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Events in Japan in January 2027

Dates verified: September 27, 2026

The most memorable festivals, fireworks nights, flower seasons, snow festivals and light-ups in January 2027, each date checked against its organiser. Filter by kind or city, and open an event for the details.

  • FestivalExpectedToka Ebisu · 9–11 Jan十日戎Osaka · FreeOsaka's three-day January festival of good fortune at Imamiya Ebisu Shrine, where visitors queue for lucky bamboo branches handed out by the fuku-musume.
    Shrine helpers in matching yellow happi holding decorated sprigs of lucky bamboo hung with gold coins, red sea bream and Ebisu charms, under red and white paper lanterns, as visitors reach up from below
    Mixtribe Photo via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0 · cropped
  • SnowShirakawa-go Winter Light-up · 11–31 Jan白川郷ライトアップShirakawa · GifuFour winter evenings when Shirakawa-go's thatched farmhouses are lit under deep snow, the most sought-after and tightly ticketed sight of a Japanese winter.
    Three gassho-zukuri farmhouses at Shirakawa-go on a winter night, their steep thatched roofs heaped with snow and their paper windows glowing gold, deep untracked snow in front and snow-laden cedars on the hillside behind
    Yoshiyuki Ito via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0 · cropped
  • FestivalExpectedNozawa Fire Festival · 15 Jan野沢温泉の道祖神祭りNozawa Onsen · Nagano · FreeA ten-metre beech shrine held for ninety minutes against torch-bearing villagers on 15 January, then burned with the year's first-son lanterns.
    The burning hatsu-doro at the Nozawa Fire Festival: a tall lantern of inked paper streamers under a domed bamboo frame, flames and sparks pouring up behind it, a red paper lantern reading Nozawagumi hanging alongside and a crowd silhouetted below
    Michael Mason via Unsplash · Unsplash License · cropped
  • IlluminationKobe Luminarie · 29 Jan – 7 Feb神戸ルミナリエKobe · Hyogo · FreeKobe's memorial illumination for the 1995 earthquake, ten late-January nights of Italian light arches over the former Foreign Settlement and Meriken Park.
    A monumental illuminated gateway of hand-painted bulbs at Kobe Luminarie seen from below at night, its rosettes and finials picked out in blue, green, red and gold, with a lit dome visible through the arch
    Yoyogimura via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · cropped
  • SnowYunishigawa Onsen Kamakura Festival · 29 Jan – 28 Feb湯西川温泉かまくら祭Nikko · Tochigi · FreeA hot-spring village in the mountains of Nikko where hundreds of candle-lit miniature snow huts line the riverbed on winter evenings from late January.
    A snowy path at night lined on both sides with small candle-lit snow huts glowing orange, blue light washing the snow between them and a few visitors walking up the path
    Miyuki Meinaka via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · cropped
  • IlluminationComing soonAshikaga Flower Park Flower Fantasy · 17 Oct 2026 – 14 Feb 2027あしかがフラワーパーク 光の花の庭Ashikaga · Tochigi · From ¥1,500The wisteria garden's winter illumination, four months of lights in three themed phases at Ashikaga Flower Park, one of Japan's three great illuminations.
    A pond at Ashikaga Flower Park filled with LED tableaux at night — a lit sailing ship, a glowing blue globe, whales, dolphins, penguins and giraffes — each one mirrored in the still black water
    Miyuki Meinaka via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · cropped
  • IlluminationComing soonNabana no Sato Illumination · 17 Oct 2026 – 31 May 2027なばなの里 イルミネーションKuwana · Mie · From ¥2,500Japan's largest garden illumination, from mid-October to the end of May in a flower park near Nagoya, with a light tunnel and a field of millions of LEDs.
    A curving light tunnel glowing pink beside a bed of red LED tulips at Nabana no Sato at night, real trees lit warm above it and a blue LED field in the distance
    carloshonda via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 3.0 · cropped
  • IlluminationComing soonTokyo Mega Illumination · 31 Oct 2026 – 10 Jan 2027東京メガイルミTokyo · From ¥800Tokyo's largest ticketed illumination, a winter light park laid out across Oi Racecourse in Shinagawa on the nights when there is no racing.
    A crowd in silhouette walking beneath a vast draped canopy of warm white fairy lights at Tokyo Mega Illumination, with red and blue lit sections deeper under the grandstand at Oi Racecourse
    Syced via Wikimedia Commons · CC0 1.0 · cropped
  • IlluminationMarunouchi Illumination · 12 Nov 2026 – 14 Feb 2027丸の内イルミネーションTokyo · FreeTokyo's most elegant street illumination, three months of champagne-gold lights in the trees of Marunouchi Naka-dori beside Tokyo Station.
    Warm champagne-gold fairy lights wound along the branches of a zelkova on Marunouchi Naka-dori at night, with autumn leaves still on the tree and the windows of an office building behind
    Takashi Hososhima via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0 · cropped
  • IlluminationSapporo White Illumination · 20 Nov 2026 – 14 Mar 2027さっぽろホワイトイルミネーションSapporo · Hokkaido · FreeJapan's oldest city illumination, lighting Odori Park and Sapporo's main streets from late November into the snow of February, with a German Christmas market.
    A field of blue lights and white and pink snowflake motifs in Odori Park at night during the Sapporo White Illumination, with the lit Sapporo TV Tower behind and the wet pavement reflecting the blue
    Sorah Fukumori via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 3.0 · cropped
  • SnowExpected · dates to be confirmedZao Snow Monsters Light-up (Zao Juhyo Festival) · Late December 2026 – Late February 2027蔵王樹氷まつりYamagata · From ¥4,400Yamagata's frost-covered 'snow monsters' lit in colour at the top of the Zao Ropeway on selected winter nights, a spectacle unique to the Zao range.
    Fir trees buried under thick layers of wind-driven rime on the ridge above Zao Onsen, standing as hulking white figures that fade one behind another into freezing fog
    pen_ash via Unsplash · Unsplash License · cropped

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