Sumo Tournaments in Japan (Honbasho): Schedule and Tickets

Professional sumo is not a year-round fixture you can drop in on. It runs as six grand tournaments — honbasho — spread across the calendar, each lasting fifteen days and always opening and closing on a Sunday. Outside those ninety days, the sport is in training or on tour.

When are the six sumo tournaments?

Three of the six are held in Tokyo, at the Ryogoku Kokugikan; the others move around the country.

• January — Tokyo, Ryogoku Kokugikan. The year opens here.
• March — Osaka, in the city’s central arena at Namba.
• May — Tokyo, Ryogoku Kokugikan.
• July — Nagoya. The tournament moved to the new IG Arena in 2025, after decades in the gymnasium on the castle grounds.
• September — Tokyo, Ryogoku Kokugikan.
• November — Fukuoka, Fukuoka Kokusai Center. The year closes here.

How does a sumo tournament day work?

Doors open around 8am and the lowest divisions wrestle first, to a near-empty hall. The building fills through the afternoon: juryo bouts from about 2:30pm, then the ring-entering ceremony and the top makuuchi division from around 3:45pm, finishing with the final bout of the day at about 6pm.

That leaves two sensible plans. Arrive mid-afternoon for the part everyone comes for, or arrive in the morning on a cheap seat and watch the hall fill around you — the early bouts are where the young wrestlers are, and the arena is empty enough to sit more or less anywhere.

How do you get sumo tickets?

Sales open roughly a month before each tournament, and the Tokyo weekends go quickly; the closing days of any tournament are the hardest to get. Book through the Japan Sumo Association, which sells in English.

• Box seats (masu-seki) — floor-level squares sold as a set of four, cushions rather than chairs. The traditional way to watch, and priced accordingly.
• Arena seats — ordinary chairs on the upper tiers, sold individually and steadily cheaper the higher you go.
• Ringside (tamari) — the first few rows, close enough that wrestlers occasionally land in them. Expensive, hard to obtain, and no back support.
• Same-day tickets — a limited run of general admission goes on sale at the venue each morning of the tournament. Queue early.

What if your dates miss a tournament?

Two options remain. Stables in Tokyo admit small numbers of visitors to morning practice, asa-geiko, which is quiet, close and free of any showmanship — arrangements are made in advance and the etiquette is strict. Between tournaments the wrestlers also travel on jungyo, regional exhibition tours reaching towns the honbasho never visit; the bouts are informal and the mood is closer to a local festival. For what else is on around your dates, the season-by-season events guide covers the whole year.

What is a day at the sumo actually like?

A bout lasts seconds. What fills the time is ritual — salt thrown to purify the ring, the crouching and staring down across the shikiri-sen, the retreats to the corner, repeated until both wrestlers agree the moment has arrived. Food and beer are carried to your seat, and nobody minds if you arrive or leave mid-session.