Latest forecast says peak sakura season is coming very early in 2026.

With this year’s first reports of the opening of cherry blossoms in Japan, sakura season is officially underway. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s time to blow off work, grab a six-pack of Asahis and a whole bunch of sakura sweets, and head to the park just yet. Well, actually we’d never say it’s a bad time to do that, but if you go right now, you probably won’t see many cherry blossoms.

That’s because as much as Japan looks forward to the opening of the sakura buds, even once that happens it still takes some time for the flowers to reach full bloom and turn the trees into those postcard-perfect, unforgettable-memory masses of pink flowers. Especially since cherry blossom trees don’t get their leaves until after their flowers appear, at the very start of sakura season their branches are still mostly bare and not particularly pretty.

Thankfully, the Japan Weather Association has just released an updated forecast of when the cherry blossoms are expected to reach full bloom in a number of cities across Japan. Since warm weather arrives in the southwest part of the country first, that’s where most of the earliest projected full-bloom dates are, with northeast Japan’s peak sakura times generally coming a little later.

The full-bloom forecast is:
● Nagoya: March 24 (9 days earlier than average)
● Tokyo: March 25 (6 days earlier than average)
● Kochi: March 25 (5 days earlier than average)
● Fukuoka: March 30 (1 day earlier than average)
● Hiroshima: March 31 (3 days earlier than average)
● Osaka: April 2 (2 days earlier than average)
● Kanazawa: April 4 (4 days earlier than average)
● Sendai: April 6 (7 days earlier than average)
● Niigata: April 6 (7 days earlier than average)
● Kagoshima: April 6 (1 day later than average)
● Nagano: April 8 (8 days earlier than average)
● Akita: April 13 (9 days earlier than average)
● Aomori: April 19 (7 days earlier than average)
● Sapporo: April 29 (7 days earlier than average)
● Kushiro: May 10 (9 days earlier than average)

Looking at the dates, we can see that full bloom is expected to happen about one week earlier than in an average year for most locations. Note, again that these are city forecasts, and so the March 30 listed for Fukuoka is for Fukuoka City, not Fukuoka Prefecture as a whole.

Kyoto is conspicuously absent from the forecast, despite boasting some of Japan’s most picturesque sakura spots. Of the cities that do have projected dates, though, Osaka is the closest geographically to Kyoto, and the two cities don’t have significantly different weather patterns at this time of year, so Kyoto’s cherry blossoms will probably also be fully open sometime around April 2.

Source: Tenki.jp
Top image: Pakutaso
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