Sumo in Tokyo (2027): January Tournament Tickets, Ryogoku Kokugikan and Morning Practice (2027)

The January 2027 tournament. The January tournament (the Hatsu Basho) runs for 15 days, from Sunday 10 to Sunday 24 January 2027, at Ryogoku Kokugikan. Advance tickets go on sale on Saturday 5 December 2026, and the new rankings (the banzuke) are announced on Monday 21 December. The tournament and sale dates appear on both the Japan Sumo Association's 2027 schedule and its official ticket site; the banzuke date is from the association's schedule. The full January ticket details, including the English site's seat list and fees, aren't published yet: the association's own January page says they'll follow, so check sumo.pia.jp/en in early December. For everything else on in the city that month, see Tokyo in January.

Buy from the official seller only. The Japan Sumo Association's ticket site is Ticket Oosumo, run with Ticket Pia, at sumo.pia.jp in Japanese and sumo.pia.jp/en in English. In 2026 the English site charged a ¥2,000 service fee per ticket, took credit cards only, and sent you to a 7-Eleven in Japan to print the tickets. Purchases can't be changed or refunded, and a lost ticket won't get you in. For the November 2026 Fukuoka tournament it ran an international advance lottery with an extra ¥550 fee per ticket; whether January has one isn't announced yet. Ticket Oosumo's own pages warn: 'Be careful of ticket resale sites!'

Resale is banned. The association's spectator terms ban reselling tickets for profit without its permission, including on auction sites. Transfers to family, friends or colleagues are allowed if nobody's making money. Anyone who buys tickets to resell them, or to package them into tours without permission, can be refused entry. A resold ticket costs more than face value and has none of the official protections, so it isn't worth the risk.

Will it sell out? Expect it to. Group tickets for all 15 days of January 2027 sold out in the autumn, before the general sale, and Ticket Oosumo lists every day of the November 2026 tournament as sold out, with no tickets on the door. If tickets sell out before the day, none are sold at the Kokugikan box office.

The new 2027 Tokyo prices. From the January 2027 tournament the association has raised Tokyo prices and added a new front-row box tier. All prices are per person and include tax. Weekend and holiday prices apply on 10, 11 (Coming of Age Day), 16 and 17 January; the higher day 14 and final day prices apply on Saturday 23 and Sunday 24 January; every other day is a weekday.

Chair seats (the upper tier, ordinary seats): S ¥11,000 weekday / ¥12,000 weekend / ¥13,000 last two days; A ¥10,000 / ¥11,000 / ¥12,000; B ¥6,000 / ¥7,000 / ¥8,000; C ¥5,000 / ¥6,000 / ¥7,000. D seats are ¥3,000 for adults. The price list also has children's versions of some seats; how those are sold for January isn't published yet.

Box seats (masu-seki), the lower tier where you sit on cushions on the floor with your shoes off, are priced per person but sold by the box, usually for four: SS (rows 1 and 2, new for 2027) ¥22,500 weekday / ¥24,000 weekend / ¥25,000 last two days; S ¥18,000 / ¥20,000 / ¥22,000; A ¥15,000 / ¥16,500 / ¥18,000; B ¥11,000 / ¥12,500 / ¥14,000; C ¥9,500 / ¥10,500 / ¥11,500. A weekday B box for four therefore comes to ¥44,000.

Ringside (tamari) seats, on the floor right by the ring, are ¥25,000 weekday, ¥27,500 at weekends and ¥30,000 on the last two days. In 2026 ringside and S boxes were sold only on the Japanese site.

What changed. In 2026 a Tokyo C chair seat was ¥3,500 on weekdays and ¥4,000 at weekends, and a ringside seat was ¥20,000. Older blog posts quoting those prices are now out of date. The price list is the association's own, published on 30 July 2026 and updated on 1 October 2026. Osaka also rose; Nagoya and Fukuoka didn't.

Children and wheelchairs. Everyone aged 4 and over needs their own ticket. Wheelchair users who want to stay in their chair need a wheelchair seat: the 2027 list puts these at ¥9,500 on weekdays, ¥10,500 at weekends and ¥11,500 on the last two days. In 2026 they could only be booked by phone, in Japanese (0570-02-9310, 10am-6pm), and paid at a 7-Eleven in Japan the next day.

The Sumo Museum is one room on the Kokugikan's first floor, founded in 1954 and here since the arena opened in 1985. It shows woodblock prints, past banzuke ranking sheets and the embroidered kesho-mawashi aprons that wrestlers wear in the ring-entering ceremony, on a display that changes through the year. It's free. Outside tournaments it opens on weekdays, 10am to 4.30pm; during a Tokyo tournament it opens 12.30pm to 4pm and only ticket holders can reach it. It's often closed between displays: in December 2026 it's open on just seven days (8-10 and 14-17 December), so check its calendar before you go.

In the same building, the Kokugikan's souvenir shop opens 10am to 3pm on weekdays outside tournaments too, so you can buy official sumo goods without a ticket. During a tournament it's for ticket holders only.

Morning practice (asa-geiko). Watching wrestlers train in their stable (heya, or beya) at 7.30am is a rawer, quieter thing than the tournament, and some stables let the public watch. The easiest is Arashio stable in Nihonbashi Hamacho, which publishes its own visitor page in English. It's free, there's no booking, and you watch from the pavement through a big front window, roughly 7.30am to 9am. Visitors of any gender are welcome.

Arashio's rules: check the online calendar first, because practice isn't guaranteed and can stop without notice; keep quiet; no flash; no eating or drinking; and don't sit on the neighbours' steps. The stable won't answer phone or email questions about the schedule. Like every stable, it leaves Tokyo for the tournaments in Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka; it's in Fukuoka now and returns to Tokyo practice in December. Check the calendar for practice days before the January tournament. The stable's page also links to a guided version sold as an official Chuo City experience.

Be careful with paid 'stable tours'. The association's own group-ticket page states that recruiting customers for paid sumo-stable visit tours is prohibited within the association. Plenty of companies still sell 'sumo stable tours' and 'morning practice experiences'. Before paying, check whether the stable itself publishes visiting, as Arashio does for free. Wherever you watch, the stable's rules are the ones to follow: silence, no flash, and stay where you're told.

Nomi no Sukune Shrine honours the legendary founder of sumo, who according to the Nihon Shoki chronicle won a bout before Emperor Suinin and became the god of sumo. Sumo people built it in 1885; it burned in the 1923 earthquake and the 1945 air raids and was rebuilt in 1953, when the Japan Sumo Association put up a monument listing every yokozuna. Before each Tokyo tournament the association's chairman and judges attend a festival here, and new yokozuna perform their ring-entering ceremony. It's a small, quiet shrine about 15 minutes' walk from the Kokugikan, and free. Its charms are sold at the Sumo Museum.

Ryogoku and chanko-nabe. Ryogoku has hosted sumo since the Edo period, and around the station you'll see stables, wrestlers in yukata on their way somewhere, and chanko restaurants. Chanko-nabe is the hotpot wrestlers eat in their stables: a big pot of broth with chicken, fish, meatballs and plenty of vegetables. It's filling rather than fancy, and one of the best things to eat in this part of Tokyo in winter.

Ryogoku Edo NOREN is the easiest place to start. It fills the old Ryogoku station building, next to the JR station, with restaurants around a full-size sumo ring under an Edo-style fire tower. It's open 10am to 11pm (closed 1-2 January). The tourist information centre inside sells the Kokugikan's famous yakitori, which is grilled in the arena's basement, to take away.

Chanko Kirishima is the restaurant of the former ozeki Kirishima, with branches inside Edo NOREN and at 2-13-7 Ryogoku, a minute from the station. The broth is chicken and pork bone with seafood, meat, meatballs and lots of vegetables. The Edo NOREN branch is open 11am to 10pm (last order 9pm), with a lunch break on weekdays. The restaurant doesn't publish its prices on its own site. For more of Tokyo's food, see our guides to the best restaurants in Tokyo, Tokyo's best izakaya and cheap eats.

More of Ryogoku. The Edo-Tokyo Museum sits right behind the Kokugikan, with full-size reconstructions and scale models of old Edo and Tokyo across two floors of permanent exhibition. Adults pay ¥800. It's open 9.30am to 5.30pm (to 7.30pm on Saturdays) and closed on Mondays. For more museums across the city, see our guide to the best museums in Tokyo.

The Sumida Hokusai Museum, a short walk east of the station, is devoted to Hokusai, who was born in this area. The permanent Education Room costs ¥400 for adults; special exhibitions are priced separately. It's open Tuesday to Sunday, 9.30am to 5.30pm, and closed over New Year (27 December to 1 January this season, per its exhibition page; its general listing says 29 December to 3 January).

Sumo shows: entertainment, not the sport. If you're in Tokyo when there's no tournament, or tickets have gone, restaurants in Ryogoku and Asakusa sell sumo shows to visitors. These are not real competition. Former wrestlers demonstrate the moves and rituals, explain the sport in English, cook or serve chanko, and let you put on a costume and push against one of them. They're good fun, especially with children (see our guide to Tokyo with kids), but don't book one thinking you've seen sumo.

SUMOLAND in Ryogoku runs two venues. SUMOLAND Tokyo Signature is a 90 to 120-minute show with a chanko meal made to a recipe from Isegahama stable, mochi pounding, a chance to step into the ring and a photo. Its own site lists adults at ¥16,000, currently shown at ¥15,500, children up to 12 at ¥12,000, and a front box for six at ¥99,500. Shows are at 11am, 2.30pm and 6pm. SUMOLAND Tokyo Express, which opened in October 2026 a minute from JR Ryogoku, is a 60-minute version with no meal, listed at ¥9,500 and shown at ¥9,000, with five shows a day. Same-day tickets are sold online until 30 minutes before a show if there are seats.

Asakusa Sumo Club, a few minutes from Senso-ji, does a two-hour show: about 40 minutes of chanko, a 20-minute demonstration by former and student wrestlers, then 40 minutes of trying sumo in costume, photos in the ring and questions. It's ¥16,000 per person (¥20,000 for front-row VIP seats, ¥12,000 for under-12s), with shows at 12pm, 3pm, 6pm and 8.30pm, and an Annex three minutes away when the main room is full. It can't do gluten-free meals. It pairs well with a morning around the temple; see our Asakusa guide.

Third-party booking sites resell both shows at their own prices, often in dollars or pounds. The prices above are the operators' own.