![\"\"](\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/03\/mk-1.jpg?w=640\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Latest forecast says peak sakura season is coming very early in 2026<\/strong>. <\/span><\/p>\n With this year\u2019s first reports of the opening of cherry blossoms in Japan, sakura season is officially underway<\/a>. However, that doesn\u2019t mean that it\u2019s time to blow off work, grab a six-pack of Asahis and a whole bunch of sakura sweets<\/a>, and head to the park just yet. Well, actually we\u2019d never say it\u2019s a bad<\/em> time to do that, but if you go right now, you probably won\u2019t see many cherry blossoms.<\/p>\n That\u2019s 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<\/strong> and turn the trees into those postcard-perfect, unforgettable-memory masses of pink flowers. Especially since cherry blossom trees don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/strong>. Since warm weather arrives in the southwest part of the country first, that\u2019s where most of the earliest projected full-bloom dates are, with northeast Japan\u2019s peak sakura times generally coming a little later.<\/p>\n The full-bloom forecast is:<\/strong> 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<\/strong>. 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.<\/p>\n Kyoto<\/strong> is conspicuously absent from the forecast, despite boasting some of Japan\u2019s 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\u2019t have significantly different weather patterns at this time of year, so Kyoto\u2019s cherry blossoms will probably also be fully open sometime around April 2.<\/p>\n Source: Tenki.jp<\/a><\/em> Latest forecast says peak sakura season is coming very early in 2026. With this year\u2019s first reports of the opening of cherry blossoms in Japan, sakura season is officially underway.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\n\u25cf Nagoya<\/strong>: March 24 (9 days earlier than average)
\n\u25cf Tokyo<\/strong>: March 25 (6 days earlier than average)
\n\u25cf Kochi<\/strong>: March 25 (5 days earlier than average)
\n\u25cf Fukuoka<\/strong>: March 30 (1 day earlier than average)
\n\u25cf Hiroshima<\/strong>: March 31 (3 days earlier than average)
\n\u25cf Osaka<\/strong>: April 2 (2 days earlier than average)
\n\u25cf Kanazawa<\/strong>: April 4 (4 days earlier than average)
\n\u25cf Sendai<\/strong>: April 6 (7 days earlier than average)
\n\u25cf Niigata<\/strong>: April 6 (7 days earlier than average)
\n\u25cf Kagoshima<\/strong>: April 6 (1 day later than average)
\n\u25cf Nagano<\/strong>: April 8 (8 days earlier than average)
\n\u25cf Akita<\/strong>: April 13 (9 days earlier than average)
\n\u25cf Aomori<\/strong>: April 19 (7 days earlier than average)
\n\u25cf Sapporo<\/strong>: April 29 (7 days earlier than average)
\n\u25cf Kushiro<\/strong>: May 10 (9 days earlier than average)<\/p>\n
\nTop image: Pakutaso<\/a><\/em>
\n\u25cf Want to hear about SoraNews24\u2019s latest articles as soon as they\u2019re published? Follow us on Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a>!<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"