Japan IT Week 2026: Dates, Venues, Expos & Free Entry Guide
October 21-23, 2026
TL;DR: The next Japan IT Week runs October 21-23, 2026 at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, just outside Tokyo, with 700 planned exhibitors and 31,000 planned visitors across 18 co-located expos. Admission is free with...
TL;DR: The next Japan IT Week runs October 21-23, 2026 at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, just outside Tokyo, with 700 planned exhibitors and 31,000 planned visitors across 18 co-located expos. Admission is free with visitor registration, and the AI content sits in two named expos: the Embedded & Edge AI Expo and the AI Infrastructure & Data Center Expo, plus the AI and Business Automation Expo under the DX & AX Week banner. Three more editions follow: Osaka on November 18-20, 2026, Tokyo Big Sight on April 7-9, 2027, and Nagoya on July 21-23, 2027.
I track AI conferences on this site mostly to answer one question for readers: is the ticket worth the flight? Japan IT Week inverts that question, because the ticket costs nothing. The organiser, RX Japan, gives away admission with a registration form, which means the entire cost of attending is travel, hotel, and three days of your time. That changes the maths completely, and it also changes what you should be checking before you commit.
I run ZPlatform’s AI events hub by pulling numbers straight from the organiser and saying plainly where the picture is thin. For this one, the dates, venues, expo lineup, and attendance projections are all published and specific. What is not published, at least not in English, is a speaker roster or a seminar programme, and the show floor itself is a predominantly Japanese-language environment. Both of those matter more here than the ticket price does.
This guide covers the exact dates and venue for the October show, the full four-edition calendar through mid-2027, which of the 18 expos actually carry AI content, how the free registration works, and an honest read on who should book the trip. All figures come from the official Japan IT Week site, checked against its per-edition visitor pages.
Key Takeaways
- The next edition is Tokyo Autumn. October 21-23, 2026 at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, running 10:00 to 17:00 each day, with 700 planned exhibitors and 31,000 planned visitors.
- Entry is genuinely free. Admission costs nothing with the visitor registration form. There is also a free VIP registration, restricted to manager level and above.
- It is four shows and 18 expos, not one event. Japan IT Week, Japan DX & AX Week, Sales & Digital Marketing Week, and E-commerce & Store Week all run under the same roof on the same badge.
- AI now has its own named expos. The Embedded & Edge AI Expo and the AI Infrastructure & Data Center Expo both carry AI in the title after a rename, and the AI and Business Automation Expo sits alongside them.
- Four editions run through July 2027. Chiba in October, Osaka in November, Tokyo Big Sight in April 2027, and Nagoya in July 2027, with the Spring Tokyo show the largest of the set.
An event that publishes exhibitor counts, floor hours, a venue postcode, and a free registration link, but no English speaker list, is telling you exactly what kind of event it is. This is a trade floor first. Treat the seminars as a bonus, not the reason you flew.
What Is Japan IT Week?
Japan IT Week is Japan’s largest IT trade exhibition, organised by RX Japan Ltd., the Japanese arm of the RX events group. It is not a single conference with a main stage. It is an umbrella under which four specialised shows run simultaneously, each made up of its own set of expos, all accessible on one badge.
The four shows are Japan IT Week itself, Japan DX & AX Week, Sales & Digital Marketing Week, and E-commerce & Store Week. Between them the October edition fields 18 individual expos. The structure is worth understanding before you go, because “Japan IT Week” on a map at the venue entrance will point you at roughly a third of the floor, and the AI and automation content is split across two of the four shows rather than concentrated in one.
The format is the classic Japanese trade-show model: dense booth grids, a heavy focus on business matching, and exhibitors who are there to meet buyers rather than to run demos for a general audience. RX Japan also runs a Japan Startup Summit as a special area, held four times a year across the Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya editions, which is where the earlier-stage companies cluster.
One naming detail signals where the show thinks the market is going. The expo now listed as the Embedded & Edge AI Expo carries an official note that its former name was the IoT & Edge Computing Expo, and the AI Infrastructure & Data Center Expo was previously just the Data Center Expo. Renaming two established expos to put AI in the title is a fairly blunt indicator of what RX Japan expects exhibitors to be selling this cycle.
When and Where Is Japan IT Week 2026?
The next edition, the Tokyo Autumn Show, takes place October 21-23, 2026 (Wednesday to Friday) at Makuhari Messe, at 2-1 Nakase, Mihama-ku, Chiba City, 261-8550. Floor hours are 10:00 to 17:00 on all three days.
Makuhari Messe is in Chiba, not central Tokyo, which is the one logistics detail worth planning around. It sits roughly 30 to 40 minutes by train from Tokyo Station on the Keiyo Line to Kaihimmakuhari, and it is genuinely convenient from Narita Airport, which is a shorter hop than most international attendees expect. If you are booking a hotel in Shinjuku or Shibuya because that is where you always stay in Tokyo, you are signing up for a longer daily commute than the Makuhari-area hotels next to the venue would give you.
A three-day midweek run is standard for RX Japan shows and it shapes how people attend. Most Japanese attendees come for one day, often a half day, with a target list of booths. If you are flying in, you have the unusual advantage of being able to work all three days properly, which is what makes a 700-exhibitor floor tractable rather than overwhelming.
Quick facts:
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Event | Japan IT Week 2026 (Tokyo Autumn Show) |
| Dates | October 21-23, 2026 (Wed-Fri) |
| Hours | 10:00 - 17:00 daily |
| Venue | Makuhari Messe, 2-1 Nakase, Mihama-ku, Chiba City, 261-8550, Japan |
| Format | Trade exhibition, 4 co-located shows, 18 expos |
| Exhibitors (planned) | 700 |
| Visitors (planned) | 31,000 |
| Admission | Free with visitor registration |
| Organiser | RX Japan Ltd. |
| Official site | japan-it.jp |
All Four Japan IT Week Editions: The Full Calendar
Japan IT Week runs four times a year across three cities, and the editions are not equivalent in size. The Tokyo Spring show at Tokyo Big Sight is the flagship and is materially larger than the others. The Osaka edition is the smallest of the three published so far, at roughly a third of the Chiba show’s exhibitor count.
| Edition | Dates | Venue | City | Exhibitors (planned) | Visitors (planned) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tokyo Autumn Show | Oct 21-23, 2026 | Makuhari Messe | Chiba | 700 | 31,000 |
| Osaka Show | Nov 18-20, 2026 | INTEX Osaka | Osaka | 250 | 12,000 |
| Tokyo Spring Show | Apr 7-9, 2027 | Tokyo Big Sight | Tokyo | Not yet published | Not yet published |
| Nagoya Show | Jul 21-23, 2027 | Port Messe Nagoya | Nagoya | Not yet published | Not yet published |
The Osaka show, at 1-5-102 Nanko-Kita, Suminoe-ku, Osaka, 559-0034, keeps the same 10:00 to 17:00 hours and the same free-registration model. It drops the SysAdmin Empowerment Expo from the Japan IT Week lineup but otherwise mirrors the Chiba structure, including all five DX & AX Week expos.
If your goal is maximum exhibitor coverage in a single trip, wait for the Tokyo Spring show in April 2027. Third-party trade-show databases put recent Spring editions well into four figures for exhibitors, though RX Japan has not yet published its own projection for 2027, so treat those listings as indicative rather than confirmed. If your goal is a lower-friction floor where you can actually get a conversation with people on a booth, the Osaka edition’s 250 exhibitors and 12,000 visitors is the softer entry point.
Which Expos Actually Cover AI?
This is the part most event listings gloss over, so here is the full October breakdown by show.
Japan IT Week [Autumn] carries seven expos:
- Software Development & Engineering Support Expo
- Embedded & Edge AI Expo
- IoT Systems Development Expo
- Information Security Expo
- AI Infrastructure & Data Center Expo
- IT Engineer Staffing & Talent Development Expo
- SysAdmin Empowerment Expo
Japan DX & AX Week [Autumn] carries five:
- AI and Business Automation Expo
- Office-work DX Expo
- Management Transformation Expo in the AI Era
- Deskless Work DX Expo
- B2B E-Commerce & Order Management DX Expo
Sales & Digital Marketing Week [Autumn] runs two expos, covering sales digital transformation and digital marketing. E-commerce & Store Week [Autumn] runs four, covering e-commerce development, e-commerce operations and logistics, store management, and store workforce solutions.
The practical read: there are three expos with AI explicitly in the name, and they point at three genuinely different buyer profiles. Embedded & Edge AI is hardware and on-device inference, which is where Japanese manufacturing depth actually shows up and where the show is strongest relative to Western equivalents. AI Infrastructure & Data Center is the compute and facilities side. AI and Business Automation, sitting under DX & AX Week rather than under Japan IT Week, is the software and workflow layer, and the “AX” in that show’s name stands for AI transformation, which RX Japan added as a distinct category alongside DX.
Note also that “Management Transformation Expo in the AI Era” is a rename of a general management expo. As with the two renamed IT Week expos, expect AI framing across booths whose underlying products predate the framing. That is not a criticism unique to this show, but it does mean the AI-labelled floor area is larger than the genuinely AI-native exhibitor count.
How Free Registration Works
Admission is free of charge with the visitor registration form, and there is no paid tier for general entry. The process RX Japan publishes has three steps: register on the show website, print your visitor badge in colour, and bring it with you to the venue. Turning up without a printed badge means queueing to register on site, which on a 31,000-visitor show is exactly the queue you want to skip.
There are two registration types. Standard visitor registration is open to anyone attending in a business capacity. VIP registration, also free, is restricted to manager level and above and adds priority handling at the venue. Both are free, so if you qualify for VIP there is no reason to take the standard badge.
One timing note for the October show: RX Japan’s own page states that visitor badge registration opens in August 2026, with pre-registration available before that. If you are reading this and the badge form is not live yet, pre-register and come back for the badge closer to the date.
The free model is the single biggest structural difference between this and the paid Western AI conferences I cover. There is no early-bird deadline to beat, no group pricing to negotiate, and no ticket-value calculation to run. Your only real decision is whether the flight and three nights are justified by the exhibitor list, which you can review on the official site before committing to anything.
Is Japan IT Week 2026 Worth Attending? My Honest Take
If you are sourcing from or selling into the Japanese market, this is the highest-density event of its kind in the country and the free entry makes the decision close to automatic. Seven hundred exhibitors under one roof, with a genuine concentration in embedded and edge AI hardware, is not something you can replicate through vendor calls.
Two honest caveats, and neither is about quality.
The first is language. RX Japan runs full English pages for visitors, and international attendance is welcome and normal, but the show floor is a predominantly Japanese-language environment. Larger exhibitors will have English-capable staff, many smaller ones will not, and seminar content should be assumed to be in Japanese unless a specific session says otherwise. If you are going to have substantive technical conversations across a lot of booths, budget for an interpreter or a local colleague. Going in expecting an English-first experience is the mistake I would most expect a first-time international attendee to make here.
The second is that there is no published English speaker roster or session programme to plan around. Compare that with the paid conferences on our hub, where a keynote lineup is the product. Here the floor is the product. If your reason for attending is to hear specific people speak, this is the wrong event.
Here is my go-or-skip framing, the same one I apply to the AI tools I have tested and reviewed. Go to the October Chiba show if you are already travelling to Japan in Q4 or your business touches Japanese IT procurement, embedded AI hardware, or enterprise automation vendors. Go to Osaka in November instead if you want a calmer floor and easier booth access over raw exhibitor count. Wait for Tokyo Big Sight in April 2027 if you can only make one trip and want the largest edition. Skip it entirely if you need an English-language conference programme, because free entry does not fix that.
Frequently Asked Questions
When and where is Japan IT Week 2026?
The Tokyo Autumn Show runs October 21-23, 2026 at Makuhari Messe in Chiba City, Japan, from 10:00 to 17:00 each day. The Osaka Show follows on November 18-20, 2026 at INTEX Osaka.
How much does a Japan IT Week ticket cost?
Nothing. Admission is free with the visitor registration form, and the VIP registration is also free, though limited to manager level and above. There is no paid general-admission tier.
How big is Japan IT Week 2026?
RX Japan plans for 700 exhibitors and 31,000 visitors at the October Chiba edition, and 250 exhibitors and 12,000 visitors at the November Osaka edition. Figures for the April 2027 Tokyo Big Sight show have not been published yet.
Which parts of Japan IT Week cover AI?
Three expos carry AI in the name: the Embedded & Edge AI Expo and the AI Infrastructure & Data Center Expo under Japan IT Week, and the AI and Business Automation Expo under Japan DX & AX Week. AI framing also appears across the Management Transformation Expo in the AI Era and much of the DX & AX Week floor.
Is Japan IT Week held in English?
The registration site and visitor information are available in English, and international visitors are welcome, but the show floor and seminar content are predominantly Japanese. Plan for an interpreter if you need detailed technical conversations across many booths.
When does Japan IT Week 2026 registration open?
Pre-registration is already open for the October and November 2026 editions. RX Japan states that visitor badge registration for the Tokyo Autumn Show opens in August 2026, and you need to print the colour badge before arriving.
What is the difference between Japan IT Week and Japan DX & AX Week?
They are two of the four co-located shows running on the same badge at the same venue. Japan IT Week is the technical and infrastructure side, covering software development, embedded and edge AI, IoT, security, and data centres. Japan DX & AX Week is the business-transformation side, covering AI and business automation, office-work DX, and management transformation.
The Bottom Line
Japan IT Week is the biggest IT trade floor in Japan, it costs nothing to enter, and it has just renamed two of its established expos to put AI in the title. Those three facts together are the whole case for going.
The insight worth carrying: because there is no ticket to buy, the usual conference decision framework does not apply. You are not deciding whether the programme justifies the price, you are deciding whether 700 booths justify the airfare. That makes the exhibitor list, not the speaker list, the thing to read before you book, and it makes the language question the real cost to plan for.
Your concrete next step for Japan IT Week 2026: check the official Japan IT Week site, complete the free visitor or VIP registration for the October 21-23 Chiba show, and print the badge before you travel. While you plan the trip, browse the AI tools I have tested so the automation and edge-AI booths land with more context, and subscribe for AI event and deal alerts if you want a heads-up when the next edition’s details go live.