Hokkoku Fireworks Kanazawa 2026 Confirmed

北國花火 金沢大会 — Kanazawa, Ishikawa (Hokuriku)

The Hokkoku Fireworks Kanazawa festival puts about 12,000 shells over the Sai River, a fifteen-minute walk from the samurai districts and tea houses of Japan's best-preserved castle town. The 2026 edition is dedicated to Noto earthquake recovery, and the show's scale is unusually large for how easy it is to attend.

Background

Run by the Hokkoku Shimbun newspaper across multiple venues in Ishikawa each summer, the Kanazawa edition is the flagship, a fixture of the city's late-July calendar for decades.

Getting there

The venue is the Sai River green belt at Omameda: about 20 minutes by bus or taxi from JR Kanazawa Station (Hokuriku Shinkansen, 2.5 hours from Tokyo), or 25 minutes on foot from the Katamachi entertainment district.

Tips

• Kanazawa's tourism infrastructure absorbs the crowd better than most fireworks cities — this is one of the easiest 'big show + great destination' pairings in Japan.
• Free riverbank space is generous by national standards; arriving at dusk still gets a workable spot.
• Stay near Katamachi/Korinbo and you can walk both to the show and back to your hotel — skip the bus queues entirely.
• The 2026 Noto-support program is expected to include memorial pieces; check the official program for the dedication segments.