How to buy Sumo Tickets in advance and on the day
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| Lineup to get Tojitsuken (General admission seat ticket) |
The tickets of the Grand Sumo tournament are usually sold from Saturday, 5 weeks prior to the first day of the tournament. For example, they started selling the tickets for the Kyushu basho (November tournament) on October 6 and the tournament will start on November 11. You can find the Grand Sumo tournament schedule which includes the schedule of tickets sales here.
You can access the Sumo association official ticket website which sells advanced tickets on-line. They start selling at 10AM and many people will try to access the site at the same
time, so you may have difficulty connecting. It doesn’t take long for the tickets
for Senshuraku (last day of the tournament) to be sold out. Also the tickets
for Shonichi (first day of the tournament) and weekends are popular and get
sold out quickly as well.
There are still some tickets available
for the Kyushu basho as of Oct 7. Generally the tournaments which are held in
Kokugikan in Tokyo are more popular than the other locations. All tickets are
sold out in the first day of sales.
If you can't get a ticket in advance,
you may want to try to get a Tojitsuken (General admission seat ticket).
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| General admission seat tickets |
Each
day of the tournament, they sell Tojitsuken tickets in the morning. For
example, they sell 400 tickets at Kokugikan and they are for the unreserved
seats, which are in the last row of the second floor of the arena. The Kokugikan is
not a big arena, so you can still enjoy watching the matches from those
seats.
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| View of the ring from the second floor |
The tickets are sold from
7:45 and generally there is a lineup before they start selling. You need
to be there quite early so that you can get these limited tickets. It’s hard to
tell what time you should be there, but I recommend arriving on the first train
to Ryogoku station which is the nearest station to Kokugikan for weekends. That
means you are in the lineup from around 5:00AM. If you go there for
weekdays, maybe you can get tickets if you arrive around 6:00AM. More
people will try to see the matches if the popular Rikishi (Sumo wrestlers) are
doing well in the tournament. So it’s hard to say what time should be early
enough.
We went to get the ticket for the
Senshuraku of Kugatsubasho (September tournament) in September. We couldn’t
buy a ticket in advance as it got sold out quickly, but we really want to see
the last match of Kamiyutaka, who is one of our favourite Rikishi. He was to
retire from Sumo at the September tournament. So we decided to get a Tojitsuken and get up at
4:00AM to leave for Kokugikan. We were not sure how early to arrive.
Yokozuna Hakuho was already victorious the day before, as he went
undefeated. So it wasn’t as exciting as his victory was already assured, so we
thought that not many people would be in the lineup.
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| Great Yokozuna Hakuho who won the September Tournament 2018 |
However, we heard that they
didn’t have 400 tickets for Senshuraku as some of the seats would be used for
the musical band which plays the national anthem for the victory ceremony. We
decided to go by bicycle to arrive before the first train arrived in to
Ryogoku station to make sure we arrive early enough to get the tickets. We
arrived around 4:40AM and saw already quite a lot of people in the
lineup.
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| Lineup to get the General admission seat ticket for Senshuraku |
We counted 200 people. It seemed that some people tmust have stayed over
night to be in the line. Sometimes just one or two persons were in the lineup,
and their friends would join them before the tickets were distributed, so there
were probably more than 200 in the end. We were relieved to get tickets. We saw
a lot of people arrive with the first train at 5:00AM and they rushed
into the lineup.
When the lineup is long, they distribute
numbered tickets around 7:00AM (the time depends on how long the
lineup is) which is required to buy a ticket. At this time, you will know if
you can buy a ticket. We saw many people who were sadly leaving from the lineup
after the numbered tickets were distributed.
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| Numbered tickets. We got 264th and 265th. |
You still have to be in the lineup
after getting the numbered ticket until they start selling the tickets. So we
waited for 3 hours, but it went quickly as we were checking the photos of the
day before when we saw the Sumo matches. Finally we bought our
tickets around 8:00AM and went home as the matches didn’t
start until 10:00AM for Senshuraku (start time depends on the day,
but usually around 8:30 for the first 12 days. They start around10:00
– 10:30 for the last three days. ).
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| View from the Ryogoku bashi on the bicycle |
We live about half hour by bicycle to Ryogoku so we came back there around 11:00 to see the last match of Kamiyutaka.
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| Kamiyutaka on the right in his last match. |
You can go in to Kokugikan from
8:00AM and secure a seat. Kokugikan is square shape and the best side is Shoumen (front of Dohyo,
the ring). There are staff who can speak English so ask them how you can get to the unreserved seats in Shoumen side. After you secured the seat, you can explore Kokugikan or you can go out
once to explore vicinity. *Please note that re-entry is allowed only once.
Important notes for getting Tojitsuken (General admission seat ticket):
*The tickets are limited (400 for Kokugikan except
Senshuraku which has little less than 400).
*The price for Adults is 2,100yen and
Children is 200yen (as of October 2018). *Only cash payment is accepted
*Only one ticket is sold per person.
**Please note that this article is written October 2018 and some informaiton may not be the same in the future.
If you have any question, please do not
hesitate to contact me.
Please contact if you are interested in watching any sumo matches with an English speaking Japanese guide who loves sumo.
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