Whisky Culture Institute (ウイスキー文化研究所), the group behind Japan’s largest recurring whisky trade show, will hold “Whisky Festival 2026 in Tokyo” on November 6 and 7 at the Tokyo International Forum, with 124 exhibitors confirmed as of August 2026. The festival’s opening Premium Night, on the evening of November 6, will feature two free talk shows, one of them with Kavalan (カバラン) chairman Lee Yu-Ting (李玉鼎), whose Taiwanese single malt has become one of the most decorated whiskies outside Scotland and Japan.
Two conversations, one stage
The first talk, running 5:30 to 6:00 p.m., brings together three people building new distilleries: Shingo Takeuchi (竹内慎吾) of Sakurao Distillery, who is leading preparations for the company’s second site in Hiroshima’s Yoshiwa area, due to open in 2027; Akihito Watanabe (渡邉暁人) of Tamano Ascend Distillery, who grows the corn and rye his distillery uses for grain whisky; and Genki Harigaya (針ヶ谷元基) of Tankyu Distillery in Higashikawa, Hokkaido. Whisky critic Mamoru Tsuchiya (土屋守), the institute’s head and editor of the magazine Whisky Galore, will moderate a discussion on how terroir, raw materials and technique are shaping Japan’s next generation of distilleries.
The second talk, from 6:30 to 7:00 p.m., puts Tsuchiya opposite Lee Yu-Ting, who founded Kavalan in 2005 and became chairman of its parent, King Car Group, in 2025. Kavalan has drawn attention since its early years for aging quickly and distinctively in Taiwan’s hot, humid climate, and Lee was inducted into Whisky Magazine’s Hall of Fame in 2018. The conversation is billed around a single question: how a whisky made near the equator became a serious rival to century-old Scottish and Japanese producers, and what that means for where the next breakout whisky region might be.
What else is at the festival
Beyond the talks, the festival runs a first session on November 7 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and a second from 2:30 to 6:00 p.m., with tickets priced at 5,000 yen per session and Premium Night access at 3,500 yen; each of the three sessions is capped at roughly 2,200 attendees. Roughly 80% of the whisky and spirits on offer across the show is included in admission, with rarer pours available for an extra charge. Confirmed exhibitors include distilleries and importers already familiar to overseas drinkers, among them Suntory, Nikka, Mars Whisky, Venture Whisky’s Chichibu, Akkeshi, Kanosuke and Sakurao, alongside dozens of smaller producers rarely seen outside Japan.
For whisky travelers, a festival of this size is one of the more efficient ways to taste widely across Japan’s fast-growing distillery scene in a single weekend, including bottles from small producers that may never be exported. The institute runs sister events in Osaka and Yokohama and has announced a first edition in Matsumoto for 2027, part of a expansion that reflects how much the domestic festival circuit has grown alongside international demand for Japanese whisky. Tickets and full details are only published in Japanese, so overseas visitors planning a trip around the event should expect to book through the festival’s Japanese-language site.
Source: PR TIMES (Japanese)