Gifu Nobunaga Festival 2026: Dates, the Samurai Parade and How to Go

Oda Nobunaga renamed this city. He took the castle on the mountain above it in 1567, changed the place name from Inokuchi to Gifu, and ran his campaign for the country from here. Once a year the city puts him back on a horse and walks him down its widest street. In 2026 that happens on Sunday 8 November — and this year is the 70th edition. Everything below is verified from Gifu City, the festival’s own organising committee, the city and prefectural tourism bodies, JR Central and Meitetsu, on 15 August 2026.

Written by Yuu — a Nagoya native of 35 years. Published August 15, 2026.

This article may contain affiliate links. See our affiliate disclosure for details.

All festival details verified from official sources on August 15, 2026.

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What Do You Need to Know in One Minute?

The Gifu Nobunaga Festival 2026 runs Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 November, 10:00 to 16:00, across central Gifu. It is free, it is the 70th edition, and the mounted samurai parade — the reason most people come — is on the Sunday.

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What Is the Gifu Nobunaga Festival?

It is Gifu City’s autumn festival honouring Oda Nobunaga, who made this city his base in 1567. Its centrepiece is a mounted samurai procession through the city centre. It is a civic and commercial event rather than a shrine rite, and it has run under this name since 1957.

Gifu’s connection to Nobunaga is not decorative. According to Gifu City, in the eighth month of Eiroku 10 — 1567, though the city notes one theory puts it at Eiroku 7 — Nobunaga took Inabayama Castle, pacified the surrounding region, changed the place name from Inokuchi (井口) to Gifu (岐阜), and made it the base from which he pursued the unification of the country. The city you walk through during the festival is, quite literally, named by the man the festival is named after.

Where the festival came from

The organisers are unusually candid about the origins. According to the Gifu Nobunaga Matsuri Executive Committee, the first samurai procession was staged in 1953 to mark 400 years since Nobunaga’s entry into Inabayama Castle. The Gifu Chamber of Commerce ran it jointly with the Gifu Times — the predecessor title of the Gifu Shimbun newspaper — and slotted it into the spring Gifu Matsuri, the annual rite of Inaba Shrine. That first procession put a dozen or so mounted warriors and a column of over 200 people, matchlock gunners included, onto the streets.

It drew crowds. So, four years later in 1957, someone made the obvious suggestion: separate it from the spring festival, give it its own date, and use it to boost trade. That is the year the autumn Gifu Nobunaga Festival was born, and 2026 is the 70th edition — a milestone the organisers flagged in their own announcement.

The committee’s constitution states the purpose plainly: to promote commerce, tourism and local produce, to revitalise the city centre, to publicise Gifu, and to create liveliness through citizen participation. Its members are the Chamber of Commerce, two shopping-street federations, the Gifu Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Junior Chamber, the neighbourhood associations, the city assembly, the city and the board of education. This is a downtown built around a parade, not a shrine rite that tourists watch from the edge.

Why the date moved

One thing trips up anyone working from older guidebooks. The festival used to run on the first Saturday and Sunday of October. From 2022 it merged with the Gifu City Agriculture Festival (岐阜市農業まつり) to become the Gifu City Industry & Agriculture Festival, and the date moved to the first Saturday and Sunday of November. The committee’s own rules now list the event date as “the first Saturday and Sunday of November”. If a source tells you October, it is out of date.

The organisers also note that there were cancellations during the COVID period. They do not specify which years, so neither will I.

The years everyone remembers

The role of Nobunaga in the procession is the thing locals speculate about all autumn. The committee’s own history page lists the casting that made news: the Gifu-born actor Hideaki Ito rode as Nobunaga at the 53rd festival in 2009, for the city’s 120th anniversary; Hiroshi Fujioka appeared in 2017; Kaoru Nagata of the idol group MAG!C☆PRINCE in 2018; and in 2019, on the eve of NHK’s Kirin ga Kuru taiga drama, the organisers created a new Akechi Mitsuhide role for Michael Tomioka.

Then came 2022. In the committee’s own words, the casting of Takuya Kimura and Hideaki Ito became a nationwide talking point, the roadsides were packed with people hoping for a glimpse, and central Gifu saw a level of excitement it had never seen before. That is why the question “who is playing Nobunaga this year?” now carries real weight. For 2026, that casting has not been announced: as of 15 August, Gifu City’s recruitment page is only calling for citizen riders, and the official site says nothing about the lead role.

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When Is the Gifu Nobunaga Festival 2026, and What Is Confirmed?

Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 November 2026, 10:00 to 16:00, across central Gifu. The day-by-day outline is published: the memorial service and dance stage on Saturday, the mounted samurai parade and agriculture festival on Sunday. Detailed timings are not out yet.

Three official sources give the same dates and hours — Gifu City, the festival’s own site, and the Gifu Convention and Visitors Bureau. The venue is “the central urban area of Gifu City”, with the plaza north of JR Gifu Station, Kogane Park, Yanagase and Kandamachi named specifically.

What is scheduled on which day

From the organisers’ announcement of 2 June 2026, which carries its own caveat: event names and content may change.

Two items already have times attached. The dance stage runs Saturday 7 November, 10:00–15:00, on the stage in front of the golden Nobunaga statue at Nobunaga Yume Hiroba, the plaza north of JR Gifu Station — cancelled in rain, with the committee making the call. The parade is confirmed for Sunday 8 November, but no start time or route has been published.

What is not out yet, and when it lands

As of 15 August 2026 the festival’s own event-programme page still shows the 2025 line-up, and Gifu City’s page simply points readers to it. That is normal at this point in the year. Based on how 2025 ran, expect the detail to arrive in the second half of October: the dance-stage running order went up on 9 October, the road-closure map on 27 October, the agriculture festival contents on 30 October, and a weather-status notice went up the day before the festival opened.

So the practical planning rule is: book your travel on the dates, and check the official site in the last week of October for the times. If you are building a wider trip around this, our Central Japan festival calendar shows what else is running the same month.

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What Actually Happens at the Mounted Samurai Parade?

A column of mounted warriors, foot soldiers, matchlock gunners and a school band walks a wide central avenue. The riders playing Nobunaga, Saito Dosan, Nohime and Oichi are chosen by public application, and local junior- and senior-high students fill the ranks around them.

Here is the 2025 shape of it, straight from the organisers’ programme — labelled as 2025 deliberately, because the 2026 timings are not published and you should not plan a train home around last year’s clock.

In 2025 the parade ran on the Sunday, 12:45 to 14:30, along Kinkabashi-dori (金華橋通り) from the Culture Centre past Yanagase Grassle 35 to Yell Gifu. It was preceded by a send-off ceremony at 12:00–12:15 at Nobunaga Yume Hiroba outside JR Gifu Station, where the selected performers declared their intentions and gave the order to march out, and by three street-performance slots along Kinkabashi-dori from 12:15 to 13:05. All of it was cancelled in rain.

The composition, again from the organisers: riders playing Oda Nobunaga, Saito Dosan, Nohime and Oichi-no-kata, all chosen by open application; ashigaru foot soldiers and koshimoto attendants played by junior- and senior-high students from the city; a matchlock gun corps; and the “Enjoy Band” music corps from Tetsumei Sakura Elementary School.

The riders are ordinary residents

This is the detail that changes how the parade reads. Gifu City’s 2026 recruitment notice, updated 13 August, calls for a small number of “Sengoku warrior” riders — and the note in brackets is literal: you will be on a horse. Applicants must live, work or study in Gifu City, be 18 or over (high-school students excluded), attend an interview and a riding practice session in early October, and be free all day on Sunday 8 November. Applications ran 3 to 21 August 2026, with second-round interviews on 31 August.

So when the column comes down Kinkabashi-dori, most of the people in armour are shop staff, students and office workers from the neighbourhoods you just walked through. It is a citizen parade in Sengoku costume rather than a professional re-enactment — and, to my mind, better for it.

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What Else Is Worth Your Time at the Festival?

A memorial service at Nobunaga’s family temple, hands-on matchlock and armour sessions for children in Kogane Park, a citizen dance stage outside the station, a flea market, and a produce festival. The festival spreads across several distinct zones rather than one venue.

The memorial service at Sofukuji

The one part of the weekend that is genuinely solemn. Sofukuji (崇福寺) in Nagara, north of the river, is Nobunaga’s family temple — a Rinzai Myoshin-ji school temple connected to both Nobunaga and his son Nobutada, holding the Oda Nobunaga Fushi-byo, a mausoleum where the pair’s personal effects were buried and their memorial tablets enshrined. The main hall also has a chi-tenjo or “blood ceiling”, built from floorboards stained during a preliminary engagement of the Sekigahara campaign; the organisers say the marks are visible to the naked eye.

For 2026 the memorial service is confirmed for Saturday 7 November, with no time yet published. In 2025 it ran 10:00–11:00 with a talk by the head priest, went ahead in rain, and the temple opened free of charge on both festival days. Sofukuji is at 2403-1 Nagara Fukumitsu — a bus ride north of the station area, not walking distance from the parade.

Kogane Park: the family zone

Kogane Park (金公園, Kogane Koen) sits in the middle of the festival footprint and is where the hands-on programming lives. Kids’ events are confirmed for both days in 2026. In 2025 that meant matchlock and bow-and-arrow sessions for primary-age children plus armour try-on, 10:00–16:00 in the park’s south area, with a flea market in the north area on the same hours. Both were cancelled in rain.

The station plaza

Nobunaga Yume Hiroba, the plaza on the north side of JR Gifu Station, holds the golden Nobunaga statue and the citizen dance stage on the Saturday, 10:00–15:00 — around 12 open-application groups, drawn by lot if more apply than there are slots, across the genres the city names in its call for performers: hip-hop, cheer dance, hula and yosakoi. Alongside it the Gifu Nobunaga Ekimae Rakuichi market runs both days, its name a nod to Nobunaga’s own rakuichi rakuza free-market policy. For the 70th edition the organisers have also added Purin Festa in Gifu on the Saturday, an anniversary event built around custard pudding made with Gifu City produce; its executive committee is listed by the city as a co-organiser of the whole festival, so it is not a fringe stall.

If you want more of Gifu than the festival itself, our Gifu City day trip guide covers the riverside, the old merchant quarter and the cormorant-fishing season.

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How Do You Get to the Gifu Nobunaga Festival from Nagoya?

Take JR or Meitetsu to Gifu. JR’s Special Rapid takes about 20 minutes and costs ¥480; Meitetsu’s limited express runs direct in 29–30 minutes for ¥630. The festival site starts immediately outside the stations and spreads out to about a 15-minute walk.

This is one of the easiest festival trips in Central Japan. Nagoya people treat Gifu less as a day trip than as an errand — you can be standing in the middle of it within half an hour of leaving Nagoya Station — and because two separate railways run the corridor, a disruption on one means walking to the other platform rather than rethinking your day.

A note on where those fares come from, because rail operators here publish them awkwardly. JR Central puts no fare table on its website, but Nagoya–Gifu is a designated special-fare section and its passenger transport regulations list that section at ¥470. JR Central then adds a railway station accessibility charge of ¥10 to adult ordinary fares in the Nagoya area — defined on the conventional lines as Toyohashi to Ogaki on the Tokaido Main Line, so both Nagoya and Gifu sit inside it — on purchases from 1 April 2024. ¥470 plus ¥10 is the ¥480 you pay. Meitetsu publishes no static fare table at all and routes everyone to its official timetable-and-fare search; searching Meitetsu Nagoya to Meitetsu Gifu on 15 August 2026 returned ¥630 for adults and ¥320 for children on every routing offered. The 20-minute JR figure comes from the Gifu Convention and Visitors Bureau, Gifu City’s official tourism body, since JR Central does not publish conventional-line journey times statically.

Which station should you aim for?

Either. They sit about five minutes apart on foot and both feed straight into the festival footprint. On a rail pass, take JR; from Centrair, Meitetsu runs the whole way. For a broader primer on the region’s rail logic, see our guide to getting around Nagoya.

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What Should You Know Before You Go?

Come by train — there is no festival car park. Entry is free. Individual events are cancelled or held in rain on a case-by-case basis, and the organisers post the decision on their site the day before or the morning of. Detailed 2026 timings arrive in late October.

Do not drive

Gifu City states it plainly: there is no parking for this event, and visitors should use private car parks in the area. Add a road closure on the parade route and a city centre full of people, and the calculation is easy. Two railways serve the venue directly.

What it costs

Gifu Prefecture’s official tourism site lists the festival as free to attend — that covers walking the streets, watching the parade and browsing the markets. Individual paid activities are a separate matter: the produce stalls, food and the pudding festival all sell things, and any museum you duck into charges its own admission.

Rain

There is no single festival-wide rain policy. Each event carries its own label: cancelled in rain, cancelled in severe weather, or held regardless. In 2025 the memorial service at Sofukuji went ahead in rain, while the parade, the dance stage, the kids’ events and the flea market were all listed as cancelled in rain. The committee makes the call and posts the result publicly — on 31 October 2025 it posted that the following day’s events would go ahead as planned, and in April 2026 it cancelled the spring festival’s portable-shrine parade on the day. Check the official site the night before.

Things nobody has published

Two questions come up constantly and I cannot answer either honestly. Reserved or paid viewing seating for the parade: nothing about seating appears on Gifu City’s 2026 pages, the organisers’ announcement, or either tourism body’s listing. I am not going to tell you there is none, and certainly not that there is. Food-stall counts, toilet locations and what to bring: also unpublished. Where other guides give numbers for these, they are not citing the organisers.

What early November is actually like here

This is the one thing I can tell you from living next door to it. The first weekend of November on the Nobi plain is usually the best outdoor weather of the year — dry, clear, cool enough that standing on a pavement for two hours is pleasant rather than an ordeal. It is also when the swing between midday and late afternoon gets sharp: a parade at lunchtime and a walk back to the station at four are two different climates. Bring a layer you can take off. Our guide to the best time to visit Nagoya has the seasonal detail.

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Can You Visit Gifu Castle on the Same Trip?

Not in 2026. Gifu Castle’s keep and its museum are closed for renovation until around the end of October 2027, and from late August 2026 the keep is wrapped in scaffolding and sheeting. You cannot go in, and you cannot photograph it.

This matters because the obvious itinerary — Nobunaga festival in the morning, Nobunaga’s castle in the afternoon — does not work this year, and a lot of older guides will still tell you it does.

Gifu City’s official notice is unambiguous: the keep and the castle museum are closed for renovation works running to the end of October 2027, with reopening planned for November 2027. The city also publishes a schedule for the external scaffolding, and the relevant line is this one: from late August 2026 to mid-April 2027 the keep is covered with protective sheeting carrying a design illustration, and the keep is not visible. The festival weekend sits squarely inside that window.

There is a consequence on the mountain itself too. A section of the summit area in front of the keep is closed to foot traffic from 25 November 2025 to the end of September 2027, so the Meiso-no-Komichi (water route) and Hanataka hiking trails now dead-end just short of the summit and the toilets at the top are unreachable from them. The path from the ropeway’s summit station up to just below the keep is not closed.

What still works

The view does. Gifu City runs night opening at the Mt. Kinka observation deck — the roof of the summit restaurant — on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays from 2 October to 29 November, until 20:15 in October and November. Both festival days fall inside that window. The last ropeway descent is 15 minutes after the deck closes, so 20:30 on paper; confirm on the day. Mt. Kinka’s summit is about 329 metres, and the panorama over the city and the Nagara River is the reason people go up.

One correction worth making explicitly: the “Gifu Castle Panorama Night View” event was listed in the 2025 festival programme, but for the 2026 fiscal year the city scheduled it only across four April–May date blocks ending 6 May, before the castle closed on 19 May. It is not running in November. If you see it on a 2026 festival itinerary, that itinerary was copied from last year.

Note that bus routings and journey times through the centre may be affected by the parade-day road closure.

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How Big Does This Festival Actually Get?

Very big by regional standards. The organisers reported 430,000 people over the two days in 2025. Gifu Prefecture’s own visitor survey put the festival second among all events in the prefecture in 2024 with 360,000, and first in 2023 with 440,000.

I have not been to this one myself, so rather than invent an experience, here is what the official record shows and where to see the festival through other people’s eyes.

The organisers’ post-festival notice for 2025 states that across 1 and 2 November the festival drew 430,000 people over the two days. For a longer baseline, Gifu Prefecture publishes an annual visitor survey with a top-ten table of events. In the 2024 survey, the Gifu Nobunaga Festival recorded 360,000 visitors and ranked second in the prefecture; the same table shows it first with 440,000 in 2023, and fifth with 340,000 in 2019. First place in 2024 went to the Takayama Festival with 370,000 — so this is a festival at the same order of magnitude as Central Japan’s most famous one, in a city 20 minutes from Nagoya that most international visitors skip entirely.

The practical implication is simple: the parade route fills up, and if the 70th edition attracts high-profile casting, expect the 2022 pattern again.

Where to see it before you commit

The organisers and the city tourism bureau both run official channels, the most reliable place to gauge the atmosphere and to catch programme changes:

• Festival official Instagram (shared with the spring Dosan Matsuri): @dousanmatsuri_nobunagamatsuri
• Festival official X: @gifunomatsuri
• Gifu Convention and Visitors Bureau: @gifucvb on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube
• Gifu City also runs an official Gifu Castle Instagram account, set up specifically to document the renovation period, the excavation work and the views from Mt. Kinka while the keep is closed

No attendance figure appears anywhere in the official record for 2022, despite the numbers that circulate for that year, so you will not find one here.

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Frequently Asked Questions

When is the Gifu Nobunaga Festival 2026?

Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 November 2026, from 10:00 to 16:00 on both days, across central Gifu City. Gifu City, the organising committee and the Gifu Convention and Visitors Bureau all list the same dates. 2026 is the 70th edition.

Which day is the mounted samurai parade?

Sunday 8 November 2026. Gifu City confirms it in its recruitment notice for parade participants, and the organisers list it under Sunday in their programme outline. The start time and route have not been published for 2026 — in 2025 the parade ran 12:45 to 14:30 along Kinkabashi-dori, with a send-off ceremony at 12:00 outside JR Gifu Station.

Is the Gifu Nobunaga Festival free?

Yes. Gifu Prefecture’s official tourism site lists participation as free. Watching the parade, walking the markets and attending the street programme cost nothing. Individual stalls, food and any museum you visit charge separately.

Are there reserved or paid seats for the parade?

Nothing about viewing seating appears on any official page for 2026 — not on Gifu City’s pages, the organisers’ announcement, or either tourism body’s listing. Rather than guess, check the official site when the detailed programme is published in late October.

How do I get to the Gifu Nobunaga Festival from Nagoya, and what does it cost?

JR’s Tokaido Line Special Rapid takes about 20 minutes to JR Gifu for ¥480 — a ¥470 special-section fare plus JR Central’s ¥10 Nagoya-area accessibility charge. Meitetsu’s limited express runs direct from Meitetsu Nagoya to Meitetsu Gifu in 29 to 30 minutes for ¥630, ¥320 for children. Both stations are within a 15-minute walk of the festival.

Can I visit Gifu Castle during the festival?

No. The castle keep and its museum are closed for renovation until around the end of October 2027, reopening planned for November 2027, and from late August 2026 the keep is covered in protective sheeting and cannot be seen. The Mt. Kinka observation deck is open in the evening on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays until 20:15 through 29 November, and the ropeway runs from 9:00 at ¥1,300 return for adults.

Is this the same as the Gifu Matsuri or the Dosan Matsuri?

No. Those are Gifu City’s spring festivals. The Dosan Matsuri runs alongside Inaba Shrine’s annual rite in early April and honours Saito Dosan, with portable shrines rather than a mounted parade; its 54th edition was held on 4 and 5 April 2026. The Gifu Nobunaga Festival is the autumn one, and it moved from October to the first weekend of November in 2022.

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Where Can You Check Official Information?

Four official channels cover this festival, plus two phone numbers. The detailed 2026 programme is due in late October, so check the organisers’ site in the week before you travel.

• Gifu Nobunaga Matsuri official site (Gifu Nobunaga Matsuri Executive Committee): https://gifunomatsuri.jp/nobunaga/ — programme, participant recruitment, road-closure maps and weather notices. The history page is genuinely good background reading
• Gifu City, official event page: https://www.city.gifu.lg.jp/kankoubunka/event/1005304/1005318/1033707.html
• Gifu Convention and Visitors Bureau, Gifu City official tourism site: event listing
• Gifu Prefecture Tourism Federation, prefectural official tourism site: https://www.kankou-gifu.jp/event/detail_975.html
• Enquiries: Gifu Nobunaga Matsuri Executive Committee (inside Gifu City Commerce & Industry Division) 058-214-2360 · Gifu City Agriculture Festival Executive Committee (Agriculture & Forestry Division) 058-214-2079
• On arrival: the Gifu City Tourist Information Office is on the second floor of JR Gifu Station, 058-262-4415, open 8:30 to 19:30 daily

Event names and content are explicitly subject to change — the organisers say so in their own announcement. A final check the week before you go is worth the two minutes.

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Related Guides

• Central Japan Festival Calendar — every major festival in the region, month by month, and the place to start if you are building a trip around one
• Gifu City Day Trip from Nagoya — what the rest of Gifu offers: the Nagara River, the old merchant quarter, and the cormorant fishing season
• Autumn Festivals in Nagoya & Central Japan — what else is running in October and November
• Takayama Festival — the only event in Gifu Prefecture that outdrew this one in the prefecture’s 2024 survey, up in the Hida mountains to the north
• Gujo Odori — Gifu Prefecture’s other headline festival, a summer dance you join rather than watch
• Nagoya Matsuri — Nagoya’s own autumn parade festival, and a useful comparison if you are choosing between weekends
• Getting Around Nagoya — trains, IC cards and the JR/Meitetsu split that gets you to Gifu