11 best food and drink festivals happening in Tokyo over Golden Week 2025

Head over to Komazawa Olympic Park during Golden Week to spend an entire day sampling some of Japan’s best gyoza. There will be 17 stalls offering more than 30 different styles of this quintessential Japanese dumpling. Enjoy deep fried shoyu butter corn gyoza from Hokkaido, juicy seafood squid dumplings from Fukuoka, baked xiaolongbao-style gyoza from Osaka, Hakata-style hitokuchi (bite-size) gyoza, strawberry milk cheese dessert gyoza from Tokyo, and much more.

There will also be other dishes like fried rice to go with the gyoza, as well as craft beers from Hokkaido Brewing, Fujizakura Heights Beer and Fuji Premium Brewing. There’s no entry fee, so you can just pay as you go. If you want to forgo the hassle of paying at each store, there is a package deal sold online for ¥4,000, which includes five meal tickets and a fast ticket to skip one queue.

Why wait until autumn to celebrate Oktoberfest? While the original Oktoberfest in Munich doesn't kick off until September, Tokyo's beer lovers can enjoy celebrations throughout spring, too. Odaiba’s outdoor Oktoberfest falls during Golden Week, when revellers can gorge on suds, sausages and sauerkraut by the waterside.

If you’re craving some Taiwanese food this spring, then drop by Tokyo Skytree Town for its Taiwan Festival. Head over to the fourth floor of Sky Arena until June 1 to feast on Taiwanese food throughout the day. Several stalls are offering popular Taiwanese festival cuisine such as lu rou fan (braised pork over rice), cong you bing (scallion pancake) and da ji pai fried chicken.

You can also shop for Taiwanese goods and even enjoy massages and fortune telling. The dining area is decorated with red lanterns to give it a Taiwanese night market feel.

Niku Fes is back this Golden Week, bringing one of Tokyo's biggest meat festivals to Odaiba. The festival is being upgraded this year with more seats than ever before, plus plenty of live music as well as an extensive line-up of meat dishes.

You can feast on meaty delights such as A5-ranked steak, wagyu sushi, slow-roasted beef, beefy cheeseburgers and kebabs from around two dozen restaurants across Japan. Make sure to also try dishes from one of the eleven restaurants participating in the Steak King Championship. These restaurants are serving up their own unique takes on the classic steak, and it’s up to you to crown the winner.

As for the drinks, there will be craft beer from Abashiri Beer in Hokkaido and refreshing Mexican Cuervo lemon sours to accompany your meal. You can enjoy desserts, too, including churros, gelato and kakigori shaved ice. 

While there are plenty of benches to sit on, including a family area which is available after buying 10 meal tickets, purchasing the VIP experience gets you a dining space for four people. This deal features table service in a comfortable, shaded seating area. You can reserve it in advance on the website for ¥9,800. 

On April 28, 30, May 1 and 2, the entire facility will transform into a beer garden from 4pm to 9pm, when all beers will be ¥500. The first 500 people to enter from 4pm will receive free Niku Fes official goods. 

Need a break from all the eating? Head over to the stage area for live music during the day. Headliners and specific event details are yet to be disclosed.

Entry to Niku Fes is free and you can just buy food and drink as you go. But note that meal tickets can only be purchased through the official Niku Fes app.

First held in 2015, this multinational celebration returns for the second time this spring at Sumida Park Soyokaze Plaza in front of Ichiya Tokyo Mizumachi, where you can enjoy food, drinks, music and entertainment, plus all the salsa dancing you can possibly take over a single weekend.

Grab a spicy taco and wash it down with beer, caipirinha or tropical cocktail before moving on to the vast selection of rum and tequila. In between meals and dancing, go check out the stalls selling handicrafts and other fun accessories.

Japan’s biggest Cambodia Festival takes place over the Golden Week holidays at Yoyogi Park Events Square. This two-day celebration of Cambodian culture features traditional dance performances, plus roughly 60 stalls dealing in authentic Cambodian cuisine, refreshing Angkor beer, handicrafts and more. The festival takes place from 10am to 7pm on both days.

Entry is free and you just pay for food and drink as you go.

Held all across Germany to celebrate the coming of spring, Frühlingsfest is also a familiar feature on Yokohama's Golden Week calendar. This year's edition features a thirty-metre-long beer counter lined with taps serving many types of German beer that you can't find anywhere else in Japan.

Pair your brews with an extensive, meat-heavy selection of food like sausages, schnitzels, roast beef and diced steak with frites. In a new addition for this year, the festival will also have an outdoor German-style barbecue area along the seafront, allowing visitors to enjoy various types of skewered meat and locally sourced seafood and vegetables. If you're looking for something sweeter, you can pick up desserts like kakigori shaved ice and ice cream sodas.

There's always plenty of fun stuff to look forward to for kids, with this year's edition featuring a bungee-trampoline, a crafting workshop, and an obstacle course to play parkour tag on. Adults, meanwhile, can look forward to live oom-pah music.

Entry is free and you just pay for food and drink as you go.

We’ll update this article as more information becomes available.

Taking over the expansive outdoor lawn within the children’s play area at Meiji Shrine’s Outer Gardens, the Forest Beer Garden distinguishes itself from other boozy events in town with its lush green surrounds and bubbling waterfall.

The popular two-hour all-you-can-eat (¥6,000) option includes everything from barbecue beef, pork and lamb to veggies, yakisoba noodles, grilled onigiri and even ice pops. It includes an all-you-can-drink selection of seven kinds of beers including Kirin and Heineken, in addition to whisky, sours, wine and soft drinks.

To mark its 40th anniversary, the beer garden is offering a special menu option (¥7,000) this year, with all-you-can-drink craft beer from Spring Valley Brewery and an all-you-can-eat seafood platter. Despite being one of the largest beer gardens in Tokyo with a capacity for around 1,000 people, the event can get extremely busy at weekends, so advance bookings are recommended via the website.

The rooftop of Lumine Shinjuku has transformed into a Japanese matsuri-themed beer garden with a BBQ menu inspired by various cities and local cuisines of Japan. You can choose from Tokyo, Kyoto or Sapporo barbecue courses, all offered in light (from ¥5,940), standard (from ¥6,490) and premium (from ¥7,590) versions. The Around Japan BBQ Premium Plan offers a taste of all the cuisines in one go, for ¥8,690.

The Tokyo course comes with wagyu beef brisket in egg sauce, pork marinated in Edo-style miso, chicken marinated in salt-fermented rice koji, and sausages, accompanied by an assortment of veggies and sauces such as teriyaki, yuzu-shio and regular BBQ sauce. The Kyoto course features a beef short rib, pork marinated in Kyoto-style miso, chicken marinated in sake lees and an assortment of veggies. The Sapporo course comes with beef short-rib, Tokachi-grown glazed pork, Hokkaido-style deep-fried chicken, seafood options like scallops and shrimp, and special jingisukan BBQ sauce. All three sets include 90-minute all-you-can-drink deals where you get to choose from a list of 160 cocktails and soft drinks.

Popular German craft beer brand Schmatz takes over the Lumine Ikebukuro rooftop with its annual beer garden serving modern German cuisine. The premium all-you-can drink plan features three original craft beers, plus a range of beer cocktails including shandy gaff, cassis beer, mango beer and even a peach weizen. Additionally, there are regular cocktails, highballs, wines and soft drinks to choose from as well. 

The standard barbecue plan with the premium all-you-can-drink option will set you back ¥6,500, and includes spare ribs, beef shoulder loin, specialty sausages, chicken, corn and an array of veggies to grill. If you're looking to save, the standard all-you-can-drink lager beer plan at ¥6,000 is worth considering too.