Drift Trip to Japan in January 2027: What's Open, What's Shut

January is not a dead month. Tokyo Auto Salon 2027 runs on 15, 16 and 17 January 2027 at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, tickets cost ¥3,000 on the Saturday and Sunday and ¥4,000 on the Friday, and they go on sale on 1 October 2026 at 10:00 Japan time. On the driving side Ebisu Circuit (Fukushima) stays open right through the winter at ¥5,500 for a full drift day, while Okuibuki Motor Park (Shiga) is shut until spring because the site is a ski resort. Every date, price and closure below was checked on the official pages on 20 September 2026, and the running list is on our event calendar.

Against our December planner, January inverts the month. December is thick with organiser days and thin on spectating. January gives you the single biggest car event in the country and almost nothing to watch on a circuit, plus a week at the start where much of Japan simply stops for nenmatsu-nenshi, the New Year shutdown. The general case for a winter trip, tyre life and empty paddocks included, is in our winter drifting guide. This page is the January dates.

Tokyo Auto Salon 2027: dates, hours and what a ticket costs

Makuhari Messe, 2-1 Nakase, Mihama-ku, Chiba City. Eleven exhibition halls plus the conference centre, the event hall and the outdoor display ground. It is about 30 minutes from Tokyo Station on the JR Keiyo line to Kaihin-Makuhari, then a five-minute walk, and there are airport coaches from Haneda (¥1,500) and Narita (¥1,200) direct to the venue.

Four things the official ticket pages are blunt about. Every ticket is digital and valid only on the date printed on it, with no date changes and no refunds. Nothing is sold at the venue box office, so turning up without a ticket is not a plan. Children aged 12 and under go in free with a parent or guardian, and there is no student rate above that. And a screenshot of the QR code will not open the gate: you show the live ticket on a phone, or print it.

Payment works from overseas. The English ticket page takes Visa, Mastercard and American Express; the convenience-store cash option exists only on the Japanese page and only for residents in Japan. If you want the wider picture on Japanese ticketing, our event ticket guide covers the platforms the circuits use.

Which circuits are open in January, and which are shut

This is where an overseas January trip is won or lost. The honest answer is that one venue runs all winter, one is closed outright, and the rest had published nothing for January 2027 when we checked, because they release schedules roughly a month ahead.

Okuibuki deserves a sentence of its own, because English blogs list it as a year-round drift venue and it is not. The park shares a site with the Gransnow Okuibuki ski resort, and the official page gives the opening season for all four competition car parks, including the 12,000 m² JAF-sanctioned area, as early April to late November. In January the tarmac is under the ski operation.

Ebisu is the opposite case and the reason a January trip works at all. The winter tariff of ¥5,500 for a full day replaces both the Course 4 (¥8,500) and Course 5 (¥10,000) passes from 1 December to 31 March, insurance is included, and the price page states plainly that there are no refunds for weather. Spectator admission is ¥1,700 for adults and ¥1,200 for children aged 3 to 12; drivers pay nothing on top. Our Ebisu guide explains how the course passes fit together.

Is there a competition to watch in January 2027?

Not a confirmed one. Neither D1 nor Formula Drift Japan had published a 2027 calendar as of 20 September 2026, so there is no D1 Grand Prix, D1 Lights, FDJ, FDJ2 or FDJ3 round with a January 2027 date. Treat any January round you see on a third-party site as a guess until a series page carries it, and watch our calendar or the track directory for the moment it lands.

Two things are worth knowing anyway. First, D1 ran a KICK OFF DRIFT demonstration on 10 and 11 January 2026 on the outdoor event ground at Makuhari Messe, alongside Tokyo Auto Salon 2026, and held its annual awards ceremony in the event hall on the Saturday. Nothing equivalent has been announced for 2027, and the Tokyo Auto Salon 2027 event page still reads COMING SOON. Second, the Kanto All-Star Drift GP, a grassroots knockout run by the organiser FLUKE, has its 2026 season final listed as planned for the end of January 2027. The page gives no date and no venue, though Nikko Circuit’s own results list shows the same final ran there on 29 January 2023 and 28 January 2024. Entry for the final is ¥18,000.

The January step you cannot take from abroad

Here is the specific trap. Ebisu does not publish which courses run on which day until the monthly driving calendar goes up, and its own calendar page says that happens around the 23rd of the preceding month. So the January 2027 calendar appears around 23 December 2026, as a Japanese PDF, in the middle of the New Year shutdown, and the web booking for the West course free-run closes at 16:00 the day before you drive. Meihan’s January sheet is not out either, and the drift days on it belong to Japanese organisers, not the circuit. By the time that information exists, your flights are booked and the people who could answer the phone are on holiday until 4 January.

Two ways to build a January week

Pattern A, the show week. Fly into Tokyo for 14 January, do Tokyo Auto Salon on the Friday afternoon and the Saturday, and keep Sunday 17 January for the halls you missed. Makuhari is a straight coach run from Haneda, and the hotels around Kaihin-Makuhari fill first.

Pattern B, the show plus Ebisu. Same three show days, then north to Nihonmatsu on 18 January. Ebisu is roughly three and a half hours from Tokyo by car via Nihonmatsu IC, it is closed on Wednesdays, and a full winter drift day is ¥5,500. Take studless tyres on any rental heading that way and accept that the surface decides the day.

Whichever pattern you pick, the show dates are the only fixed points in January 2027. Everything on a circuit firms up in the last ten days of December, which is exactly when Japan stops answering the phone.