Drift Events in Japan in October 2026: Every Date and Deadline

October 2026 carries six championship rounds and 31 organiser drift days in Japan. The month opens with the Formula Drift Japan Rd.6 and FDJ2 Rd.6 finale at Okayama International Circuit (Okayama) from Friday 2 to Sunday 4 October, runs through D1 Lights Rd.9 & 10 at Tsukuruma Circuit Nasu (Tochigi) on 9–11 October, D1 NEXT Series Central Rd.4 at Nikko Circuit (Tochigi) on Saturday 17 October and FDJ3 Rd.5 at Fuji Speedway Drift Park (Shizuoka) on Sunday 18 October, and closes with D1 Grand Prix Rd.7 & 8 at Autopolis (Oita) on 24–25 October. Every date, fee and deadline on this page was checked on the official pages on 5 September 2026, and the running list is on our event calendar.

October is also where November’s paperwork happens. The headline events in the November planner — the Autumn Drift Matsuri, the D1 finale — are entered in October, and two of those windows shut before the month ends. If you are booking flights this week, the deadline table matters more than the event table.

Which championship weekends are worth flying for?

Six rounds, and only one of them has a published ticket price.

Two footnotes. The D1 Grand Prix round runs on the Autopolis GP circuit, not the Lakeside drift course, with Friday 23 October as official practice; and the D1 Lights page prints a Friday-to-Sunday window without saying which days are competition, so treat 10–11 October as the weekend to be there.

The Okayama finale is the only round you can price today, and the only one reachable without a car with any confidence — the circuit’s access page routes you Okayama Station → bus → about 20 minutes by taxi. Our Formula Drift Japan guide covers the format.

Where can you actually drive in October 2026?

A sōkōkai (走行会) is a private organiser’s track day, rented from the circuit and sold by the organiser — which is why the circuit’s schedule sheet often lists a name and a mobile number where you expect a price. October has 31 of them.

Friday 16 October shows what that means: ¥10,000 buys the Chibikko Gang weekday day at YZ Circuit East (9:00–17:00, free practice), while the same Friday at Nikko Circuit costs ¥16,500 for FLUKE’s free-run day, capped at 35 cars. Two Meihan dates are also unsettled — the circuit sheet puts HitomiGO on 11 October and Link-so on the 18th, while HitomiGO’s own site sells entries for the 18th.

Which deadlines fall inside October — and what happens after?

This is the part that decides whether an October or November trip is still possible.

What can you do in October without a car or a licence?

Plenty, but the fees are lumpy. Standing at the fence on an organiser day costs ¥500 at Meihan Sportsland (Sundays and holidays), YZ Circuit East (non-members) and Bihoku Highland Circuit; Mobara Twin Circuit charges ¥500 on Saturdays and nothing on weekdays, though its October gate list was still blank when we looked. Weekdays there and at Nikko are the quietest paddocks of the month and the easiest place to talk to dorisha owners — literally “drift car”, the Japanese term for a built-for-sliding chassis.

For the championship rounds the picture is thinner. Okayama is priced and ticketed; Autopolis and Tsukuruma publish nothing yet. FDJ3 at Fuji Speedway Drift Park still reads “Soon”, though at Rd.1 on the same site the fees stacked: ¥1,200 Fuji Speedway admission plus ¥2,000 cash at the course entrance, parking free. Treat that as the shape of it, not the price.

One weather claim, and only one. The Japan Meteorological Agency’s 1991–2020 normals for Fukushima, the station below Ebisu Circuit, give October a 15.6°C mean with 138.7 mm of rain, against 21.6°C and 167.6 mm in September and 9.5°C and 58.4 mm in November.

How do you build an October week out of this?

Two shapes work. West, 2–8 October: the FDJ finale at Okayama, then Meihan Sportsland for the SEIMI and Free Style pair on Sunday the 4th, then YZ Circuit East on the 7th or 8th. Kanto, 14–18 October: organiser days at Nikko on the 14th, 16th and 18th, D1 NEXT Central Rd.4 there on Saturday the 17th, and FDJ3 at Fuji Speedway Drift Park on Sunday the 18th — one base, two competitions, three driving days.

Whichever you take, do the entries first and the flights second. Our guide to entering a Japanese drift track day walks through what each field wants, and the calendar shows when every entry was last checked against its official page.