Can You Drift at Fuji Speedway? Drift Park Guide (2026)

Yes, you can now drift at Fuji Speedway — and that sentence became true only in June 2026. Fuji Speedway Drift Park in Oyama, Shizuoka sells an individual day ticket at ¥9,900, giving you twelve 20-minute sessions between 9:10 and 16:00, and it is open to anyone holding the circuit’s Short Course & Parks licence, which costs ¥25,000 for a first year. Every figure in this guide was read off the official Fuji Speedway and Fuji Motorsports Forest pages on 4 September 2026.

That matters because until June this pad could only be hired whole, for six figures, and English guides still say Fuji will not sell you a drift lap. They are out of date.

What the Drift Park actually is

It is the former Multi-Purpose Driving Course, renamed Drift Park on 1 April 2026 with no change to the layout — so event pages and entry forms still print the old name. Fuji’s facility page gives it as 629.8 m × 699.5 m with an 8 m course width, a 240 m main straight and 63 paddock spaces, laid out under the supervision of Keiichi Tsuchiya.

The day is not free running in the loose sense. The published session grid rotates four layouts and both directions, stopping every 20 minutes so the cones can be moved:

Sessions in bold, plus the 9:10 A, are marked beginner-priority. Reception opens 30 minutes before running starts, and the actual cone layout is only posted at the Drift Park window on the day. Twelve sessions is four hours of track time for ¥9,900 — about ¥825 a session. One casualty is worth knowing: Fuji ended the DRIFT slot on its Short Course on 31 May 2026, so this is now the only surface on the site where sliding is allowed.

What a day costs

Passenger rides came in with the same June change and are licence-members-only in both seats: one passenger, front seat only, licence shown at reception, helmet and long sleeves and long trousers required, gloves optional.

The licence is the wall, and it is taught in Japanese

Nothing runs on the Drift Park without the Short Course & Parks licence, which replaced the old Short Course licence on 9 June 2026 and now covers three facilities. The good news for a visitor is that the eligibility list is broader than most Japanese circuits publish: a Japanese class-1 car licence, an International Driving Permit issued by a Geneva Convention country, a US Forces Japan personal vehicle permit, or a JAF or other ASN competition licence. Racing Course licence holders are covered too.

Now the catches. Fuji’s own FAQ says the lecture is delivered in Japanese only and asks you to attend with an interpreter. The licence page adds that if your International Driving Permit cannot be verified at the desk on the day, you may not be allowed to sit the course at all. Bring your driving licence, a hanko (印鑑, the carved personal seal Japan uses in place of a signature), and your blood type including the RH factor — it goes on the form. Our licence and IDP guide covers what the permit does and does not buy you at Japanese circuits generally.

Buying the ticket is a second wall

Drift Park running is sold only through the Forest Membership website. Fuji states it plainly: the Drift Park window does not sell tickets. Short Course and Kart & Moto Park tickets can be bought at the counter on the day; the drift day cannot.

At check-in you show the QR code on your licence, they record your licence ID and car details, and you get a coloured armband that is your pass in and out of the course all day.

Getting there, and the last leg nobody writes down

By road it is about 50 minutes from Tokyo IC on the Tomei Expressway to Ashigara Smart IC, then ten minutes to 694 Nakahinata, Oyama-cho, Sunto-gun. Without a car it gets interesting. Fuji’s access page names two route bus lines and no times, so we went to the operator’s timetables:

Read the first row twice. On a weekday there is exactly one bus in and one bus out, and the bus out leaves 13 minutes after the bus in arrives. That is not a return trip, it is a timetable coincidence. At weekends the Fuji Reien line, a cemetery service, is genuinely useful, and Suruga-Oyama is the station to work from: it is the only one whose stops at the gates are printed in both directions.

The shortcut: enter somebody else’s day

If ¥25,000 and a Japanese lecture is too much for one trip, organiser days are the practical way in. Fuji publishes them on its own Drift Park listing, and September 2026 ran three: TOP ONE on 2 September, KK☆BROS on 5 September with a drift contest and tsuiso (追走, tandem chase) finals at ¥15,200 for about 50 cars, and TK Club on 16 September. That last one states in writing that you can take part without a circuit licence and will bring slide-practice tyres and wheels to the paddock for you if you book them. Entry is by Japanese email or web form to a small club, not to Fuji.

Watching instead

All three run on the Drift Park rather than the GP circuit, and all three fall on a day the Fuji Reien bus operates. For where these series sit relative to each other, see our D1 NEXT Series explainer and the Formula Drift Japan guide.

So is it the drift track closest to Tokyo?

On driving time from central Tokyo, yes — and it is now the only big-name circuit near the capital selling individual drift running rather than whole-course hire alone. The trade is paperwork. If you want a cheaper first slide with less admin, the alternatives are in our tracks near Tokyo guide, and every venue in the country with its fees and rules sits in the track directory.