When Is Kansai All Stars 2026? Meihan Date, Price and Access

Kansai All Stars 2026, properly the 27th Kansai All-Star Drift GP, runs on Sunday 1 November 2026 at Meihan Sportsland in Nara Prefecture, on the C course. Watching it costs ¥1,500 per person, paid in cash at the Meihan entrance on the day, and there is no advance ticket to chase and nothing to book. Anyone can turn up and watch, but nobody can turn up and drive: the field is made up entirely of drivers who won through one of seven prefectural qualifiers earlier in the year.

That combination is rarer than it sounds. Most Japanese grassroots drift competitions either publish no spectator price at all or quietly assume you are there with a car. This one prints the number on its own front page.

When is Kansai All Stars 2026, and where exactly?

Sunday 1 November 2026, at Meihan Sportsland (名阪スポーツランド), 1343-1 Kirihata, Yamazoe-mura, Yamabe-gun, Nara Prefecture. The event uses the C course, which the circuit lists as 840 m long, 8 to 12 m wide, with a 120 m main straight and no elevation change at all. The circuit’s own page describes it as the course used for drift and gymkhana competitions. All of it was checked on the official pages on 21 September 2026.

One warning about finding the event online: Meihan’s printed schedule sheet gives the organiser’s address as kansaiallatar.web.fc2.com, which is a typo and goes nowhere. The live site is kansaiallstar.web.fc2.com, actively maintained, with notices posted through late August 2026.

How much does it cost to watch, and what do you get?

Hand over the ¥1,500 at the Meihan entrance and staff give you a pamphlet and a wristband. The ¥500 half of that total is not an event charge at all: it is what Meihan Sportsland charges every visitor on a Sunday or public holiday, confirmed on the circuit’s own fee page.

Can I enter as a driver?

Not for 2026. The Kansai All-Star Drift GP is a regional championship final, not an open track day. Seven prefectures run their own qualifier and send the winners forward:

All seven had run and had results published by late August 2026, so the 1 November grid is already decided. The route in, if you are serious, is a prefectural qualifier the following season.

It is worth saying that this is not a closed shop for foreigners. The published 2026 qualifier results include Jordan Tweedie, printed in the Latin alphabet, third in the Shiga round in an RPS13, and several other qualifier placings are katakana renderings of non-Japanese names. Drivers from outside Japan do get through this system.

The obstacle is not the driving. Entry and information for this event run entirely in Japanese through a personal fc2 site, there is no English page anywhere on it, there is no online entry in English, and the published enquiry route is a Kyoto office telephone number.

What actually happens on the day?

Four classes run. Individual (個人) is the main event with no entry restriction. U25 is limited to men aged 25 and under, and to women of any age. Triple puts one three-car team from each prefecture against another. Super Team closes the day, open only to drivers who won through round two or beyond, and runs only if time allows.

Each round is a warm-up lap followed by judged runs. Note one change the organiser announced on 27 August 2026: round one of both the Individual and U25 classes dropped from three judged runs to two. The 2026 judging panel includes 中村 直樹 (Nakamura), named on the official page as the event’s most successful driver with five Kansai All-Star titles.

If you were hoping for a ride, the driver regulations ban passenger running across the whole programme, practice included.

How do you get to Meihan, and where do you park?

Meihan Sportsland sits about five minutes from the Kono-guchi interchange on the Meihan National Route, roughly an hour from central Osaka. Gates open at 6:00 on Sundays and public holidays, and parking is provided with a map on the organiser’s page, subject to the caveat above.

Getting there without a car is the harder problem, and we have written up the actual bus and taxi options in how to reach Meihan Sportsland without a car. The circuit itself, including why there is no general four-wheel walk-up running, is covered in our Meihan Sportsland guide. If 1 November does not fit your trip, the rest of the region is in drifting in Kansai: the tracks guide, and every dated event we track sits on the TSUISO event calendar.

For ¥1,500 and a Sunday, this is the cheapest way to watch real competition drifting in Japan that we know of. Bring cash, arrive early, and leave the car somewhere you can get it out of.