The official English-language website announced the cancellation of the festival on August 9, 2026.
Update — August 11, 2026: The proposed venues had not been officially confirmed
According to a report by Yomiuri TV on August 11, the organizing committee had presented specific planned locations in Hikone, Nagahama and Takashima during online briefings for vendors and other preparations.
However, the necessary procedures with the managers of the respective sites had not been completed, meaning that none of the locations had been formally confirmed for use as fireworks venues.
The report stated that Hikone Port had not received information about the fireworks event, while no event notification had been filed for Saikachi Beach in Nagahama.
At Mutsuyazaki Beach in Takashima, the organizers had reportedly explained the plan, but permission to use the site had not been granted.
The organizing committee later acknowledged that its project management and explanations had been insufficient while preparations were moving forward before the venues were formally secured.
For this reason, the locations shown in this article should be understood as proposed locations presented by the organizers, not as officially confirmed fireworks venues.
The Lake Biwa Three-City Simultaneous Fireworks Festival was scheduled to take place on August 22, 2026, in Shiga Prefecture, Japan.
It was an unusual plan.
Fireworks were to be launched on the same night from three cities around Lake Biwa — Hikone, Nagahama and Takashima.
However, the event was canceled on August 9.
For people who had purchased tickets or were preparing to participate as vendors, the cancellation shortly before the scheduled date was undoubtedly disappointing.
Rather than focusing here on why the event was canceled, this article looks at another question about the original plan:
Where exactly were the three fireworks locations supposed to be?
And just how far apart were they?
If fireworks had been launched simultaneously from all three areas, would spectators at one location have been able to see the displays from the other two?
- What Was the Lake Biwa Three-City Fireworks Festival?
- Where Are Hikone, Nagahama and Takashima?
- Where Were the Proposed Fireworks Venues?
- How Far Apart Were Nagahama and Hikone?
- Takashima Was Across Lake Biwa
- How Far Was Takashima From Hikone?
- Saikachi Beach to Takashima Was Nearly 19 km
- Could Spectators Have Seen Fireworks From All Three Cities?
- What Might Simultaneous Fireworks Around Lake Biwa Have Looked Like?
- What Did the Idea of “Three Cities at the Same Time” Really Mean?
- Explore More Locations in Japan
- Conclusion: The Map Reveals the Scale of the Plan
What Was the Lake Biwa Three-City Fireworks Festival?
The event’s official website described the project as a simultaneous fireworks festival involving three cities and three directions around Lake Biwa: Takashima, Nagahama and Hikone.
The event was planned with reserved seating and advance ticket sales.
A night market and a three-city stamp rally on the following day were also planned.
Several seating categories were advertised, including standard, panoramic, dynamic, couple and VIP seating, with tickets offered for each of the three cities.
In other words, this was not simply three unrelated fireworks displays happening on the same night.
The concept was to connect Hikone, Nagahama and Takashima as one event centered on Lake Biwa.
So what did that look like geographically?
Where Are Hikone, Nagahama and Takashima?
The three cities are located around Lake Biwa, Japan’s largest lake, in Shiga Prefecture.
Hikone and Nagahama are on the eastern side of the lake.
Takashima is on the western side.
The interactive Google Maps view below shows the overall geography.
Looking at the map immediately changes the impression created by the phrase “three-city simultaneous fireworks.”
These were not three neighboring venues concentrated along a short stretch of shoreline.
Instead, the proposed locations stretched across a substantial part of Lake Biwa, including sites on opposite sides of the lake.
Where Were the Proposed Fireworks Venues?
The organizers had presented locations in each of the three cities as part of the planned event.
Subsequent reporting showed that these locations had not been formally secured for use.
They are therefore described below as proposed locations.
Saikachi Beach — Nagahama
The Nagahama location was presented around Saikachi Beach (湖岸緑地 さいかち浜) on the eastern shore of Lake Biwa.
Hikone Port — Hikone
Farther south along the eastern shore, the Hikone location was presented around Hikone Port.
Mutsuyazaki Beach — Takashima
Across Lake Biwa, one of the locations presented on the Takashima side was around Mutsuyazaki Beach Auto Campground (六ツ矢崎浜オートキャンプ場).
Biwako Kodomo-no-Kuni — Takashima
Another useful reference point on the Takashima shore is Biwako Kodomo-no-Kuni (Lake Biwa Children’s Land).
We use this location later in the article to estimate the cross-lake distances.
The map helps show that even the locations discussed on the Takashima side covered a significant stretch of shoreline.
How Far Apart Were Nagahama and Hikone?
First, let’s compare Saikachi Beach in Nagahama with the Hikone Port area.
Both are on the eastern shore of Lake Biwa, but they are not neighboring locations.
They are separated north to south along the lakeshore by roughly 9 km (about 5.6 miles).
That is very different from having another fireworks display only a few hundred meters away.
If fireworks had been launched from both locations, spectators at one site would have seen the other display from a considerable distance.
Takashima Was Across Lake Biwa
The geographical relationship becomes even more interesting when Takashima is included.
Google Earth gives a much clearer sense of the scale.
From the Takashima side, both Nagahama and Hikone are visible across a broad expanse of Lake Biwa.
The aerial perspective shows that the concept of “simultaneous fireworks” covered a very large geographical area.
The reverse view makes this even clearer.
Hikone and Nagahama occupy the eastern shore, while Takashima lies across the lake to the west.
This was not a compact multi-venue festival.
It was a plan spanning both sides of Japan’s largest lake.
How Far Was Takashima From Hikone?
Using Google Maps’ distance measurement tool, we measured the approximate straight-line distance from the Hikone side to Biwako Kodomo-no-Kuni on the Takashima side.
The measurement is approximately 15.5 km (about 9.6 miles) between the selected points.
In other words, a spectator looking toward a fireworks display on the opposite shore would have been looking across roughly ten miles of open water.
Saikachi Beach to Takashima Was Nearly 19 km
The distance becomes even greater when measured from Saikachi Beach in Nagahama.
The straight-line distance between the selected points is approximately 18.9 km (about 11.7 miles).
This helps put the scale of the original plan into perspective.
Locations promoted as part of the same simultaneous fireworks event were separated by well over 10 km across the lake.
Could Spectators Have Seen Fireworks From All Three Cities?
This raises perhaps the most interesting question:
If fireworks had been launched from all three areas at the same time, would spectators have seen three large displays together?
The distances suggest that this probably would not have looked like three equally large fireworks displays filling the same part of the sky.
At a spectator’s own location, nearby fireworks would naturally have dominated the view.
A display approximately 9 km away would have appeared much smaller.
Fireworks across Lake Biwa, roughly 15–19 km away depending on the observation points, would have appeared much farther toward the horizon.
Actual visibility would have depended on several factors, including the size of the fireworks shells, launch altitude, weather, atmospheric clarity and the spectator’s exact position.
What Might Simultaneous Fireworks Around Lake Biwa Have Looked Like?
To help visualize the geographical scale, we created an AI-generated image based on the approximate positions and distances examined with Google Maps and Google Earth.
AI-generated visualization of how simultaneous fireworks around Lake Biwa might have appeared
※ This is not a photograph of the actual event. It is an AI-generated visualization created only to illustrate the approximate geographical scale. The size, height, color and precise launch positions of the fireworks are not intended to be accurate.
The nearest fireworks would have appeared large.
Another display several kilometers away might have been visible farther along the lakeshore.
Across Lake Biwa, a third display could have appeared much smaller in the distance.
The image is not intended to recreate the cancelled festival itself.
Rather, it illustrates how unusual the geographical concept was.
What Did the Idea of “Three Cities at the Same Time” Really Mean?
Looking at the maps suggests that the most interesting part of the project may not have been the idea of seeing three enormous fireworks displays together in one field of view.
Hikone, Nagahama and Takashima are geographically separated.
Yet spectators on different shores of Lake Biwa would have looked up at fireworks belonging to the same event at approximately the same time.
Across the lake, another audience would have been sharing the same night.
The planned three-city stamp rally also suggests that the project was intended to connect communities around Lake Biwa rather than simply place three fireworks displays close together.
Seen this way, the idea of a three-city simultaneous festival may have been about three communities around Lake Biwa sharing the same moment.
Explore More Locations in Japan
If you enjoy exploring unusual places in Japan through maps and aerial imagery, these guides may also be useful.
Conclusion: The Map Reveals the Scale of the Plan
Mapping the proposed locations of the Lake Biwa Three-City Fireworks Festival reveals just how large the geographical concept was.
Nagahama and Hikone were both on the eastern shore, yet were still separated by several kilometers.
Takashima was across Lake Biwa on the western shore, with distances from the eastern side reaching approximately 15–19 km depending on the points measured.
The event itself was ultimately canceled.
Subsequent reporting also established that the locations discussed in this article had not been formally confirmed for use as fireworks venues.
Even so, examining the proposed locations helps explain the unusual scale behind the idea of launching fireworks from three cities around Lake Biwa at the same time.
Had the plan been realized, what would the night sky over Japan’s largest lake have looked like?
Looking at the maps gives us a clearer sense of what the organizers had envisioned.
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