Tokyo Game Show 2026 Tickets: Prices, Days and Perks

There is one line on the Tokyo Game Show 2026 ticket page that decides whether your trip happens: "No same-day tickets will be sold at Makuhari Messe." Not a sold-out warning. A policy. If you turn up at the gate on September 19 without a ticket already on your phone or in your pocket, you are looking at the outside of the building.

That is worth leading with, because TGS 2026 is the longest version of this show CESA has run. It goes September 17 to 21 — five days, which the overview page calls the show's "longest-ever five days", under the official theme "Longest Five Days of Nonstop Play". It is also TGS's 30th anniversary — CESA's own overview page puts the first show in 1996 — and the anniversary has produced a ticket that costs more than a car.

Here is the whole price list, what each pass actually buys, and the rules that decide which door you walk through.

Five days, three of them yours

Five days sounds like five days of show. It is not. The first two are business days; the public gets the last three.

Monday is the short day — an hour less than Saturday and Sunday — and it is a public holiday in Japan, which the official overview flags on the date itself. A short day on a holiday Monday is a specific combination worth thinking about before you pick which single day to buy.

One more line from the overview page that is easy to miss: on public days, "the opening time may be 30 minutes earlier depending on the circumstances." Turning up for a 9:30 door at 9:30 is the plan that assumes the door opens at 9:30.

The venue is bigger than one building, too. TGS 2026 occupies Makuhari Messe Exhibition Halls 1 to 11 plus the International Conference Hall, and spills into TKP Tokyo Bay Makuhari Hall, which is where the Family Game Park lives. CESA organises it; Nikkei Business Publications and Sony Music Solutions co-organise.

What a public-day ticket costs

Every public-day price below is tax-included, taken straight from the official ticket page. Four of the five — 1-Day, Special Discount, Fast and Premium — are listed at the same prices for residents of Japan and for people living abroad, with the vendor as the only difference. The 30th Anniversary Ticket is the exception: CESA states it is intended for residents of Japan, and it does not appear in the overseas list.

Status read off the official ticket page on August 23, 2026. It moves without notice, so check the vendor page before you build a plan on it.

A few things that number table does not tell you.

The priority tickets are already gone. Premium and Fast both ran a lottery from July 11 to July 15 with payment July 17 to 19, then a first-come, first-served sale from July 20 at 12:00. On the official ticket page today the Lawson Ticket lottery rows for both read "Sales ended" and both first-come rows read SOLD OUT — in the Japan-resident list and the overseas list alike. CESA's own note that after the initial sales period "additional tickets may be made available on a first-come, first-served basis for customers who were not selected in the lottery" is still on the page, so Lawson Ticket is worth re-checking, but as things stand the priority lane is not something you can buy. The 1-Day, Special Discount and 30th Anniversary tickets were all still listed as purchasable on the same page on the same day.

Fast Ticket is per day, and capped. 6,000 yen buys priority entry and merchandise for one admission day, with a maximum of two tickets per person per day. The merchandise colour changes by date — orange on the 19th, blue on the 20th, pink on the 21st — which is a detail that only matters if you care, and matters a lot if you do.

Premium is a three-day product. At 30,000 yen it bundles the Fast Ticket for all three public days, so you are paying 30,000 for something whose Fast component alone lists at 18,000, plus merchandise and access to an exclusive lounge called Energy Spot, behind the event stage on the Hall 1 side, with charging, seating and catering. One per person. And the ticket carries the buyer's name.

That name is not decoration. For Premium and Fast tickets, the purchaser's name is printed on the ticket and checked on site against photo ID — driver's licence, passport or student ID. The site is blunt about the consequence: if the purchaser does not show up in person, they will not be admitted. The Special Discount ticket works the same way, with the original certificate required in physical form, and Mirairo ID accepted via smartphone as a new option this year.

Children under junior high school age get in free. The 1-Day ticket is described as being for junior high school students and older; elementary school students and younger are admitted free. The one exception is Premium: if you want a child to have the Premium benefits, the child needs their own Premium ticket regardless of age.

The 3.3 million yen ticket

This is not a typo and it is not a bundle with a hotel. The 30th Anniversary Ticket is 3,300,000 yen, tax included, and what you get is a three-day admission pass and a framed set of pure gold medals.

The specifications are published in full, which is how you know it is real:

The order window runs from July 11 at 12:00 to September 8 at 23:59 — before the show, not during it — and the sale can close early if the maximum number of orders is reached. Serial numbers are assigned at random, cancellations are not accepted, and the listing states the product is intended for residents of Japan.

It is a thoroughly on-brand way for a 30-year-old trade show to mark the anniversary: a limited-run gold artefact with your name engraved on it, sold with a ticket attached.

The business days are a different price list

September 17 and 18 are the trade days, and they are not a paywalled version of the public show. The official notices are flat about it: only people related to the game business are admitted, nobody under 18 or in education gets in, and every application is screened by the secretariat before a pass is issued — paying does not buy the screening. Within that, there is a three-tier pass structure, and the published prices split on one thing: whether an exhibitor has given you a 16-digit Business Day Pre-Registration Code.

All figures tax-included. The gap between the two columns is the entire point of the system — a code turns a 16,500 yen standard pass into a free one, and knocks 16,500 off both premium tiers.

What the tiers actually add:

Note row two. A business day pass does not admit you on the public days. They are separate products, and the site says so explicitly: public day tickets are not valid for business day admission, and the business badge is not transferable.

Deadlines differ by route. Paid pre-registration is accepted until 23:59 on September 8; free pre-registration using an advance registration code runs later, to September 16 at 23:59. Registration opened July 30 at 12:00 through EventRegist. On the day you need the PDF ticket QR code, photo ID and two business cards — a requirement that tells you exactly who these days are for. Group applications need a minimum of 20 people — that is a floor, not a cap — carry a 33,000 yen administrative fee per application, and are open only to game industry associations, government agencies and travel agencies.

The Gold pass also covers the International Party, listed as Friday, September 18 from 18:00 and marked tentative on the site.

The cheaper ways in

Three routes sidestep the standard 3,000 yen day ticket, and each has a real gate on it. Two of them are cheaper. The third is an extra purchase on top of one.

Family Game Park — free. It runs all three public days at TKP Tokyo Bay Makuhari Hall, 9:30 to 17:00 on the 19th and 20th and 9:30 to 16:00 on the 21st. Admission is free for children of junior high school age and under and their accompanying guardians, and entry is limited to that group. The catch is spelled out in the notices: moving from the Family Game Park into the general exhibition areas requires a paid admission ticket for anyone junior high age or older.

Influencer ticket — 1,100 yen. A registration fee of 1,100 yen tax-included covers four days, September 18 to 21, with an accompanying person at 1,650 yen. Registration for general influencers opened July 20, 2026, via Stagecrowd for Japan residents and Trip.com for people overseas. It also has the hardest eligibility bar: more than 30,000 followers on a single platform, or more than 50,000 across several, 18 or over, students not eligible, one companion each and the companion must also be 18 or over. It comes with access to the TGS Creator Lounge Presented by Twitch in the Hall 1 event stage area, which carries a demo booth, bookable 30-minute streaming slots and a working space.

Cosplay registration — 2,000 yen. If you are cosplaying you need a cosplay ticket in addition to a one-day admission ticket, not instead of one. Registration is 2,000 yen tax-included including changing room and cloakroom use, or 3,000 yen for the early-morning slot, on sale from July 20 at 12:00 through Lawson Ticket, with a daily cap on registered cosplayers.

The entry rules that decide your morning

Buying the ticket is the easy part. These are the published rules that shape the day itself.

Last admission is earlier than closing. First entry is permitted until 16:00 on Saturday the 19th and Sunday the 20th, and 15:00 on Monday the 21st — a valid ticket does not get you in after that. Re-entry runs slightly later: 16:30 on the 19th and 20th, 15:30 on the 21st.

Halls 9-11 are a one-way trip in the morning. After the doors open you can move from Halls 1-8 to Halls 9-11, but you cannot move from 9-11 back to 1-8 during the entry restriction period, which runs until 10:00 every day. Enter on the Hall 9-11 side and the first half hour of your show is decided for you. Fast Ticket holders get priority lanes on both the 1-8 and 9-11 sides, and the exchange point for Fast Ticket merchandise on the 1-8 side handles visitors who entered via 9-11 from 11:00.

There is a published entry order. After the venue opens, admission is granted in this sequence: Fast Ticket holders, then 1-Day Pass holders, then Special Discount Ticket holders. That is the organiser's stated order, and it puts the accessibility ticket last in the queue — a scheduling choice worth knowing about in advance rather than discovering at the gate.

The priority lane starts absurdly early. The official wording is that the Fast Ticket priority waiting line starts "at the time of the first train at JR Kaihin Makuhari Station." That is what 6,000 yen is buying: a place in a queue that begins before dawn.

Getting to Makuhari Messe

Makuhari Messe sits at 2-1 Nakase, Mihama-ku, Chiba City. The nearest station is Kaihin-Makuhari on the JR Keiyo Line, about a five-minute walk, and the Keiyo Line rapid service runs it from Tokyo Station in roughly 30 minutes. Makuhari-Toyosuna Station is the alternative at about a 20-minute walk. From Makuhari-Hongo Station on the JR Sobu and Keisei lines, buses run to Kaihin-Makuhari in about 15 minutes and to Makuhari Messe Central in about 17.

Makuhari Messe is stitched together by covered pedestrian decks like the one above, which matters in a Japanese September more than it sounds like it should.

What is not published yet

Being straight about the gaps is more useful than filling them.

• No exhibitor total. The exhibitor list and search are live on the official site, but CESA has not published a headline exhibitor or booth count in its news feed as of August 23. The newest item there is the launch of the "TGS NEWS STUDIO" broadcast on August 18; everything before it is dated July.
• No stage schedule detail here. The official programme, event stage and streaming pages exist; the individual show times are theirs to publish and change.
• Sales status moves, and this post is a snapshot. On August 23 the official ticket page showed Fast and Premium sold out and the 1-Day, Special Discount and 30th Anniversary tickets still on sale. Each of those five carries the same warning that sales end once the allocated number is gone. Check the vendor page for the day you want rather than trusting any snapshot, including this one.
• Currency conversions are deliberately absent. Every price above is in yen because that is the currency the tickets are sold in.

If you are planning a convention run rather than one show, the gamescom 2026 ticket guide and our PAX West 2026 badge and hours breakdown cover the two shows that sit ahead of TGS on this year's calendar.

Quick Action Checklist

• Buy before you fly. No tickets are sold at Makuhari Messe on the day, for domestic or international attendees.
• Pick your day around the Monday short close. September 21 runs 9:30 to 16:00, an hour shorter than the 19th and 20th.
• Budget 3,000 yen a day, not 3,000 total. The 1-Day ticket is per named date and there are no refunds or exchanges for buying the wrong one.
• Do not plan around the priority lane. Fast (6,000 yen a day) and Premium (30,000 yen) both read SOLD OUT on the official ticket page as of August 23, so budget your morning for the general admission queue instead.
• Carry photo ID for any named ticket. Premium, Fast and Special Discount all check the name on the ticket against ID at the gate.
• Do not enter via Halls 9-11 unless that is where you want to spend the first hour. You cannot cross back to Halls 1-8 until 10:00.
• Watch the clock at the end, not just the start. Last admission is 16:00 on the 19th and 20th, 15:00 on the 21st.
• Business visitors: chase a pre-registration code first. It is the difference between free and 16,500 yen on a Standard pass, and 16,500 yen off Gold and Black.
• Cosplayers need two purchases, a cosplay registration and an admission ticket.
• More convention logistics in the Gaming Events archive, and the rest of it on the Mythras blog.