Design Festa Summer + Gakuten 2018

Happening at West Hall No. 1 and 2 of Big Sight, this year sees a big change for Gakuten as it combines with the mega event Design Festa. The newer Design Festa Gakuten event (this year marks the 3rd) has a focus on students, and you’ll find both talented young high school students and university art students showing their work. It’s a veritable potpourri of creativity with art, ceramics, illustration, photography, accessories, merchandise, live performance and interesting cosplay characters wandering around the event. There’s also regular non-student Design Festa exhibitors making for a total of around 12,000 people exhibiting.

You can save a few hundred yen by purchasing the one-day pass in advance. Pre-sales are available through the site, but only in Japanese.

Don’t turn up too early as the event has a student sleep-in friendly start time of 11am.