On April 13, 2025, Expo 2025, Osaka, Kansai, Japan will open on Yumeshima, an artificial island built on the waterfront of the city of Osaka. More than 28 million people, including 3.5 million from overseas, are expected to attend.
The theme is “Designing Future Society for Our Lives.” It is of great significance that approximately 160 countries will bring together solutions to social issues common to the world and set the direction for the society of the future. During the expo period, 53 pavilions for official participants, 13 pavilions for private parties, and eight theme pavilions will be constructed. Each official participant and private party will present a unique and fascinating viewpoint, so we hope many people from all over the world will attend the expo to experience them by all means.
The Grand Ring, one of the world’s largest wooden structures, has been already assembled using traditional construction methods to form a continuous circle at the center of the expo site. In September, the location of official participants’ pavilions in the ring was officially announced. Although it is said that the world is facing a crisis of fragmentation, there are few places where many countries from all over the world can gather under the concept of “Unity in Diversity” to discuss global issues and their solutions.
The 1970 World Exposition in Osaka, dubbed Expo ’70, was the first world’s fair to be held in Asia and a major event that symbolized Japan’s rapid economic growth. Just as the wireless phones and automatic ticket gates at train stations first unveiled at Expo ’70 have become indispensable to life today, many more excellent technologies and services stand to be born at next year’s expo and influence future generations.
The 2025 World Expo will aim to contribute to the achievement of Society 5.0 and the United Nations’ sustainable development goals under the expo theme to help create a society where the world’s 8 billion people can live more prosperous and healthy lives after overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic.
Furthermore, based on the concept of creating a “People’s Living Lab,” cutting-edge technologies such as regenerative medicine, carbon neutrality and next-generation mobility tools — including Advanced Air Mobility and self-driving buses — will be presented to the world. The expo is truly “a compass for future society” and practically applying these technologies and social systems to social issues will lead to innovation. I hope the 2025 expo will present opportunities for new businesses in each country to expand and develop worldwide.
I believe the impact that Expo ’70 had on the youth of that time was immeasurable, because professor Shinya Yamanaka, a Nobel laureate for induced pluripotent stem cell research, said his experience with the event influenced his international achievements. For this reason, I sincerely want children to experience an image of future society directly at the expo and influence the next generation. I hope their experience at the world’s fair will help them come up with a vision of their future and become active on the world stage to shape the future of our society.
We don’t want the expo to just be a passing event; we want its effects to spread to the whole world and contribute to “Designing Future Society for Our Lives.”
With only five months until the expo, we are entering the final stage of preparation. We will work together with the government, the Japan Association for the 2025 World Exposition, the business community and other groups to make every possible effort. We look forward to welcoming you to Yumeshima in 2025.
