Osaka Expo 2025
Expo is, in my opinion, a very subjective experience, and a lot depends on the theme chosen by the organizers. Here’s a brief overview from official sources:
From April 13 to October 13, 2025, the Japanese city of Osaka will host the World Expo 2025, held on the artificial island of Yumeshima. The theme, “Designing Future Society for Our Lives”, focuses on innovation, sustainability, and global collaboration.
🌍 Key Information
- Dates: April 13 – October 13, 2025
- Location: Yumeshima Island, Osaka, Japan
- Theme: “Designing Future Society for Our Lives”
- Participants: Over 150 countries and regions
- Expected Visitors: More than 28 million people
🏛️ Main Attractions
- Grand Ring: An impressive 20-meter-high wooden structure with a perimeter of nearly 2 km, symbolizing unity and connection.
- National Pavilions: Each of the 150+ countries presents a unique vision of the future and innovation.
- Women’s Pavilion by Cartier: A pavilion dedicated to gender equality and sustainability, designed by architect Yuko Nagayama, featuring interactive experiences and art installations.
- Technological Innovations: Visitors can see a lab-grown beating heart, a Martian meteorite, or the world’s longest sushi conveyor belt.
🇨🇿 Czech Pavilion
The Czech Republic presents a pavilion in the shape of a glass spiral, designed by Apropos Architects. It combines modern architecture with traditional elements and offers interactive exhibitions focused on innovation and sustainability.
🚆 Transport & Tickets
- Access: The newly extended Chūō metro line provides convenient access to the Expo site on Yumeshima Island.
- Tickets: Available for purchase online through the official Expo website. It is recommended to reserve a specific date and time for your visit.
🎟️ Visitor Tips
- Plan Ahead: Schedule your visit early and book tickets online.
- Transport: Use the extended Chūō metro line for easy access.
- Allow Time: Set aside a full day to explore as many pavilions and attractions as possible.
Expo 2025 in Osaka is a unique opportunity to glimpse into the future and experience innovations from around the world. Let yourself be inspired by the visions that may shape our shared future.
Impressions and Thoughts
Personally, I enjoyed the Dubai Expo a bit more. That may have been due to post-Covid travel restrictions, which made it less crowded, or perhaps because of the content itself. In Dubai, it felt like each country was trying to outdo the others with interactive and impressive presentations.
The Czech pavilion in Osaka was interesting, but as I mentioned on Twitter, it felt like something was missing. There were certainly compelling lectures and workshops—the pavilion had a fairly large auditorium—but during regular tours, you could only peek inside. I believe we have a lot to showcase, especially in a tech-driven country like Japan. Why not include something like Kingdom Come? Or Alfons Mucha? Just a few of his works would draw massive crowds. Also, a deeper presentation of Czech cities—Asians love Český Krumlov.
Dubai combined beauty with technology, and I felt the technological aspect was a bit lacking here in Osaka. But hey, the beer was great! 😄 Objectively, our pavilion was well done and could rank in the top 10 overall, but subjectively, it didn’t fully resonate. I think many visitors missed the main concept behind the pavilion—it needed better explanations or interactive elements to clarify why, for example, that specific work by Masker, Lasvit and Plesl was included.
We visited the Czech pavilion twice in one week. On our second visit, I noticed the Prusa Research 3D printer. I’d swear it wasn’t there a week earlier 😄 It was the XL version, but again—there was no description of why it was there, what makes it special, or that it’s one of the biggest on the market. At least it was printing René! Imagine if it printed small figures that visitors could buy for a few yen…
Personally, I liked the Polish pavilion, Portugal and their focus on ocean protection, Saudi Arabia with their 3D-printed coral reef initiative (reminding themselves they have the Red Sea and could use it for tourism like Dubai), and Singapore’s pavilion was nice. The Chinese pavilion was surprisingly tech-oriented—their real-time translation tool was incredible. Minimal delay and instant 1-to-1 interaction, even in Czech—amazing. Austria focused on music, while Monaco highlighted its royal family 😄 Some pavilions were enormous but had underwhelming content.
The overall layout of the Expo site was excellent—plenty of food stalls, toilets, and facilities. The wooden ring structure encircling the entire Expo was fantastic. You could walk along it to view the pavilions from different perspectives, and at night it hosted light and drone shows.
Most pavilions had their own restaurants serving national cuisine. For example, Canada’s poutine—we definitely have better in Prague! Shoutout to Garage!
Downsides?
The lines. Oh, the lines. 😅 Some pavilions required advance reservations, making them almost inaccessible. Ticket purchasing was painful—sometimes the payment page wouldn’t even load 😄 especially not for Czech-issued cards. Luckily, I had various cards to try until one worked.
And the UX design of the website and apps? Hellish. You’d get logged out every 10–20 minutes and had to re-authenticate via a code sent by email—which was buried inside the message body instead of the subject line. When three different Expo apps (Visitor App, Expo Personal Agent, and Expo Wallet) do this at once, it’s rage-inducing.
The Expo Wallet was another story. It was meant for payments, collecting NFTs and points, but barely anyone used it. Most pavilions offered digital stamp collecting (about 30,000 possible stamps per pavilion). Scanning a QR code opened a web-view in the app where you could claim your stamp. But these stamps were stored in a separate section, not under the “NFT” tab. Only “special” items made it there. The wallet featured its own Expo Token and also used Aptos Coin. As of one month in, the Czech pavilion had only 2,665 stamps minted—even during Golden Week. I was usually the only one in the group scanning the stamp; everyone else lined up for the good old-fashioned ink stamp in a paper booklet. 😄
