Eastern Japan Rock Festival Information List [2025–2026]

It was started by an organizer who has lived in Matsumoto for many years and wanted to make the city he loves even better through music. Matsumoto hosts events like the classical Saito Kinen Festival and the summer festival Matsumoto Bonbon, but because there weren’t any events centered on youth-oriented popular music, the Ringo Music Festival focuses on popular music—including J-pop, as well as rock and hip-hop.

Now that diversity of values has become the norm, following the boom of large-scale music festivals, the new focus is on “live circuits,” in which multiple live music venues are rented out and concerts are held simultaneously across them. In this context, three of the nation’s premier circuit festivals—Osaka’s Mihoudai, Nagoya’s Dera Rock, and Fukuoka’s TENJIN ONTAQ—are joining forces in Tokyo to stage one of Japan’s largest live circuits.

Set in Iwamuro, a hot spring area in Niigata Prefecture, this music event invites everyone to share what they love and enjoy, and to express it freely. Aiming to share the joy of spending time in the countryside, we bring out each person’s unique color, freely paint the space called Iwamuro, and share that time together by creating the event as one. Why not shift from spending your days just going into town to shop and coming home tired, to a way of living where you create your own enjoyment right in the town you call home?

The Gunma Rock Festival, which was held for three years starting in 2011, has been reborn as “Yamabito Ongakusai.” The central driving force behind the event is G-FREAK FACTORY, and the title “Yamabito” (mountain folk) was chosen to evoke Gunma Prefecture’s mountains: Mt. Akagi, Mt. Haruna, and Mt. Myogi.