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One City, One Story, Many Views
In five days, SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 opens at Tokyo Big Sight. More than 700 startups from across the world will gather under a programme designed explicitly by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to test, validate, and export urban innovation.
The name is deliberate. SusHi: Sustainable High-City. The dual meaning — sustainability plus a global symbol of Japanese precision and quality — is the brand strategy in one word. Tokyo is not just hosting a conference. It is positioning itself as the city where urban solutions come to be proven.
SusHi Tech was launched in 2024 as part of the Tokyo 2050 Strategy. The logic is specific: Tokyo faces the urban problems of the future today. Ageing population. Disaster preparedness. Carbon neutrality. Labour shortage. Infrastructure maintenance. A city of 14 million people running an operating system built for a different century.
The hypothesis is that solving Tokyo's problems at Tokyo's scale produces solutions that work everywhere. A mobility innovation validated in Tokyo — where the transit system moves 8 million passengers a day — carries an endorsement that no other city can provide. An elderly care technology proven in Tokyo — where 23% of the population is over 65 — has a market credential that a pilot in a smaller city cannot match.
This is different from most smart city conferences, which are primarily showcases. SusHi Tech is built around open innovation partnerships: major corporations presenting specific urban problems they cannot solve alone, startups pitching solutions in response, the city providing the test environment. More than 60 major companies are participating in 2026 edition.
Pavilions from more than 20 countries and regions will be present. For many of them, Tokyo is the validation they need to go global.
The Governor of Tokyo has been explicit: this is not a trade fair. It is urban policy made visible.
In five days, the city opens its doors.
(Sources: Asia Biz Today / SusHi Tech Tokyo official programme — March–April 2026)
Many Views — Seoul · Singapore · San Francisco · London · Tallinn · Dallas
Seoul 🇰🇷 — Seoul will have a significant presence at SusHi Tech 2026. Korean startups have been building their Tokyo relationships for years — Japan is Korea's closest and most culturally resonant international market, and the two cities' innovation ecosystems have more in common than their geopolitical tensions suggest. What Seoul brings to Tokyo is a strength in consumer technology, K-content, and digital platforms. What Seoul needs from Tokyo — and what SusHi Tech provides — is a validation environment for hardware, robotics, and deep tech applications where Tokyo's industrial infrastructure and institutional buyers are unmatched. Seoul also brings its CES experience: a city that has learned to use international showcases as policy instruments rather than marketing events.
Singapore 🇸🇬 — Singapore will attend SusHi Tech as a city that sees Tokyo as both a peer and a model. Singapore's urban innovation infrastructure — its smart city programme, its regulatory sandbox, its government technology agency — is built on a similar philosophy to Tokyo's: the city as test environment, the government as first customer. What Singapore watches for at SusHi Tech is the category where Tokyo is moving faster: mobility, energy, and disaster resilience in a densely built, earthquake-prone environment. Singapore's vulnerabilities are different — sea level rise, extreme heat, water scarcity — but the methodology of urban experimentation is the same.
San Francisco 🇺🇸 — San Francisco will be present at SusHi Tech through its startup ecosystem, but the relationship between Silicon Valley and Tokyo has always had a specific dynamic. American technology companies come to Tokyo to sell. SusHi Tech is built to invert that: to bring global technology into Tokyo's problem-solving framework on Tokyo's terms. The solutions that come out of SusHi Tech — developed in response to Tokyo's specific challenges — are likely to compete with San Francisco's generic global products in a growing number of categories. Tokyo is building the proof that the best urban technology is contextual, not universal. San Francisco has built its dominance on the opposite assumption.
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