The World's First Pokemon-Themed Airport is Opening in Japan
Japan is about to get the world's first Pokemon-named airport, and it's not Tokyo, Osaka, or any of Japan's other usual tourist centers. It is located in the quieter Noto Peninsula region of Japan on the Sea of Japan and is in an area still in the process of rebuilding its tourism industry after the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake.
From 7 July 2026, the Noto Satoyama Airport in Ishikawa Prefecture will be renamed Noto Satoyama Pokémon With You Airport for a limited time, until the end of September 2029. According to Ishikawa Prefecture, it will be the only airport in the world to use the Pokémon name.
However, it is not completely arbitrary to open the airport on that date: the airport was opened on July 7, 2003, exactly 23 years after Pokemon's premiere, and follows a series of Pokemon-themed ventures promoting Noto. These included Pokemon manhole covers, a Pokemon footbath, a wrapped train, and new sightseeing routes in the city meant to bring tourists inland on the peninsula.
Why Noto, not Tokyo?
Because this is largely a domestic airport serving an underpopulated part of the Noto Peninsula, Noto Satoyama Airport in Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, most passengers arrive from Tokyo Haneda. According to the 2026 timetable for the period of 29 March to 24 October 2026 published by the airport, there are two ANA roundtrips per day from Haneda to Noto: flight NH747 & NH749 from Haneda and NH748 & NH750 in the reverse direction.
That small size is exactly what makes the project interesting. Japan already has Pokémon aircraft, Pokémon travel campaigns and Pokémon-themed trains, but that can be found along already-famous routes. This airport project is different because it will use Pokémon to draw attention to a regional gateway otherwise overlooked by international travelers.
While not exclusively rural, the peninsula is prominent for its satoyama and satoumi: a mosaic of villages, forests, farmland, irrigation ponds, rocky coastline, tidal flats, and fishing villages. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, Noto's agricultural system is a mosaic of managed land and coastal ecosystems, and both its Satoyama and Satoumi were designated Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems in 2011.
That may seem trivial, but the new airport name is not just "Pokémon Airport", but Noto Satoyama Pokémon With You Airport. The concept of "Satoyama" creates a link between the Pokémon brand and the community.
The airport is now a post-earthquake recovery success.
This project is part of an agreement with the Pokémon With You Foundation and the Ishikawa Prefectural Government made in response to the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake. The two groups agreed to work together on activities to support children in the earthquake area, promote customary crafts and local products in the area, support the local tourism industry, involve local communities in reconstruction, and help Noto recover.
A related charity-based initiative is the Pokémon With You program, which has offered disaster relief from its origins in response to the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami to its full launch as a charity in 2021. The program offers disaster relief, prevention education, children's programs, and environmental support. Following the Noto earthquake, the foundation published support books for children, sent Pikachu to visit, and assisted in local events, creating the recovery-support artwork "Akarui Mirai" (Bright Future).
That is why the airport project feels more serious than a normal character campaign. It is cute, obviously, but it is also being used to give people a reason to visit Noto, spend money locally and talk about an area where recovery from the earthquake was still on-going.
What travelers will see inside the Pokémon airport
The centerpiece will be a balloon sculpture of Pikachu holding an airplane to be suspended in the second-floor atrium of the airport, as well as numerous decorations of Pokémon flying throughout the airport. In total, all 111 Flying-type Pokémon as of May 2026, disregarding Mega Evolutions and regional variants, will be available on the airport's grounds, according to the official announcement.
That's one of the reasons it seems so appropriate that, instead of just populating the airport with widely known Pokémon, the theme here is flight. Other Flying-type Pokémon, like birds, dragons and insects, are part of its travel story.
The first floor's arrival lobby will feature the "Akarui Mirai" artwork, three-dimensional monuments of Pikachu and Plusle and Minun. The artwork's theme resembles the natural landscape of Noto and was designed as a welcome sight to those arriving in the region.
Other decorations outside the lobby will include the airport exterior, entrance pillars, terminal entrances, boarding bridges, second-floor walls and some information signs. There will also be an observation-deck area for visitors, called "Pikachu no Satoyama" (ピカチュウの里山), that is meant to appear as if a large group of Pikachu and the nearby satoyama are being looked down at.
A second aspect is "side stories" within the airport via smartphones, with three videos planned. One of these is "Tobe! Tatsubay", a story about a Bagon dreaming of flying. At the base of the monument, inside the airport, will be a statue of Bagon looking up at Salamence.
Food, goods and the collector factor
The Restaurant Annon on the third floor will serve one-of-a-kind, Pokémon-themed meals. So far, two different pancake dishes and two different drinks have been announced. Meals will come with an original placemat, and should be the sort of tiny detail fans of both Pokémon and Japan travel tend to appreciate a great deal.
The shop Serendipity on the second floor will sell original airport merchandise sporting the airport logo and the newly installed airport artwork "Kibou no Sora" ("Sky of Hope"). These include T-shirts, keyholders, luggage tags and suitcase belts. The luggage items in particular would serve to tie the merchandise into the airport concept rather than just being character related.
The official release notes also state that in some situations, products may be limited in quantity or subject to purchase limitations to allow more visitors to purchase them, which is probably worth keeping in mind if you are planning to visit soon after opening.
The airport is merely one starting point.
The Japanese Pokémon airport is not for trapping people in the airport terminal. The Hokuriku Railroad Group is set to wrap two buses in Pokémon designs in Ishikawa starting mid-July 2026. One will be a daily round trip of the existing express bus services between Kanazawa Station, the airport and Wajima.
The second is a new Noto sightseeing bus route, which is currently in development to connect the airport with Pokémon tourist attractions, such as the Wakura Pokémon Footbath located at the Wakura Onsen hot spring resort district in Nanao and the Sylveon with LOVE monument located in Suzu City, and is scheduled to operate on weeks and holidays outside of the winter holiday as well as limited times during school holidays like summer holidays.
Alongside the airport renovations were the additions of six new Poké Lids to Noto in April 2026, located in Suzu, Wajima, Noto Town, Anamizu, Nanao and Shika. Other Poké Lids located in Wajima include Mitsuke Beach, Roadside Station Wajima, Yanagida Botanical Park, Anamizu Station, the Yuttari Park of the Wakura Pokémon Footbath and the World's Longest Bench which is also located in Shika.
On 12 May 2026, the Wakura Pokémon Footbath opened at Yuttari Park in Wakura Onsen. It is free of charge and open from 7:00 until 19:00, depending on weather conditions. Alongside Gyarados, Poliwag and Poliwrath, it depicts Pokémon featured on Nanao's Poké Lid. At the opening ceremony, children from Nanao's nursery schools tested out the renovated footbath.
According to the city of Nanao, all 19 inns in Wakura Onsen, which were destroyed by the 2024 earthquake, were closed at the time of the footbath's opening, and 9 of the hotels had reopened at the time. The city hoped that the footbath would bring energy back to the area and encourage more people to visit and return.
How to visit
The easiest way for international travelers to visit Noto is still through Tokyo. One suggestion is to visit Haneda Airport in Tokyo and take an ANA domestic flight to Noto Satoyama Airport. However, buses, taxis, or rental cars are also available from the airport. Noto tourism information states that the flight time from Haneda to Noto is about one hour, and flat-fare shared taxis are available from different terminals in the airport according to arrival times, with pre-booking required.
An alternative is to reach Shika Peninsula by train from Kanazawa, continuing by local train and bus to Nanao, Anamizu or elsewhere. The Hokuriku Shinkansen journey from Tokyo to Kanazawa takes about 2.5 hours. From Kanazawa, the Noto Railway and buses connect to other areas of the peninsula.
The airport is more than just a runway and check-in counter, however. In addition to small regional travel facilities, there are an observation deck, souvenir shops, a restaurant, a roadside station, a tourist information center, and a rental-car counter. Prior to the Pokémon relaunch, it was described as a starting point for traveling around the Noto Peninsula.
Is this really the first Pokémon airport?
Japan has had Pokémon designs on planes, as ANA, Skymark, China Airlines, Scoot, and other airlines built aircraft for the Pokémon Air Adventures project or similar projects where flights were designated as a Pokémon experience. According to Pokémon Air Adventures, these aircraft were designed with the goal of connecting skies around the world and creating a fun air experience.
Noto is different, in that its airport is adopting the Pokémon name, and not just a Pokémon aircraft, a pop-up display or a themed shop corner. The airport is being renamed Noto Satoyama Pokémon With You Airport for a little more than three years, located in one of the Japanese locations most affected by earthquakes.
That's what makes the story worth telling. It's a Pokémon travel destination, but it's also a regional revitalization project, a domestic tourism experiment, and a very Japanese example of how pop culture can be used to move people toward places they would not otherwise think to visit on their own. For Pokefans, it's a temporary pilgrimage destination. For airport nerds, it's surely one of the weirdest and most charming airport stories of 2026. For Noto, it's another reason for people to come back.
