How to Watch Sumo from Outside Japan
The hardest part of following sumo from abroad is not finding a stream. It is knowing when to look. Sumo runs on a fixed calendar published years in advance, and once you have that, everything else follows.
Sumo is not a season with a match every weekend. It is six tournaments a year, fifteen days each — so for roughly half the year there is no top-level sumo at all, and for the other half there is some every single day.
The calendar
The Sumo Association publishes the schedule several years ahead. The pattern repeats: odd-numbered months, six times a year.
Tournament | City |
|---|---|
January | Tokyo |
March | Osaka |
May | Tokyo |
July | Nagoya |
September | Tokyo |
November | Fukuoka |
Three of the six are in Tokyo, at the Kokugikan. The other three move — and the July venue changed recently, so a guide written a few years ago may name a different building.
The shape of a tournament
Fifteen days, no rest days. The first day is 初日 (shonichi) and the last is 千秋楽 (senshuraku), and in the published schedule both fall on a Sunday.
That is genuinely useful if you are abroad. Whatever your time zone, the tournament opens on a weekend and is decided on a weekend.
Put in senshuraku — the final Sunday. It is the day the championship is settled, and the day the last results decide who goes up and who goes down. If you watch one day a year, that is the day. Why the best bouts come last explains what time to start.
What time of day
A tournament day runs for hours and climbs the ranking as it goes, so the part worth staying up for is the end of it. There is no need to work out a start time — work out an end time, and go back about an hour.
Everything you need for that is in the article on the day's running order.
The trap for new viewers
Between tournaments the wrestlers are not idle — there are touring exhibitions — but those are not the sport you are following. Results there do not affect the banzuke. If you want the thing that changes careers, wait for the next of the six.
What we are not going to tell you
We are not going to list broadcasters or streaming services here.
Rights differ by country and change from year to year, and a page that named them would be wrong within a season — which is worse than saying nothing. What does not change is the calendar above.
Search for coverage in your own country shortly before a tournament starts, not months ahead, and check whether it carries the top division only or the lower divisions too.
Going in person
If you are travelling to Japan, the schedule is the first thing to look at, because it decides the city as well as the date. Tickets go on sale well before each tournament — the Association publishes an advance-sale date for every one of the six, generally around a month or more ahead.
Note that the tournament is in a different city depending on the month, so "sumo in Japan" is really "sumo in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya or Fukuoka" depending on when you go.
What to watch for
Find the next tournament on the calendar and note two dates: the first Sunday and the last Sunday.
Watch the last hour of each. Two sessions, two weeks apart, and you will have seen a tournament open and close — which is more of the story than fifteen scattered hours would give you.
Now you know which day. This is which hour.
Source: Japan Sumo Association, 年間日程表 (annual schedule), retrieved 8 September 2026. Dates and venues as published for 2026 to 2028.