Breaking news has surfaced today from Inside Sport: Japan by way of a flurry of social media posts announcing that the Sumo Association will be resuming its international tours in 2025.

Among others, ISJ has dropped a couple of posts on Facebook referencing a much larger announcement on December 4 where full details will be revealed of a Kyokai exhibition trip to London next October.

The trip will apparently be the Kyokai’s first official tour of any kind since 2013, according to ISJ, when the organisation took a lot of heavy cargo to Jakarta, and the first ‘koen’ cultural exhibition since its last trip to Last Vegas in 2005. This will mark its second such trip to the UK’s capital overall.

We’ll be looking forward to the revelation of further details on the 4th.

The resumption obviously marks a much debated talking point among international sumo fans: namely, in light of the success or at least the interest in recent unofficial international promotional tours such as Sumo & Sushi and others, whether the NSK would strike out again and make an official super-jumbo journey to international markets in order to spread the culture around sumo and promote the sport.

Obviously, we’ve seen the growing interest from international markets here on Tachiai in recent years, and will be watching to see whether this is a one-off or the first step towards a more consistent run of events, should the Kyokai be successful.

Thank you to ISJ for breaking this news, and feel free to sound off in the comments: is London the right destination? Could we see the Kyokai coming back to an American destination in Hawaii or the mainland in the future, or other east Asian markets?