ZuCity Japan Annual Popup 2026
Sept 4 – Oct 5, 2026 · Komoro, Nagano, Japan
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Join the group chatSept 4 – Oct 5, 2026 · Komoro, Nagano, Japan
A month of builders, scientists, entrepreneurs, artists, and free spirits living together in the mountains of rural Japan. We sleep in homes we own, eat at tables we built, and figure out our next decade together. This isn't a conference you fly into — it's a futurists city that you get to experience for a month. Three intensive summits (d/acc · DeSci · jp/acc), three weeks of unconference in between, one week of recovery, one night where it all closes.
ZuCity Popup is hosted in ZuCity — our own neighborhood (codename Brooklyn 2.0) made from buying abandoned houses in Komoro, Nagano and turned into community-owned coliving infrastructure. Unlike traditional popup cities that rent hotels and vanish, everything built here stays. The venues, the equipment, the relationships — they compound year over year.
Four properties within a 5-minute walk of each other, plus a community space for coworking, events, the private club, and casual hangout — a hacker-house × art-residency rhythm where we build, adventure, and host things together every week.
$50.00 USD / day
24-hour access to all ZuCity Japan facilities - coworking, lounges, parties, community meals, workshops, and more. Come experience our action-packed coliving with bleeding-edge tech, solarpunk self-sovereignty, and traditional rural Japanese lifestyle.
All ZuCity venues are community-owned properties within 5 minutes walking distance of each other. Book rooms, day passes, and memberships through the app — longer stays get better rates.
Coworking, Talks & Workshops, Community Meals, DeSci Experiments, Parties
Sleeping, Coworking, Offgrid Systems, Community Gatherings
Sleeping, Art & Creativity, Chilling
Sleeping
🔴 is our central community space. ⚪ are rooms in our community-owned houses within minutes on foot. This is ZuCity's neighborhood.
| Property | Distance | Walk |
|---|---|---|
| ZuCity Artist & Builder Residency | 0.1 km | 1 min walk |
| ZuCity Balcony Bedroom #1 | 0.1 km | 1 min walk |
| ZuCity Balcony Bedroom #2 | 0.1 km | 1 min walk |
| ZuCity Lounge - Nakamandem | 0.1 km | 1 min walk |
| ZuCity Secluded Backyard Flat | 0.1 km | 1 min walk |
| ZuCity Office Bedroom and Mountain View | 0.2 km | 2 min walk |
| ZuCity Master Bedroom | 0.3 km | 4 min walk |
| ZuCity Traditional Tatami Bedroom | 0.3 km | 4 min walk |
A popup city is a temporary society — we move in, we contribute, we compound to Komoro and ZuCity over the month. ZuCity residents create intimate bonds thought coliving and cocreating experiences - in a place we own together. We host the ZuCity Popup City every September in Komoro: a steady, exciting, and rejuvenating rhythm that lets you experience life in Komoro like we do everyday. Short intensive summits where the whole community gathers around one theme, then longer cowork stretches where you put your head down, make things, take onsen breaks, and let the ideas settle.
INTENSIVE SUMMITS · 2–3 DAYS
Intensive all day talks, workshops, and collaboration. Community dinners and private salon dinners at night. Late sessions in the private club. Drop in for a day or stay the whole summit.
COWORK & COCREATE · 4–5 DAYS
Four to five unconference days between summits. Hack on your startup, host a workshop, paint murals on the walls, design our biolab, DJ while we work, go for a sunrise summit. The venue belongs to the residents.
One click and you're set for a full themed week — d/acc, DeSci, jp/acc, or Recovery. Curated rooms, passes, and meals priced as a pack save you ~15% over booking item by item.
Sept 4–6
Three days of physical-world hackers in one room — mesh networks, offgrid energy, food forests, sovereign compute. Talks all day, community dinners at night, late sessions in the basement.
Sept 11–13
Japan biotech regulation, longevity protocols, biomarker experiments. We bootstrap the community biolab this week and prototype the long game on our own bodies.
Sept 18–20
Visionaries, entrepreneurs, and operators building Japan back. Covering the Modern Meiji Restoration, Yen stablecoins, Japan SEZ playbooks, and rural revitilization — how to buy, fix, and live in abandoned Japanese houses.
Sept 21–27
For ZuCity's long-term community members. Designing the future of ZuCity, neighborhood services, community manifesto, onchain and coliving protocols.
Sept 28 – Oct 5
A calm, focused energy week. Yoga at sunrise, all-day onsen circuits, day raves in the mountains. The closing ceremony sends you home different.
OCT 5 · NIGHT
Sharing our favorite experiences, our last meal, and final rituals with people we've spent the month. Live artists providing visual experiences. Popup store to support artists and Zucity with art and merch. Impeccable DJs with just the right vibe. Everything we came for, in one night.
Sept 4–6 · Intensive Summit
Physical-world builders in one room. Why rural Japan is the right ground for this work — and what we're going to make this week.
Mesh networks. Offgrid energy. Food forests. Hardware sovereignty. Hackers who touch dirt.
Local-first AI. Encrypted comms. Sovereign identity stacks. Infrastructure that doesn't phone home.
Community dinners with the homies, private salon dinners with the speakers, late sessions in the basement.
Why the the global and local conditions are perfect for building sovereign hubs in Japan right now.
Sept 11–13 · Intensive Summit
What Japan biotech actually permits, ZuCity daily/weekly protocols, and how we plan to open our DeSci lab to researchers.
Market overview. 薬機法 reality check. Biotech SEZ landscape. The lawyers, the doctors, the founders who've already done it.
Gaps in the DeSci ecosystem. How to design and run decentralized experiments to publish publish papers,
Biomarker experiments. Longevity protocols. Nootropic stacks. Self-experimentation roundtables — bring your data, leave with a year-long protocol you understand.
What onchain science and DAOs can unlock here that they can't elsewhere. The boring answer is usually the right answer.
Sept 18–20 · Intensive Summit
Pioneers building Japan back from inside the country. Inside the government, on the open market, in Tokyo streets, under forest mountains. Anyone tackling Japan's biggest issues and bringing its economy on track.
Transforming Japan's economy for the 22nd century. Rural revitalization as opportunity, not nostalgia.
State of programmable JPY. Real-estate tokenization. The financial primitives Japan is getting right.
What's actually possible in the special zones. Who's actually doing it. How you'd structure your venture if you wanted in.
Founder dinners. National entrepreneur networks. How the country can tolerate risk and innovation again.
Sept 21–27 · Community Coordination
During ETHTokyo while many will be away, those that stay behind will decide the future of ZuCity.
Intensive talks discussions Zuzalu, permanent hubs, ZuCity experiment design, social protocols, and incentive mechanisms.
Murals, sets, games. Keep us grounded in the here and now while we get lost in the future.
Hands-on contribution to permanent infrastructure. The biolab you help spec is the biolab that's here next year. Equipment shortlists, IRB pathways, lab and trial management, IP ownership, universities to partner with, all the nitty-gritty to make this a successful lab in the future.
Mountain onsens. Ramen shops. Temples. Mountain hikes. Neighborhood kissaten. Local museums. Farm tours.
Sept 28 – Oct 5
The pace finally slows. The point of a popup city isn't to grind for a month — it's to integrate what just happened. This week is for that.
Daily sessions on the patio, Mt. Asama in the front window. The same teachers all week so you can actually drop in.
Full-day rotenburo circuits. Contrast therapy. The deep onsens out in the mountains that locals know about.
Sunlight on the mountain. Sound system on the patio. Friends you've spent a month becoming. The recovery week earns it.
The pace settles. Cook breakfast together. Walk the river. People you arrived as strangers with leave as people you'll see again next year.
One click and you're set for a full themed week — d/acc, DeSci, jp/acc, or Recovery. Curated rooms, passes, and meals priced as a pack save you ~15% over booking item by item.
Understand how to make the most of your trip — events, the time of year, accommodation choices, and your itinerary.
Apply for ZuCity community housing or find Airbnbs, hotels, and hostels within walking distance.
Join our Telegram for travel tips, last-minute logistics, and to meet your future popup-mates before you arrive.
Available Airbnbs, hotels, hostels, and ZuCity rooms within walking distance of ZuCity popup venues
Villa$283.87 USD /night
Venue$290.32 USD /night
Room$77.42 USD /night
Suite$187.10 USD /night
Venue$38.06 USD /night
Suite$206.45 USD /night
Villa$63.23 USD /night
Room$38.71 USD /night
Komoro sits at the foot of Mount Asama volcano in Nagano Prefecture — 90 minutes from Tokyo by shinkansen, 20 minutes from Karuizawa. A historic castle town with 1,300-year-old zen temples, top-100 cherry blossom spots, dozens of onsens, and local soba so famous Tokyo named a chain after it. Cool mountain summers while the coast drowns in humidity. The kind of place that rearranges your priorities.
Read more about life in Komoro or how we buy abandoned properties for $2k–$30k.
Want to arrive early and help shape the spaces? Build Month (July 1 – Aug 24) is the hands-on construction phase where volunteers transform our properties into the venues you see above. Build Month participants get first access and discounted rates. Learn about the community behind this, the town we call home, or how booking and discounts work.
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24-hour access to all ZuCity Japan facilities - coworking, lounges, parties, community meals, workshops, and more. Come experience our action-packed coliving with bleeding-edge tech, solarpunk self-sovereignty, and traditional rural Japanese lifestyle.