ZuCity Japan Annual Popup 2026
Sept 4 – Oct 5, 2026 · Komoro, Nagano, Japan
What is ZuCity Popup?
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.
What is ZuCity Japan?
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.
ZuCity Japan Daily Access
$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 Venue Spaces (Coworking, Lounges, Private Club)
- Daily Breakfast
- Shared Cars
- Fast WiFi & Dedicated Work Stations
- Yoga & Zen Sessions
- DIY Regeneration & Workshops
- Biohacking & DeSci Experiments
- Parties & Local Adventures
- Expert Talks & Panels
- Mountain Views, Forest Air & Natural Onsens
Get Your Tickets
Venues
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.
ZuCity Vibe Space (Main Venue)
Coworking, Talks & Workshops, Community Meals, DeSci Experiments, Parties
ZuCity Flagship House
Sleeping, Coworking, Offgrid Systems, Community Gatherings
ZuCity Residency House
Sleeping, Art & Creativity, Chilling
Novels
Sleeping
The Neighborhood We Own
🔴 is our central community space. ⚪ are rooms in our community-owned houses within minutes on foot. This is ZuCity's neighborhood.
Legend
| 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 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 |
| ZuCity Secluded Backyard Flat | 9375.3 km | 112503 min walk |
How It Works
Pick Your Dates
Choose the tracks that fit you — d/acc, DeSci, jp/acc, or recovery.
Apply To Come
Fill out our resident application form before you come.
Buy Your Access Pass
You need to get a pass for everyday you are staying. Bundles available for tracks.
Plan Your Trip
Sort your housing, your flights, and your week in Komoro before you land.
Arrive in Komoro
90 minutes from Tokyo by train. Get picked up at the stations and dropped at your place.
Co-live & Build
Live in the houses, work in the commons, ship something real with the room.
Keep The Network
The friends you made, the things you created, the homes you come back to. Leave with the people, not just the photos. The group chat outlives the month.
What To Expect: Programming & Content
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.
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.
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.
Early Bird Pricing Ends Soon
Lock in the lowest rate before prices step up. Apply before the next increase to pay early-bird.
Jul 4
Early Hustler Discount Ends
Aug 4
Early Bird Discount Ends
Sep 4
At-The-Door Price
d/acc & Self-Sovereignty Summit
Sept 4–6 · Intensive Summit
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.
Regen & Offgrid Builders
Mesh networks. Offgrid energy. Food forests. Hardware sovereignty. Hackers who touch dirt.
Privacy & Sovereign Compute
Local-first AI. Encrypted comms. Sovereign identity stacks. Infrastructure that doesn't phone home.
Talks All Day, Dinners All Night
Community dinners with the homies, private salon dinners with the speakers, late sessions in the basement.
Why Rural Japan, Why Now
Why the the global and local conditions are perfect for building sovereign hubs in Japan right now.
DeSci, Longevity & Transhumanism Summit
Sept 11–13 · Intensive Summit
What Japan biotech policy, ZuCity daily/weekly longevity protocols, and how we plan to open our DeSci lab to researchers.
Japan Biotech & Regulation
Market overview. 薬機法 reality check. Biotech SEZ landscape. The lawyers, the doctors, the founders who've already done it.
Decentralized Labs & Trials
Gaps in the DeSci ecosystem. How to design and run decentralized experiments to publish publish papers,
Biohacking Workshops
Biomarker experiments. Longevity protocols. Nootropic stacks. Self-experimentation roundtables — bring your data, leave with a year-long protocol you understand.
DeSci × Japan Roundtable
What onchain science and DAOs can unlock here that they can't elsewhere. The boring answer is usually the right answer.
jp/acc Summit
Sept 18–20 · Intensive Summit
Pioneers and visionaries building Japan back inside the government and the open market, in Tokyo streets and satoyama. Covering the Modern Meiji Restoration, Yen stablecoins, Japan SEZ playbooks, and rural revitilization
Modern Meiji Restoration
Transforming Japan's economy for the 22nd century. Rural revitalization as opportunity, not nostalgia.
Yen Stablecoins & RWA
State of programmable JPY. Real-estate tokenization. The financial primitives Japan is getting right.
SEZ / NSSZ State of Play
What's actually possible in the special zones. Who's actually doing it. How you'd structure your venture if you wanted in.
Upgrading JP Startup Culture
Founder dinners. National entrepreneur networks. How the country can tolerate risk and innovation again.
Core Week
Sept 21–27 · Community Coordination
For ZuCity's long-term community members. Designing the future of ZuCity, neighborhood services, community manifesto, onchain and coliving protocols.
Decide The Future of ZuCity
Intensive talks discussions Zuzalu, permanent hubs, ZuCity experiment design, social protocols, and incentive mechanisms.
Paint The Walls, DJ While We Work
Murals, sets, games. Keep us grounded in the here and now while we get lost in the future.
Design ZuCity's BioLab
Hands-on contribution to permanent ZuCity infrastructure. The biolab you help spec is the biolab that's here next year. Equipment shortlists, IP ownership, universities to partner with, IRB pathways, lab and trial management - all the nitty-gritty to make this a successful lab in the future.
Komoro Is Our Office
Mountain onsens. Ramen shops. Temples. Mountain hikes. Neighborhood kissaten. Local museums. Farm tours.
Recovery Week
Sept 28 – Oct 5
A calm, focused energy week. Yoga at sunrise, all-day onsen circuits, day raves in the mountains. You'll go home different.
Yoga & Meditation
Daily sessions on the patio, Mt. Asama in the front window. The same teachers all week so you can actually drop in.
4–8 Hour Onsen & Sauna
Full-day rotenburo circuits. Contrast therapy. The deep onsens out in the mountains that locals know about.
Day Raves on the Mountain
Sunlight on the mountain. Sound system on the patio. Friends you've spent a month becoming. The recovery week earns it.
Quiet Mornings, Long Walks
The pace settles. Cook breakfast together. Walk the river. People you arrived as strangers with leave as people you'll see again next year.
Stay nearby
Available Airbnbs, hotels, hostels, and ZuCity rooms within walking distance of ZuCity popup venues
VillaHistoric Townhouse - Komoro Hokkoku Kaido
$283.87 USD /night
VenueKominka in Komachi - Momiji-an
$290.32 USD /night
RoomRoute Inn Court Komoro
$77.42 USD /night
SuiteBeautiful Renovated Open-Floor Family Home
$187.10 USD /night
VenueNOVELS Hostel & Cafe
$38.06 USD /night
SuiteVictorian Style Japanese Private Rental
$206.45 USD /night
VillaTraditional Japanese House - Aramachi
$63.23 USD /night
Roomまきはうす (Maki House)
$38.71 USD /night
The Location
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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