What Remains of the Grand Ring After Expo 2025 Osaka
Sou Fujimoto's two-kilometre timber ring was the image of Expo 2025. About 200 metres will stay on Yumeshima; part of the rest goes to towns rebuilding after earthquakes.
The Grand Ring, the timber structure by architect Sou Fujimoto that encircled Expo 2025 in Osaka, is being dismantled. By February 2026 its future was largely settled: about 200 metres of the roughly two-kilometre loop will remain on the Expo site on Yumeshima island, and part of the remaining timber has been allocated to projects elsewhere in Japan.
The structure
The Expo ran from 13 April to 13 October 2025, and the ring was its defining image. It measured 615 metres across on the inside and 675 metres on the outside, was 30 metres wide and stood 12 metres high, rising to 20 metres on its outer edge. Its roof, which covered about 60,000 square metres, served as an elevated walkway with views of the pavilions on one side and Osaka Bay on the other. Before the opening it was certified as the largest wooden architectural structure in the world.
It was built from Japanese cedar and cypress, with imported pine, using a modern version of nuki joinery, the technique used in temples such as Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto, in which horizontal beams pass through slots in vertical posts. One argument for this method was that the structure could be taken apart and the timber used again.
Where the timber goes
The Expo association held an auction for the wood from 17 October to 6 November 2025. The announced recipients include the town of Namie in Fukushima Prefecture, which is still rebuilding after the 2011 earthquake and nuclear accident; the city of Suzu in Ishikawa Prefecture, badly damaged by the Noto Peninsula earthquake of January 2024; and Kansai University, which will use timber in a new student building in Osaka.
Not all of it will find a second use. Fujimoto has said that the material left unclaimed would most likely become firewood, a frank comment that drew attention in Japan to the gap between the project’s promise and the practical limits of reuse. For the Expo as a whole, 26 of the 84 pavilions are being reused in some form, more than the organisers had planned.
For visitors
Yumeshima is being redeveloped, and the preserved section of the ring is planned as part of a future park. Until that opens there is little to see on the island. Osaka’s recent hotel openings, including the Waldorf Astoria Osaka and the Four Seasons Hotel Osaka, were timed for the Expo and remain its most durable legacy for travellers.