ROCKET PITCH NIGHT TOKYO: Bloom 2026 (TG #380)

ROCKET PITCH NIGHT TOKYO: Bloom 2026 is Venture Café Tokyo's flagship startup pitch event, held as a SusHi Tech Tokyo partner event at Toranomon Hills Forum. Unlike last year's 'ULTIMATE' edition, this edition is intentionally smaller in scale — 40 pitching teams and roughly 800 participants — designed to foster deeper, more meaningful face-to-face connections among founders, investors, and ecosystem supporters. The event will be held onsite only with no online streaming, in keeping with the mission 'Connecting Innovators to Make Things Happen.' Each founder gets a 3-minute pitch slot, followed by feedback from a lineup of distinguished commentators drawn from Japanese and international VCs and accelerators (KPMG AZSA, Kepple Group, Techstars, Phenomena Ventures, Incubate Fund, Globis Capital Partners, MIXI, Ant Innovations, AgVenture Lab, Start2 Group, Prometheus, and more). Pitches span four thematic tracks — social/education/agri-food, enterprise/productivity/security, IT & AI/IoT/AR-VR, and climate/medical/manufacturing/space — plus a dedicated U-18 category featuring teenage founders. Co-organized by Venture Café Tokyo, CIC, and Mori Building, the gathering combines rapid-fire pitching, commentator feedback, and extensive networking across Japan's startup ecosystem. Doors open at 1:30pm JST and the program runs until 8:30pm JST on Thursday, April 23, 2026. Content is delivered bilingually in Japanese and English.