Osaka, Japan, July 18, 2025 (Lusa) - The Commissioner General of Portugal at Expo 2025 in Osaka told Lusa on Friday that on Thursday the Portuguese Pavilion reached one million visitors, representing 10% of the exhibition’s total audience.
Visitor numbers are “well above our expectations, we are very happy,” said Joana Gomes Cardoso.
Last Sunday, 13 July, “it was three months since the Expo began, which means we are halfway through, and yesterday [17 July] we reached one million visitors,” said the Commissioner-General.
“Our overall expectation for the six months was 1.2 million, so we are very pleased” that after three months of Expo 2025 “we have already reached this milestone, which is symbolic and also very important, of one million” visitors.
These figures, she continued, “represent about 10% of the Expo’s global audience, so one in ten visitors to the Expo visits the Portugal Pavilion”.
In addition, “we are also very happy that this is happening at this point, when word of mouth is already working and we know that some pavilions are even seeing a decline,” she said.
“In our case, we are very happy because we have seen growth,” Joana Gomes Cardoso emphasised.
Last week, “we reached 15,000 visitors in a single day for the first time, so we have been hovering around 11,000 to 12,000, having already reached 15,000,” added the Portuguese Commissioner General at Expo Osaka.
This “shows that there is already a very organic, spontaneous, word-of-mouth interest that helps explain these figures,” she explained.
When someone asked about the type of audience visiting the exhibition, Joana Gomes Cardoso pointed out that “it continues to be mainly Japanese, but it is also very international and, at least every day, a Portuguese visitor turns up.”
For example, at Easter, “they even came in organised groups and sometimes even contacted us in advance to have a guided tour”.
At the moment, “it’s a more spontaneous audience, they are generally tourists visiting Japan who come here and prefer to arrive without prior announcement,” “So sometimes people notice them right away, and at other times they proudly point out that they are Portuguese, or one of us from the Portuguese team notices a fellow Portuguese person, so we strike up a conversation and always try to find out what impression the Portuguese visitors have of us,” she said.
In summary, “although mostly Japanese, it is an international audience and also with more Portuguese than we expected”.
As for exceeding the visitor target, she says she is hopeful that this will happen.
“Of course, the numbers are very important, and on the day we reached one million, it was a child, a boy of about 10 years old, so we had a ceremony with confetti and gave him a T-shirt from Cristiano Ronaldo’s national football team.
“We also try to mark these moments that are symbolic,” because they are part of the Expo rituals.
The Commissioner-General pointed out that the Portugal Pavilion has also welcomed many universities.
“We are very happy about this. We have had the Catholic University of Coimbra, we currently have Aveiro University, and we will have the New University. I believe that this will also be an opportunity to attract Japanese students to Portugal in the future,” she said.
Meanwhile, Monday, 21 July, is a public holiday in Japan and is Sea Day.
“As the sea is our theme, we will have a special programme with the Oceano Azul Foundation, which will organise a seminar, and then in the evening, Turismo Portugal by Júlio Resende will present a concert inside our pavilion, with piano,” she concluded.
Portugal’s theme at Expo Osaka is “Ocean: Blue Dialogue.”
Expo 2025 kicked off on 13 April 2024 and runs until 13 October 2024 on the artificial island of Yumeshima, located on the coast of Osaka, Kansai, Japan.
ALU/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
