
A life-size Gundam robot statue stands outside a pavilion at the 2025 Osaka Expo in the city of Osaka on April 9, 2025.
Photographer: Richard A. Brooks /AFP via Getty Images
Do World’s Fairs Still Matter?
Like its predecessors in Paris and New York, Osaka’s World Expo is supposed to be a showcase of global progress. An expo historian explains how it stacks up.
In mid-April, the 2025 World Expo opened in Osaka, Japan. With an estimated $66 billion price tag and unique setting on an artificial island called Yumeshima, it’s the follow-up to the famous 1970 World Expo held in that city — the first such event in Asia, remembered now for its wild futuristic architecture that conveyed the sweeping ambitions of postwar Japan.
Through Oct. 13, visitors can step into the national pavilions of 158 different countries, each designed to respond to the fair’s theme — “Designing Future Society for Our Lives.” Sub-themes include “saving,” “empowering” and “connecting” lives. Like the comparatively safe architecture of its pavilions, the theme is no match for the grandiose ’70 Expo, which celebrated “Progress and Harmony for Mankind.”