Japan: Government Confirms Preferred Route for Hokuriku Shinkansen Extension to Osaka

Japan's ruling coalition -- the Liberal Democratic Party and the Japan Innovation Party -- decided on 15 July 2026 on the detailed route for extending the Hokuriku Shinkansen through Kyoto, Railway Gazette International and the Japan Times reported.

The 139 km extension will run from Tsuruga, in Fukui Prefecture, through eastern Kyoto Prefecture to a new station to be built near Katsuragawa, about 5 km west of the existing Kyoto Station, before continuing south to terminate at Shin-Osaka. The Kyoto-area station will be built roughly 50 metres underground, a design intended to avoid disrupting road traffic on the JR Kyoto Line running above.

The decision settles years of debate over the broader Obama-Kyoto corridor, the alignment chosen in preference to routes via Maibara or Lake Biwa. Shiga Prefecture, which the alternative routes would have crossed, had opposed being included on those routes, citing a construction-cost burden it said was disproportionate to local benefit, and the risk that existing JR lines in the prefecture could be spun off as unsubsidised "parallel conventional lines" once the Shinkansen opened.

The Hokuriku Shinkansen currently ends at Tsuruga, reached from Tokyo via Kanazawa -- itself linked to Tokyo since March 2015 -- with a further 125 km extension to Tsuruga. Japan Times reported that completing the Tsuruga-Osaka extension is expected to take around 26 years.