Half of the tickets still for sale: adjustments planned for the Osaka World Expo

Difficulties in selling tickets for the 2025 World Expo, which will be held in Osaka for six months, prompted Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba to announce on Tuesday the decision to allow the purchase of tickets on site for a visit on the day.

With less than 50 days to go until the opening, only 7.8 million tickets have been sold, about half the target initially set by the organizers, while nearly 160 countries or regions are due to participate in Osaka-2025 from April 13 to October 13.

At a meeting with the prime minister in February, Osaka Governor Hirofumi Yoshimura said the slow sales pace was potentially due to the "complex" process of pre-selling tickets online. Many participating countries also raised this criticism in January at a joint seminar in the region.

Organizers are hoping to take advantage of the record number of foreign tourists visiting the archipelago to attract the public to the site, where each country has developed its own pavilion on the theme "Designing the society of the future, imagining our life tomorrow."

Expo 2025, which will be held on an artificial island at the city's sea entrance, is worrying the Japanese because of its financial cost, particularly the construction budget.

Persistent inflation in the archipelago and labor shortages have pushed the total construction budget up 27% from 2020 estimates, reaching 235 billion yen ($1.5 billion).

The first "Universal Exhibition" celebrating culture and industrial progress took place in London in 1851. In 1889, the one in Paris left a legacy, including the Eiffel Tower built for the occasion.

The previous edition in Dubai, originally scheduled for 2020, was delayed by the pandemic and was held between 2021 and 2022.

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