How to win the Nintendo Museum lottery (and what to do if you don't)

The short version: there's no way to just "buy" a ticket — every visit is allocated by a free lottery, roughly 3 months ahead of your visit month, through a free Nintendo Account.

Applying

• Create a free Nintendo Account and verify a mobile number — required to even enter the lottery.
• Applications open a few months ahead of your visit month. You can select up to 3 preferred date/time combinations across different weeks in one application — use all 3, it materially improves your odds.
• The drawing happens on the 1st of the month before your visit month (a September visit is drawn around August 1). Results arrive by email and are also viewable on the ticketing site.

If you win

• You must pay by 23:59 JST on the 7th of that same month — miss this and your slot is forfeited automatically, no grace period documented anywhere.
• Accepted cards: Visa, Mastercard, JCB, with 3D Secure enabled — turn on 3D Secure before the drawing so you're not scrambling on the 7th.

If you don't win — the second chance

• Tickets that winners never claimed or paid for have historically reappeared in the booking system around the second Wednesday of that month — about two weeks after results. This is a pattern we've observed, not an official guarantee, and Nintendo doesn't publish a fixed re-release schedule.
• Reasons this happens: winners' plans change, groups that entered separately both win and only need one slot, or people simply forget to pay by the 7th.
• If this matters to your trip, keep checking the ticketing site's calendar around that date rather than assuming it repeats exactly.

Sources

Nintendo Museum official ticketing site and visit-flow guide, community reporting on the second-Wednesday pattern. Verified 2026-07-04.