On our first family trip to Tokyo we visited Teamlab Planets, and we loved it!

Teamlabs Planets is an interactive digital art gallery space that’s amazing for families. You wade through water that has a koi carp pond projected onto it, move through rooms full of giant bouncing balls, and walk through mirrored rooms covered in lights.

You don’t just look at the art here, you touch it and you hear it. And your actions change the art: when you touch a koi, for example, it swims away. It’s an experience unlike any other. You can read the review I wrote after our first trip here.

Teamlabs Planets isn’t the only critically acclaimed space owned by the brand in Tokyo: there is also Teamlabs Borderless, which is a space that also comes with rave reviews. So when we returned to Tokyo last month, we had every intention of visiting Teamlabs Borderless….

That was until we read about the new Athletics Forest Expansion at Teamlabs Planets.

This new expansion only opened in January 2025. And in our opinion, it has turned what was a great family attraction into an absolutely epic family attraction. Here’s why:

Athletics Forest At Teamlabs Planets

The new expansion makes Teamlabs Borderless almost twice as big as it was before! The new expansion includes the Athletics Forest and Catching and Collecting Forest areas, but it was the Athletics Forest area that was the real stand-out spot for us.

This is the part of Teamlab Planets that your kids are going to rave about: especially if they’re kids that like to be active.

You’re immersed in a physically challenging four-dimensional world where time changes with the presence of your body: the art changes as your body interacts with the space by climbing, sliding, jumping.

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All the things that kids love, but actually this is both fun and accessible to adults too. Mike and I did all the same activities that the boys did, jumping across huge colour-changing mushrooms and racing the boys on the slide. There’s so much to keep kids engaged here, with 9 new activities.

These are:

• Rapidly Rotating Bouncing Spheres in the Caterpillar House: Navigate a field of colorful, spinning spheres that stop when approached and change colour when you step on them.
  
• Multi Jumping Universe: Experience an elastic floor that sinks with each jump, creating warps in space and time, and giving birth to new stars in the projections. You can jump from planet to planet.
  
• Aerial Climbing through a Flock of Colored Birds: Balance on suspended rods of varying colors, floating in three dimensions, to move through the air and avoid falling. In my opinion, this is the most visually stunning of the attractions in the Athletics Forest.
  
• Balance Stepping Stones in the Invisible World: Step on elastic stones that change interactively, producing sounds and affecting the surrounding space, challenging balance and coordination.

• Graffiti Nature in the Beating Valley: Draw illustrations of animals and plants, which are then projected onto the walls and floor, becoming part of the dynamic light art that changes color and shape. We all sat for ages drawing and colouring animals that were projected on the walls here.
  
• Sliding through the Fruit Field: Mimic rays of sunlight to transfer energy, creating growth in a digital fruit field, and interact with the evolving environment.
  
• Waterfall Droplets, Flowing Down a Slope: Experience the gentle rhythms of glowing lamps and synchronized tones, blending art with the rituals of daily life.This is the most like a conventional gallery space, but if you let the kids sit on the slanted floor they’ll slide towards the art.
  
• Existence in the Flow Creates Vortices: Climb against a flow, leaving a trail of vortices that seem to remain steady, gradually swelling with power, offering a unique interactive experience.

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Tickets To Teamlabs Planets

The Athletics Forest is a part of Teamlabs Planets and you move seamlessly from between this part of the gallery and other parts of the gallery. That means that tickets to the Athletics Forest are included in the price of regular admission tickets to Teamlabs Planets.

We always book our tickets via Klook. We paid £22.49 per adult and £10.79 per child (this applies to childen under 12) for our tickets. There is also a reduced rate available for children aged between 12-17.

You can book these tickets here, and if you use my affiliate code THATMUMTRAVEL5KLOOK then you will get an extra 5% off the numbers quoted above.

One benefit of booking via the Klook website is that Klook has access to exclusive early morning time slots: we arrived at 9.30, making us the 2nd group to enter the building, and I would REALLY recommend getting there as early as you can. The longer we were there, the busier (and more chaotic) it got.

You can also buy your tickets directly from the TeamLabs website.

Top Tips For Visiting The Athletics Forest

There are some tips for visiting the Athletics Forest area in Teamlabs Planets that I think will make your trip so much easier:

• Wear comfy clothes that are easy to move in! Shorts and t shirts would be a good choice (shorts for the water exhibits) and anything you can climb and jump in.
• Easy on and off shoes will make things so much easier too! Some exhibits need shoes on, some need shoes off, so make this as easy for yourself as you can.

• Consider bringing a change of clothes. We didn’t for our first trip to TeamLabs and our youngest decided to go swimming in the water room! He was soaking wet through!
• Arrive early. This is one of the most popular attractions in Tokyo and it’s always busy. The best way to beat the crowds is to arrive in the first slot of the day.

• Take things slow. Let your kids explore at their own pace: some rooms they’ll want to rush through and some they’ll want to spend ages in. Both are OK!
• Don’t skip the drawing station! Even if your kids want to run and not sit down, seeing their works of art appear on the huge screen is so cool!

Have you visited TeamLabs Planets? Or is this the kind of exhibit you’d like to try? I know some people avoid the big tourist attractions, but I think this is a big tourist attraction for good reason, and shouldn’t be missed! I’d love to know what you think too!

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