Do world fairs still matter?

IN MID-APRIL, the 2025 World Expo opened in Osaka, Japan. With an estimated US$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.

Till 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 1970 event, which celebrated “Progress and Harmony for Mankind”.

The starry history of these international spectacles, which trace their roots back to 1851, haunts their modern analogues, says Charles Pappas, a World Expo historian and consultant. The World Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago and the world’s fairs that came to New York City in 1939 and 1964 still linger in the collective imagination; few outside of eastern Tennessee are likely to recall Knoxville’s World’s Fair of 1982, and many more recent expos have been held in emerging-market cities like Astana, Kazakhstan. “When I talk to an American about an expo,” he says, “the response I usually get is, ‘My grandmother went to one!’ or ‘They still have those?’”