The first Laravel Live Japan has now wrapped up, and I am still thinking about what happened in Tokyo over those two days.
On May 26-27, 2026, more than 550 artisans gathered in Tokyo for the first official Laravel conference in East Asia. Attendees came from more than 40 countries, with the crowd about 65% Japanese and 35% international.
Those numbers are exciting, but they do not fully explain why the event felt special. For me, Laravel Live Japan was never just about bringing Laravel talks to Tokyo. It was about creating a place where the Japanese PHP community and the international Laravel community could finally meet in the same room.
Why We Wanted to Host It
I attended my first Laracon in Chicago in 2018, and it changed my life.
I got to meet Taylor Otwell and many fellow artisans from around the world. I met people building the ecosystem, shipping real products, and sharing what they were learning with an openness that made me feel excited, inspired, and motivated.
After that conference, I started sharing more of what I learned on Twitter and on my blog. The next year, I had the opportunity to speak at Laracon EU in Amsterdam. It was my first conference talk, and that single opportunity gave me the courage to keep sharing, connecting, and challenging myself.
Later, I moved to Singapore to explore new opportunities, spoke at Laracon Online, and eventually joined Laravel as a Senior Software Engineer. It has been a long journey, but in many ways, it all started with attending Laracon in Chicago.
I am deeply grateful for everything the Laravel community has given me, and I wanted to bring that experience back to Japan.
Japan already has a huge and passionate PHP community. There are PHP conferences almost every month in different cities across the country. The energy is incredible, and the community is strong. At the same time, I had always felt there was an invisible wall between the Japanese PHP community and the international Laravel community.
Laravel Live Japan was our attempt to turn that wall into a bridge. We also knew there was demand from the international community for a Laravel conference in Japan.
Making the Event Inclusive
One of the biggest challenges was language.
English is not widely spoken in Japan, and many Japanese developers are not comfortable watching talks in English. At the same time, many international attendees do not speak Japanese. If we wanted the event to feel welcoming to everyone, translation could not be an afterthought.
So I built YOYO, an AI-powered live translation app for conferences and meetups.
During the conference, live English-Japanese translation was shown on the main screen in real-time for every session. Attendees could also open the app on their own devices and follow the translation in additional languages.
The first version of YOYO was built for PHPxTokyo, a meetup where about half of the attendees are international. It worked well there, so I expanded it for larger events like Laravel Live Japan.
To improve the translations, I provided YOYO with each talk's abstract and a list of technical terms for each session. That context helped it understand domain-specific language. For example, if a speaker said "Vite Plus", the app could display "Vite+" instead of translating it literally.
We also used live translation at the Ask the Speaker booth, so attendees could ask questions in either English or Japanese. This was one of my favorite parts of the event. Translation was not only helping people listen; it was helping people participate.
The web app for YOYO is built with Laravel, Inertia.js, and React, and is hosted on Laravel Cloud. It also uses Cloudflare Durable Objects to handle multiple WebSocket connections, forward the audio stream to an LLM, and broadcast translated text to the main screen and attendees' devices.
Our MC, Daniel Coulbourne, also helped connect the room. Daniel is based in the U.S., but, in his own words, he “grew up as a child in Japan and grew up as an adult in the Laravel community.”
He has spoken at many Laracons around the world and was the perfect fit for Laravel Live Japan. He served as MC mainly in English, but also spoke Japanese at different moments during the event, including when asking questions of Japanese speakers. He introduced Japanese culture and useful Japanese phrases from the stage, and brought so much joy and energy to the room.
Highlights from the Stage
Across the two days, we had 14 regular talks, 10 lightning talks, one panel session, and a keynote from Taylor Otwell. The sessions covered Laravel, PHP, frontend, mobile, AI, community, and more. For the lightning talks, each speaker had exactly five minutes, and when their time was up, we rang a gong. It added a little tension, a lot of fun, and made the sessions feel very lively.
The speaker lineup included both Japanese and international speakers, and every talk had practical insights that attendees could bring back to their own work.
I was especially happy to see the effort speakers made to reach the whole audience. Many international speakers included Japanese explanations in their slides, even though we did not ask them to, and Japanese speakers created their slides in English. That extra effort showed real care for the audience and made the sessions more approachable for everyone.
I loved every single talk, so it is hard to pick only one to highlight. But one that I will remember for a long time is "Making Music with PHP" by Marcel Pociot.
Marcel gave a live demo showing how to make music with PHP. It was fun, unexpected, and a great reminder that PHP can be used for more than typical web applications. With event loops and tools like ReactPHP, PHP can also be used to build real-time systems.
The venue is usually used for live music, so the sound system was exceptionally good. When the kick drum and bass came through the speakers, the whole room felt it. It was exactly the kind of demo that could only happen in person: a technical talk, a performance, and a little bit of chaos all at once.
Marcel ended with the message, "Build weird stuff." That stayed with me. It is a good reminder that curiosity is one of the best ways to learn and grow.
Experiences Unique to Japan
The talks were great, but some of my favorite moments happened between sessions.
Lunch Matching
We did not provide lunch at the venue, so we hosted "Lunch Matching" for solo attendees. People who wanted to join came up on stage, and we randomly formed groups of four to go out for lunch together.
This is common at Japanese developer conferences, and it worked beautifully at Laravel Live Japan. It gave people a simple reason to talk, share their experiences, and make new friends without needing to already know someone in the room.
Japanese Calligraphy on Paper Fans
We also had a booth where attendees could get Japanese calligraphy written on a paper fan. They could choose a word, and the artist would write it in Japanese and add a Laravel stamp. Some people chose words like "Artisan" (職人) or "Kaizen" (改善).
Many attendees shared photos of their fans on X. It was a small cultural touch, but it gave people something personal to take home from the event.
What We Learned
One of the goals of Laravel Live Japan was to connect the Japanese PHP community with the international Laravel community. By the end of the conference, that goal felt real.
We saw Japanese and international attendees talking, laughing, asking questions, taking photos, going to lunch, and continuing conversations online after the event. Even when people did not share the same native language, they found ways to connect.
Before the event, we worried that language and cultural differences might keep attendees apart. In practice, Laravel and PHP gave everyone a shared starting point. People came with curiosity, kindness, and a desire to connect. That was enough.
The feedback from attendees was incredibly positive. People left the conference feeling connected, inspired, and motivated. There were more than 1,000 posts about the event on X, and even after the conference ended, attendees kept communicating with each other there.
Since this was the first official Laravel conference in Japan, we learned a lot, and there are many things we can improve next time. But the biggest lesson was simple: the Laravel community is even stronger when more people can see themselves as part of it.
I hope Laravel Live Japan helped bring Japan closer to the global Laravel community. I also hope it made the global Laravel community feel a little closer to Japan. If you’re interested in attending Laravel Live Japan, fill out this form to get all the updates straight to your inbox.
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