Tasikmalaya readies national bonsai show, 800 trees expected at Plaza Asia

Tasikmalaya’s Plaza Asia is turning its parking area beside Teejay Waterpark into a 10-day national bonsai stage, with organizers targeting as many as 800 trees for the 2026 Kontes dan Pameran Bonsai Nasional. The show, run by Persatuan Pecinta Bonsai Indonesia Cabang Kota Tasikmalaya, is built as a competition first and an exhibition second, with judging, awards and tree pickup spread across the full run from April 19 to April 28.

Intake and registration are scheduled for April 20-21, followed by display setup on April 21. Judging and flag-related formalities run April 22-24, before the public opening and awards announcement on April 25. The closing and tree pickup are set for April 28. Plaza Asia has promoted the theme as “Change Of Seasons,” a fitting label for a display that moves from staging to judging to public viewing over more than a week.

The scale is what makes this Tasikmalaya edition stand out. Trees are expected from across Indonesia, including Samarinda, Bali and Lampung, giving the show a national footprint rather than a local club feel. The committee said local PPBI membership is approaching 400 people, and the contest will be divided into Pratama, Madya and Utama categories, with Bintang left out this year. For serious growers, that structure matters: the show is being framed not only as a competition but also as a correction-and-learning forum where entries can be compared, assessed and refined.

For casual visitors, the biggest draw will be the sheer volume. The 800-tree target would exceed Tasikmalaya’s 2022 edition, which had about 650 bonsai, and it would also top the roughly 600 trees shown at Banyuwangi’s 2022 national exhibition, where the collection was estimated at Rp25 billion. In a hobby where presentation, condition and detail reward close looking, that kind of massed display turns a mall parking lot into a temporary national gallery.

PPBI says it regularly stages exhibitions across its branches throughout Indonesia and treats bonsai as part of cultural preservation. In Tasikmalaya, that mission is arriving in a format that is easy to find, easy to enter and hard to ignore: a national show at Plaza Asia with one of the largest tree counts in the Indonesian bonsai scene this year.