Origami Samurai Helmet Template — Free Kabuto Crease Pattern

The samurai helmet template, flat and folded

Samurai helmet template — free printable dieline with cut and fold lines, any size — The printable dieline at its standard size. Type your own size above for yours.

Samurai helmet folded up from the template — the finished piece — The finished samurai helmet, made from it.

What this template is for

The origami samurai helmet (kabuto) folded for Children's Day: a square printed with every crease, numbered in the order you fold. A small one sits on a desk; a square from a newspaper sheet is big enough to wear.

Also called origami samurai helmet · kabuto · origami helmet · paper samurai hat — all the same shape, and this is it.

Children’s Day (Kodomo no Hi) on 5 May
Kids’ origami lessons
Japanese culture days
Party hats for kids

How to use this template

All four downloads are the same samurai helmet at the same size — only the format changes.

Which file goes where: PDF, PNG, SVG or DXF

PDF printing at home: Print at 100 per cent, or hand it to a print shop as "actual size, no scaling".
PNG 300 dpi Canva, Photoshop, Procreate: Upload, lock it in place and design your samurai helmet on top. Free plan and phone included. Full Canva walkthrough →
SVG Cricut, Illustrator, Inkscape, Affinity: Vector, with cuts, folds and labels on separate layers. Cricut and Silhouette walkthrough →
DXF Silhouette, laser and vinyl cutters: Two layers, CUT and FOLD — and the one free Silhouette Studio Basic will open.

Getting it printed properly → · Putting your own design on it →

Printing it

Type your size above, then download the PDF.
Print at 100% — never “fit to page”, or every measurement comes out wrong.
Too big for the paper? Pick your paper size and leave Fit the pieces to the page ticked: each piece gets its own place on a sheet and the PDF comes out with every page in it, nothing cut in half and nothing to tape.

How to put it together

These pictures are the samurai helmet itself, not a generic diagram — change the measurements above and the template changes, but the steps never do. The names in capitals are the labels printed on the template.

Cut out the sheet
Cut on the solid outline only. Thin paper — printer or origami paper — folds crisper than card.
Crease the numbered lines
The dashed lines are folds, numbered in the order you make them. Thin paper needs no scoring: fold, then run a fingernail along the crease.
Step by step
1. Cut out the square and lay it printed side down. Fold the lines in the order of their numbers.
2. 1: fold it in half on the diagonal. 2: fold the two ends of the long edge down to the point.
3. 3: fold those two points up to the top. 4: fold each tip out and up along its line, as a horn.
4. 5 and 6: fold the front bottom point up, then up again, for the brim. 7: tuck the back point up inside.
5. Open the HELMET from the bottom.

No glue: it holds by its folds. If a fold will not stay, crease it again harder.

Questions about the samurai helmet

How big a square to wear it?

The helmet is about 0.7 of the square’s side across the brim. A child’s head needs a square of about 400 to 450 mm, cut from a sheet of newspaper or wrapping paper; print the pattern at that size on A3 sheets taped together, or copy the folds onto the big square by eye.

What do the numbers mean?

Each crease carries the number of the step that makes it: 1 the diagonal, 2 the corners down to the point, 3 those flaps up, 4 the horns, 5 and 6 the brim, 7 the back flap tucked inside. Fold them in that order.

Are the creases right?

They are worked out by folding: the square is folded step by step in the computer and each crease is printed where a fold lands. Check-origami folds it again with different arithmetic and confirms every crease is real, none is missing and the pattern folds flat.