The Hospices de Beaune Wine Auction: A Visitor’s Guide

The Hospices de Beaune wine auction is the oldest charity wine sale in the world, and the one date every Burgundy lover circles in November. On Sunday, November 15, 2026, the 166th sale fills the covered market hall of Beaune with bidders, barrels sold by the cask and a town that turns the whole weekend into a festival. Here is how the auction works, how a private buyer can take part from the US, and how to plan the three days around it.

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What the Hospices de Beaune wine auction is

The Hospices de Beaune is a hospital, founded in 1443 by Nicolas Rolin, chancellor to the Duke of Burgundy, and housed for centuries in the Hôtel-Dieu with its glazed tile roof. Over five hundred years, benefactors left it vineyards. Today the estate covers about 60 hectares across the Côte de Beaune and the Côte de Nuits, from village wines to Grands Crus such as Clos de Vougeot, Corton-Charlemagne and Bâtard-Montrachet.

Every year the Hospices sell the new vintage at auction, and the money goes back into the hospital. The first sale took place in 1859, which is why 2026 is the 166th. Since 1945 one barrel, now called the Pièce des Présidents, has been sold for charities chosen each year. For the 2026 edition the Hospices have dedicated it to research and care for patients with rare diseases.

What makes the sale matter beyond Beaune is that it is the first public price signal for a new Burgundy vintage. Growers, merchants and collectors watch the hammer prices to read how the market feels about the wines, months before anyone else releases them. The official Hospices de Beaune estate site lists the cuvées and the buying rules.

Hospices de Beaune 2026: dates and the weekend schedule

The sale itself is a single afternoon, but Beaune treats the whole weekend as one event. These are the fixed points we could confirm with the organizers:

Being physically under the Halles on Sunday is the hard part. Seats are limited, and access is by advance request to Sotheby’s, which runs the auction. Most visitors follow the sale from the streets outside, where the atmosphere is the point: Beaune’s tourist office publishes the weekend program and the cellar tastings as they are confirmed.

How the sale works

Everything is sold en primeur, as young wine still in barrel. The unit is the pièce, the Burgundian barrel of 228 liters, which ends up as 288 bottles or 24 cases of twelve. Each cuvée is offered in a series of barrels, and the winning bidder can usually take more than one at the same price.

The Hospices do not age the wine for you. After the sale, every buyer must hand the barrel to a Burgundy négociant-éleveur, a merchant who raises and bottles wine, for 12 to 24 months of élevage. Only then is it bottled, and buyers can have their own name printed on the label. The estate publishes a list of négociants who take on this work.

Sotheby’s has run the auction since 2021. The 2025 sale was its fifth in a row and, at €18.75 million before fees, the third-best result in the history of the Hospices. More than 370 bidders registered, in the room and online.

How to bid from the US

Private buyers can take part, and they do not need to be in France. The estate lists four ways to bid: a written order left in advance, in person in the hall, by telephone with a Sotheby’s representative, or online through a Sotheby’s account. All four start the same way, with registration before the sale through Sotheby’s at hospicesdebeaune@sothebys.com. The 166th sale’s catalogue page on Sotheby’s is where the lots appear.

Be realistic about the budget. A whole barrel averaged €33,930 in 2025 before the buyer’s fees, and that figure is only the start: élevage, bottling, transport and import into the US come on top. The pages we read do not publish the buyer’s premium, so ask Sotheby’s for the full cost before you register. If 288 bottles is more than you need, ask the négociant you choose whether the wine can be split among several buyers, or simply wait: Hospices wines reach the market later, bottled by the négociants who bought them.

The weekend around it

If you are not bidding, the sale weekend is still the liveliest time to be in Burgundy. On Friday and Saturday the Fête des Grands Vins de Bourgogne pours every Burgundy appellation under one roof at the Palais des Congrès, a short walk from the Halles. It is the easiest way to taste across the Côte before the barrels go under the hammer.

Saturday afternoon belongs to the runners. The Semi-Marathon de la Vente des Vins starts at 2:00 p.m., with 5,000 bibs, music and tasting points in Meursault, Volnay and near the finish. Expect closed roads through the vineyards that afternoon, and plan any drive along the Côte for the morning.

Through the weekend, a festive village on Place Carnot hosts food stands and free concerts, and a fairground sets up in town. The Cité des Climats et Vins de Bourgogne in Beaune sells a two-day experience ticket at €29.50 per adult, with a tasting of three wines included: a calm hour away from the crowds.

Where to stay for the Hospices de Beaune wine auction

Beaune is a small town, and this is its busiest weekend of the year. Rooms in the old center go first. If you want to walk from your hotel to the Halles on Sunday, book now and stay at least two nights, Saturday and Sunday: the sale ends late in the afternoon, and leaving the same evening means driving or catching a train in the dark.

Outside the ramparts, the villages of the Côte de Beaune put you ten to fifteen minutes away by car, with the added benefit of waking up among the vineyards. On a weekend of tastings, though, a hotel within walking distance of the center saves you the question of who drives.

Check Beaune hotels for the auction weekend on Expedia →

What else to do in Burgundy that weekend

Sunday morning, before the sale, is the best window for the vineyards: the Fête is over, the Halles do not open to bidders until the afternoon, and the Côte is quiet. GetYourGuide lists several dozen wine tastings and winery tours around Beaune, from a 90-minute visit of a négociant’s cellars at about $35 to full-day tours of the Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beaune, at around $331 per person when we checked in October 2026.

Browse Beaune wine tastings on GetYourGuide →

If you are staying in Dijon, the wine tours that leave from Dijon cover the Côte de Nuits, from Gevrey-Chambertin to Vosne-Romanée, and are an easy way to see the Grand Cru villages without a car. For another autumn wine festival with a very different feel, see our guide to the Merano WineFestival.

Past editions

The 165th sale, in November 2025, offered 552 lots: 428 barrels of red, 111 of white plus two half barrels, 11 barrels of eaux-de-vie and the charity barrel. Clos de Vougeot appeared for the first time, as the Cuvée François Faiveley. The average barrel rose 4.6% on 2024, to €33,930.

The headline lots were white. Two barrels of Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru, Cuvée Dames de Flandres, sold for €400,000 each, a record for the cuvée. The Pièce des Présidents, a Pommard Premier Cru Les Rugiens, also reached €400,000, a record for a Premier Cru charity barrel, for a children’s disability association in the Côte-d’Or and a pediatric brain research institute in Paris.

Hospices de Beaune wine auction 2027: what we know

By tradition the sale is held on the third Sunday of November, which in 2027 would fall on November 21. The Hospices have not confirmed the date yet, so treat it as provisional until the estate announces the 167th sale. If you are planning a first trip, the safest plan is to come in 2026 as a spectator, taste at the Fête, watch the sale from the street, and decide afterwards whether a barrel of your own is worth the paperwork.

We will update this page after November 15 with the 2026 results: the total, the charity barrel and the cuvées that set the pace. For a way to visit wine cellars privately rather than in a crowd, our guide to private cellar tours in Bordeaux covers the other great French region.

Related reading

Fête des Grands Vins de Bourgogne 2026: How to Attend Merano WineFestival 2026: A Visitor’s Guide to the Kurhaus Private Cellar Tours in Bordeaux: 8 Trips You Can Book