Merano WineFestival 2026: a Visitor’s Guide to the Kurhaus

Merano WineFestival runs from November 6 to 10, 2026, and it is not one event but four. A Friday given to organic and biodynamic growers, three days of the main festival, a closing day of Champagne, and a food and spirits hall under canvas behind the building. All of it happens inside an Art Nouveau spa house on the river Passirio. Here is how the days differ, what each ticket costs and where to sleep in town that week.

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What Merano WineFestival is

2026 is the 35th edition, which makes this one of the older wine events in Italy: the first was held in 1992. What separates it from a trade fair is that no producer buys their way in. Every wine poured has passed through The WineHunter selection, a year-round tasting program run by the festival’s founder, Helmuth Köcher, and scored on three tiers: Red Award from 90 to 92.99 points, Gold from 93 to 95.99, and Platinum at 96 and above. The 2026 edition puts the Platinum wines at the center, with an awards ceremony of their own.

The building does a good deal of the work. The Kurhaus is an Art Nouveau spa house on the Passirio promenade: the west wing opened in 1874, and the rotunda and the Kursaal, designed by the Viennese architect Friedrich Ohmann, opened on the last day of 1914. Tasting a mountain Riesling under that ceiling is not the same as tasting it in a conference hall, and it is a large part of why people come back.

Four venues in the center of Merano carry the program. The Kurhaus holds the wine tables across the Kursaal, the Pavillon des Fleurs, the Rotonda foyer and several smaller rooms. The GourmetArena, a 1,500-square-meter tented structure on the Passirio promenade immediately behind it, holds the food, beer and spirits selections. Hotel Terme Merano hosts the masterclasses, and the 296-seat Teatro Puccini hosts the symposia. Everything is within a ten-minute walk, which matters on a day when you are tasting.

Merano WineFestival 2026: dates and tickets

The five days are sold as separate events, and choosing between them is the only real decision you have to make. November 6 is TasteTerroir – bio&dynamica, a single day for growers working organically and biodynamically. November 7 to 9 is The Festival itself, the three days when the Italian and international tables are all open. November 10 closes with Catwalk Champagne & more, given to sparkling wine. The GourmetArena runs alongside from November 6 to 9.

Three things worth knowing before you buy. Prices move in tiers, and the standard tier above holds only until October 19: after that every ticket rises by €10. A First Class ticket costs €25 to €30 more than the single on the same day and is the version to take if you want the quieter rooms. And industry professionals pay far less, from €39 to €94 depending on the day, but the reduced rate requires accreditation through the festival site in advance rather than a claim at the door.

If you are staying more than a day, the multi-day passes run from €99 to €344 and cover two or three consecutive sessions. Two days is the sensible shape of a trip: one at the main festival and one at either end. All prices here were read on the official ticket page on September 27, 2026, and are quoted in euros, the currency the organizer sells in. How we check and report numbers like these is set out in Our Editorial Methodology.

What to expect at the Kurhaus

You are in a white wine region, and the tables closest to home say so. Alto Adige grows 5,860 hectares of vines between roughly 200 and 1,000 meters of altitude, 96% of it under DOC, and the split is about 65% white to 35% red. Around 4,800 growers deliver to some 260 wineries, which is why a co-operative here can behave like a serious estate. Look for Gewürztraminer, Pinot Bianco, Pinot Grigio and Sauvignon among the whites, and Schiava and Lagrein among the reds. The Consorzio Alto Adige Wines publishes the appellation detail.

The bio&dynamica day is the one to plan around if certification interests you. It gathers growers working to organic and biodynamic methods, and it is the cheapest day of the five. Before you go, it is worth knowing what those words actually guarantee, because two of the three are certified schemes and one is not: our guide to organic, biodynamic and natural wine sets out who audits what.

Three themes are new for 2026, and all three tell you something about where the trade is going: no- and low-alcohol bottlings, amphora winemaking, and wines aged underwater. The amphora tables are the ones we would spend time at, and they overlap with a style you may have met on a wine list without being told what it was, explained in our guide to orange wine.

Pace yourself on the food side. The GourmetArena carries the Culinaria food selection with live cooking, plus the Beerpassion and Aquavitae selections, and a plate there is the difference between a good afternoon and a wasted ticket.

Where to stay for Merano WineFestival

Merano is a small town that fills up for these five days, and the festival is the reason to stay in the center rather than out in the vineyards. Everything happens within a few hundred meters of the Kurhaus, so a hotel on the promenades means you walk to the tasting and walk back afterwards. That is worth more here than a view: you will not want to drive after a session, and Italy’s blood alcohol limit is 0.5 grams per liter.

Book early rather than cleverly. Five days of visitors arrive in a town with a finite number of central beds, and the hotels on the promenades are the first to go.

Check Merano hotels for festival week on Expedia →

What else to do in Alto Adige that week

Five days of tasting rooms is a lot, and the cellars of the valley are open the rest of the week. GetYourGuide lists 40 wine tasting and winery tours across Trentino and South Tyrol, and the entry price is low by the standards of Tuscany or Napa: several start around $40 per person, among them a Merano cellar tour of roughly an hour and a half with sparkling wine, wine and grappa, and winery visits at Termeno and Bolzano. Counts and prices were read on September 27, 2026.

Browse South Tyrol wine tastings on GetYourGuide →

If you would rather keep the day in town, the walks along the Passirio and the gardens of Trauttmansdorff Castle are a short distance from the Kurhaus, and there is a full catalog of things to book in Merano for the hours when the Kurhaus is closed.

Past editions

The 2025 edition is the yardstick for what 2026 will feel like. It drew 1,300 exhibiting companies and around 8,000 visitors, of whom more than 3,000 were industry professionals, with 150 selected buyers invited from 32 countries and more than 2,000 wines open for tasting. Those are the numbers the organizers published going into this year, and they explain the one piece of advice every returning visitor gives: pick a dozen tables before you walk in, because you will not get through the room.

Merano WineFestival 2027: what we know

Nothing is confirmed yet. As of September 27, 2026 the organizers have not published dates for the 2027 edition, and we will not put a date here before they do. What can be said is the shape of the calendar: the 36th edition falls in November 2027, and for 2026 the early-bird tier opened on June 15 and closed on August 10. If that pattern holds, tickets for 2027 go on sale in June, and the cheapest way in is to buy before the summer.

A festival is a shortcut into a region: five days at the Kurhaus will tell you more about Alto Adige than a week of driving between appellations, and it costs less than the flights. The trick is to treat the ticket as the beginning. Taste widely at the Kurhaus, write down the six producers whose bottles you want to see again, and build next autumn’s trip around their cellars instead of a map. If your interest is Italian wine rather than South Tyrol specifically, the other event on our calendar worth planning around is Vinitaly USA in New York, which brings a slice of the same country to a pier in Manhattan.

Related reading

Vinitaly USA 2026: A Guide to the New York Show Organic vs Biodynamic vs Natural Wine, Explained DOur Editorial Methodology