Merano WineFestival 2026: The Highlights From Merano

Merano WineFestival 2026 ran from November 6 to 10 in the Art Nouveau Kurhaus on the river Passirio, and its 35th edition will be remembered for a first: four wines given a perfect 100 points by The WineHunter selection. Around it came a day for organic and biodynamic growers, three days of the main festival opened with 35 bottles sabered on a bridge, and a closing day of Champagne. Here is what the 2026 festival offered, what it cost and what to plan for next year.

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What Merano WineFestival is

2026 was 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 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 and the awards. Everything is within a ten-minute walk, which matters on a day when you are tasting.

What happened at Merano WineFestival 2026

The news of the year came before the doors opened. In October, at the presentation of the 35th edition in Rome, The WineHunter gave its first-ever perfect scores to four wines: Ferrari’s Perlé Trento DOC 2002, Cantina Terlano’s Alto Adige Terlano Rarity 2013, Attilio Contini’s Vernaccia di Oristano Riserva 1998 and Avignonesi’s Vin Santo di Montepulciano Occhio di Pernice 2012. One of the four comes from a co-operative a short drive down the valley from Merano, which says a good deal about what Alto Adige can do with white wine and time.

The festival opened on Friday, November 6, with TasteTerroir – bio&dynamica, given this year to organic, biodynamic and natural producers, PIWI disease-resistant grape varieties, amphora wines and no- and low-alcohol bottlings, alongside a scientific summit on climate and the vineyard at Teatro Puccini. That evening, in the same theater, Köcher handed out 101 WineHunter Award Platinum to the wines, foods and spirits that scored above 96 points, including five from outside Italy: a South African wine from Capelands, two grand cru Blanc de Blancs Champagnes and two Georgian wines, one of them an orange wine. The full list is published on The WineHunter’s site.

The same ceremony gave nine Honour Awards, among them Donnafugata, Marco Caprai and the Nonino distillery, and named eight Cult Oenologists, opening with a tribute to Franco Bernabei, who died in July. On Saturday, November 7, The Festival began with the anniversary toast: 35 bottles opened with a saber on the Ponte Lenoir, one for each edition, before the Italian and international rooms of the Kurhaus opened for three days.

The closing day on Tuesday, November 10, Catwalk Champagne & more, put Champagne and Italian traditional-method sparkling wine on the tables, with gourmet pairings. The organizers had not published attendance figures for 2026 when this page was updated; the 2025 numbers are under Past editions below.

Merano WineFestival 2026: dates and tickets

The five days were sold as separate events, and the same structure is the one to expect next year. November 6 was TasteTerroir – bio&dynamica, the single day for growers working organically and biodynamically. November 7 to 9 was The Festival itself, the three days when the Italian and international tables were all open. November 10 closed with Catwalk Champagne & more, given to sparkling wine. The GourmetArena ran alongside from November 6 to 9.

Three things to carry into next year’s planning. Prices moved in tiers, and the standard tier above held only until October 19: after that every ticket rose by €10. A First Class ticket, with priority entry, glass and cloakroom included, cost €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 paid far less, from €39 to €94 depending on the day, but the reduced rate required accreditation through the festival site in advance rather than a claim at the door.

If you are staying more than a day, two- and three-day passes cover consecutive sessions, and two days is the sensible shape of a trip: one at the main festival and one at either end. Prices are quoted in euros, the currency the organizer sells in, from the official ticket page. How we check and report numbers like these is set out in Our Editorial Methodology.

What poured 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, as the Terlano score shows. 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, and it was 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 were 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 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, and it is no accident that one of the foreign Platinum wines was a Georgian orange. The Sala Sissi held another curiosity: 84 wines from 14 countries that had won a Grand Gold Medal at the Mondial des Vins Extrêmes, the competition for steep-slope and mountain vineyards.

Pace yourself on the food side. The GourmetArena gathered about 100 selected producers of cheese, charcuterie, chocolate, spirits and beer, with live cooking that leaned on Campania this year, 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. The 2027 dates are not out yet, but the festival has kept to early November, so it is worth watching for them before the summer.

Check Merano hotels 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 dozens of wine tastings and winery tours across Trentino and South Tyrol, and the entry price is low by the standards of Tuscany or Napa: several start from 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.

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

2025. The 34th edition 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 numbers 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.

2026. Five days, November 6 to 10, with more than 700 exhibitors of wine and food announced by the organizers. It was the edition of the first 100-point WineHunter scores, of the 35 sabers on the Ponte Lenoir, and of the first dedicated tables for no- and low-alcohol, amphora and underwater-aged wines.

Merano WineFestival 2027: what we know

Nothing is confirmed yet. 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 should fall 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. We will update this page when the dates are announced.

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.

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