Vinitaly USA closed its first New York edition on October 27, 2026, after two days at Pier 36 with 300 Italian exhibitors and about 2,500 wines. It was a trade show, open to professional buyers only, and the organizer counted more than 3,000 of them. For wine travelers the lasting result came on the first evening: Wine Spectator’s list of the 150 Italian wineries selected for OperaWine 2027, many of which you can visit.
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- Dates
- Held Monday, October 26 and Tuesday, October 27, 2026
- Venue
- Pier 36, 299 South St, New York, NY
- Access
- Trade only, by professional-buyer application; no public admission, no entry under 21
- Attendance
- More than 3,000 trade visitors from 20 US states and 40 countries
- Exhibitors
- 300 Italian exhibitors, approximately 2,500 labels
- OperaWine 2027
- 150 wineries announced in New York; the tasting is in Verona on April 10, 2027
In this article
What Vinitaly USA is
Vinitaly USA is Veronafiere’s Italian wine show in the United States, run with the Italian Trade Agency. The first two editions took place in Chicago; the third moved to Manhattan. Veronafiere describes the audience plainly: producers, consortia, importers, distributors, hospitality operators and institutional partners. The room is built for people who buy and sell Italian wine for a living.
That matters if you found this page while planning a wine weekend. The two days are commercial meetings, professional tastings, masterclasses and networking, and the only way in is a professional-buyer application to the organizer. Anyone under 21 is refused entry regardless of credentials.
The show is still worth a traveler’s attention for what it puts on display. October is when Italian wine lists, awards and new releases get their US moment, and a trade fair makes unfamiliar places visible long before anyone books a vineyard visit. The bridge between the business and the trip is Vinitaly Tourism, the program dedicated to Italian wine travel.
Vinitaly USA 2026: dates and access
The 2026 edition ran Monday, October 26 and Tuesday, October 27 at Pier 36, 299 South St, the multipurpose venue on Manhattan’s Lower East Side waterfront. The organizer’s January announcement called it the third edition and confirmed the move after two years at Chicago’s Navy Pier. New York was a first for the US show, not a return visit.
Access never changed: there was no general-admission ticket, no public day and no entry for anyone under 21. Professional buyers applied through the organizer and waited for confirmation, and Veronafiere and the Italian Trade Agency also invited and hosted a group of buyers from across the United States, Canada and Mexico.
What happened at Vinitaly USA 2026
The show opened on October 26 with 300 exhibitors, from single estates to regional groups (Friuli Venezia Giulia, Lazio, Sardinia, Umbria, Emilia-Romagna) and consortia including Asti DOCG, Brunello di Montalcino, Prosecco DOC, Vini dell’Elba, Sicilia DOC, Lugana DOC and delle Venezie DOC. DOC and DOCG are Italian origin designations; the second carries stricter production controls. In its opening-day release the organizer framed the stakes: according to the UIV-Vinitaly Observatory, about 35 million Americans already drink Italian wine, out of nearly 90 million regular wine drinkers.
Veronafiere’s closing figures, carried by Corriere del Vino, put attendance at more than 3,000 trade visitors from 20 US states and 40 countries, up 36% on the 2025 edition in Chicago. Buyers, distributors and hospitality professionals made up 60% of those accredited, close to 800 of them invited and hosted by the organizers, and the exhibitors logged more than 1,690 business meetings. Another 222 members of the media were accredited. These are the organizer’s own numbers, not an independent count.
The 13th wine2wine Vinitaly Business Forum ran alongside the show, with more than 20 sessions on market trends, education, masterclasses and wine tourism. The tourism track is the part that reaches travelers: it is where Italian estates work out how to receive American visitors.
The OperaWine 2027 list, announced in New York
At the close of the first day, Wine Spectator senior editors Alison Napjus and Bruce Sanderson unveiled the 150 wineries selected for Vinitaly OperaWine 2027. The tasting takes place on Saturday, April 10, 2027 at the Gallerie Mercatali in Verona, the day before the 59th Vinitaly opens. This year the list has three groups: 31 Legacy Icons, present at every edition, 73 Classics, and a new Led by Women category of 46 wineries where women own, make or represent the wine.
Sixteen wineries are new to the selection and 17 return after an absence. The regional split is the useful part for a trip: Tuscany leads with 48 wineries, followed by Piedmont (27), Veneto (15) and Sicily (14), with Campania and Trentino-Alto Adige at seven each. A list like this is a map of where Wine Spectator’s editors see benchmark Italian wine, not a guide to which cellars welcome visitors, so check each estate’s own hospitality before building a day around it.
Where to stay for Vinitaly USA
The 2026 show is over and the organizer has not yet said where the next US edition will be held. If it returns to Pier 36, the advice stays the same: look in the Lower East Side or elsewhere in lower Manhattan, and check the door-to-door route from the hotel, because South Street by the East River has little directly on top of it. JFK, LaGuardia and Newark are all a long ride from the venue.
For most readers the trip the show points to is in Italy. With Tuscany at the top of the OperaWine list and the Brunello di Montalcino consortium on the show floor, Montalcino is the most direct place to start: our round-up of Montalcino estates with rooms covers the wineries where you can sleep among the vines, and the town itself has hotels within a short drive of the cellars.
Find a base in Montalcino
Compare hotels in and around Montalcino for a few nights among the Brunello estates.
From Pier 36 to the Italian vineyards
Vinitaly Tourism published a US Market and Wine Tourism Report alongside the show, produced by the Italian Food and Wine Tourism Association from a survey of 750 US tourists. Forty-seven percent said they were considering a trip to Italy with at least one wine tourism experience within 24 months, and 79% saw Italy as a place that delivers authentic food and wine. Two thirds said that pairing wine with historic cities and cultural sites made the country more appealing. These are stated intentions from one surveyed group, not a forecast of who will actually travel.
Among regions, Sicily (82%), Tuscany (81%) and Piedmont (56%) ranked highest. The named destinations run wider: the Amalfi Coast (67%), the Prosecco area (60%), Chianti (59%), Etna (58%), Montalcino (56%), Cinque Terre and Montepulciano (55%), Franciacorta (54%), Langhe and Barolo (53%) and Valpolicella (52%). Read that list as a map of what Americans already have in mind, not a ranking of quality.
Tuscany is the most practical starting point, because it leads both the survey and the OperaWine selection and has the density of estates to justify a week. Our Tuscany wine country guide sets out how Chianti, Montalcino and the other areas differ, and the vineyard hotels in Tuscany round-up answers the question a tasting never does: where you actually sleep. Timing matters as much as geography, and our guide to the best time to visit Tuscany wineries covers harvest crowds and cellar-door hours.
For a first day among the vines without driving after tastings, compare Chianti wine tours from Florence. Montalcino asks for a different plan: our list of Brunello tastings in Montalcino sets out cellar-door visits you can book, so allow time for the town and the estates around it rather than treating Brunello as a detour. A trade show supplies the names; the trip still needs its own geography, reservations and pace.
Past editions
The inaugural show was held at Navy Pier in Chicago on October 20–21, 2024. Veronafiere reported 230 Italian companies and 1,650 wines available for tasting, and the edition also hosted an American preview of Gambero Rosso’s Tre Bicchieri 2025 awards, which made the fair a stage for Italian wine news as well as buyer meetings. The figures come from Veronafiere’s own account.
The second edition ran October 5–6, 2025, again at Navy Pier, with the wine2wine Business Forum alongside it. The pattern was set by then: producers came to meet the US trade, while seminars and tastings gave buyers context for the wines. The 2026 move changed the city and the scale, not the purpose.
Vinitaly USA 2027: what we know
At the close of the New York show, the organizer had not announced a city or dates for a 2027 US edition. The three previous shows were all held in October, but that is a pattern, not a calendar. What is fixed is the next stop in Verona: OperaWine on April 10, 2027, followed by the 59th Vinitaly at Veronafiere. Before that, the Vinitaly calendar moves to Asia, with roadshow dates in Hong Kong on November 13–14, Shanghai on December 4 and Bangkok on December 7, 2026.
We will update this page when the 2027 US dates are confirmed. Until then the division stays simple: qualified wine professionals can watch for the next buyer application, while everyone else can use the OperaWine list and the regions on show to build an Italy itinerary. Start with Tuscany’s wine areas, pick a base, then book the tastings around it.
