Most visitors see the Leaning Tower, take the photo and catch the next train out. On the weekend of October 16 to 18, 2026, Pisa gives you a good reason to stay a few hours longer.
The Terre di Pisa Food & Wine Festival fills Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, right outside the main train station, with more than 80 local producers of wine, olive oil, cheese, cured meats, craft beer, truffles and sweets.
This is the 14th edition, and the theme is bread and leavened dough, with a pizza workshop led by a world champion and a cecina contest to close the weekend. Entry to the square is free, and so are the tastings and masterclasses, as long as you book a seat.
Table of Contents
Terre di Pisa Food & Wine Festival 2026 at a Glance
| Details | |
|---|---|
| Dates | Friday, October 16 to Sunday, October 18, 2026 |
| Opening hours | Friday 4:00 PM to 10:00 PM Saturday 11:00 AM to 11:00 PM Sunday 11:00 AM to 9:00 PM |
| Where | Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, Pisa, a few steps from Pisa Centrale station |
| Entry | Free |
| Tastings, masterclasses, workshops | Free, with mandatory booking |
| Bookings open | Tuesday, October 6, 2026, at 3:00 PM Italian time |
| Official program | terredipisafoodwinefestival.it |
One detail on Friday: the official website and the regional tourism board list a 4:00 PM opening, while the program published by the organizing Chamber of Commerce says the stands open at 5:00 PM. The first booked event starts at 5:00 PM, so don’t plan on arriving earlier.
The festival is organized by the Chamber of Commerce of North-West Tuscany. The official website is in Italian, but the program is easy to follow: each event page shows the day, the time, the room and the number of seats.
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The Events Are Free, but You Must Book (from October 6)
Walking around the stands costs nothing. The scheduled events are also free: the organizers state that all masterclasses, workshops and talks on the program are free of charge.
The catch is the number of seats. Almost every event carries the label “iscrizione gratuita obbligatoria”, meaning free but mandatory registration, and the groups are small:
- 15 seats for each guided wine or beer tour
- 30 seats for the cheese, cured meat and olive oil workshops
- 60 seats for the wine masterclasses, the pizza workshop and the cecina contest
Registration opens on Tuesday, October 6, 2026, at 3:00 PM Italian time, which is 9:00 AM in New York. You book from each event’s page on the official program. Before that date the pages are online, but the booking button is not active yet.
If you already know which day you will be in Pisa, set a reminder. With 15 people per wine tour, the popular slots are unlikely to last long.
Wine and Beer Tours, Some of Them in English
The most useful event for an international visitor is the Guided Wine Tasting Tour curated by FISAR, the Italian sommelier federation. These tours are conducted in English.
Each one stops at three wineries’ stands, with three wines at each stop: nine tastings in total, explained by a sommelier who talks you through grape varieties, soils and styles. It is the fastest way to understand what the wines from the Pisa hills are about.
| Day | English-language wine tours (FISAR) | Booking |
|---|---|---|
| Friday, October 16 | 6:00 PM | Event page |
| Saturday, October 17 | 7:30 PM | Event page |
| Sunday, October 18 | 1:30 PM | Event page |
| Sunday, October 18 | 3:00 PM | Event page |
All tours meet at the festival’s information point. The program also lists many more wine tours run by AIS and FISAR sommeliers across the three days, but those are published in Italian, and only the four above are announced as English-language tours.
Prefer beer? The guided craft beer tours, led by professional taster Simone Cantoni, stop at three breweries with one tasting each. They run on Friday at 7:30 PM, Saturday at 5:00, 7:00 and 9:00 PM, and Sunday at 5:30 and 7:00 PM.
For a deeper dive, there are four wine masterclasses with 60 seats each, held in the Salone Borsa Merci, on the ground floor of the Chamber of Commerce building on the square (Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, 5):
- Friday at 5:00 PM: the DOC Montescudaio wines of the Val di Cecina hills
- Saturday at 4:30 PM: Terre di Pisa DOC Atelier, on elegance and aging potential
- Sunday at 11:30 AM: the DOC Terre di Pisa Bianco white wines
- Sunday at 2:30 PM: the coastal-hill wines of Riparbella
The masterclass pages are written in Italian and do not mention an English option.
Pizza with a World Champion and the Cecina Contest
On Saturday, October 17, at 1:00 PM and again at 7:30 PM, pizza maker Antonio Pio Campanella runs a hands-on session on contemporary Neapolitan pizza. He runs the L’Arciere pizzeria in Pisa’s historic center, and in January 2026 he won the Contemporary Neapolitan Pizza category at the Pizza Senza Frontiere championship, held during the Sigep trade fair in Rimini.
It is not just a demonstration. Each participant makes their own dough ball, learns about long rising and hydration, and takes the dough home at the end. While the dough rests, you get to taste his pizzas.
If you are staying in a hotel, think about what you will do with raw dough the next day. For anyone with a kitchen, it is a fun souvenir.
The festival closes on Sunday, October 18, at 5:00 PM with Cecina 2.0, a contest between Pisa pizzerias organized with the city’s Associazione Cecinai. Cecina is Pisa’s street food: a thin, golden flatbread made with chickpea flour and baked in a wide, shallow pan.
The pizzerias start from the traditional recipe and push it in new directions. A technical jury votes, and so do 60 members of the public, who taste the entries and fill in a score card. Booking one of those 60 seats is how you get to taste them.
Both events are in the Salone Borsa Merci, with 60 seats each and the same free, mandatory booking.
Cheese, Cured Meats, Olive Oil and Kids’ Workshops
Smaller workshops with 30 seats run through the weekend, pairing local products in ways you might not try at home:
- Cheese: aged and flavored cheeses, cheese with gelato, blue cheeses with sweet wines, cheese with fermented products and with extra virgin olive oil from Monte Pisano (Saturday and Sunday)
- Cured meats: with beer, with honey, with spirits, plus a session on Cinta Senese pork and one on how to recognize a good salume (all three days)
- AperiOlio: an aperitivo built around matching each dish with the right olive oil (Saturday and Sunday at 6:00 PM)
These are presented in Italian, but tasting needs little translation.
For children, there are two free baking workshops in the kids’ area, near the carousel on the square. On Saturday at 4:00 PM they make an old-fashioned snack of bread and homemade jam, and on Sunday at 4:00 PM they knead lavender-scented bread. Unlike the other events, their pages do not show a seat limit, so check them after October 6 to see if registration is needed.
The full list, with times, is in the official program, split by day.
Extra Festival: Walking Tours, Bike Rides and Weekend Packages
The “Extra Festival” is a separate set of experiences outside the square. Two things make them different from the main program: they are paid, and you book them by email at info@dmcterredipisa.it, not on the festival website.
Every option includes a reserved place in one festival activity of your choice (a tasting, workshop or masterclass, depending on what is still available when you book). In practice, it is also a way to secure a seat without racing for it on October 6.
| Experience | When | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Pisa and the Mediterranean: guided walk on Pisa as a maritime republic, ending at the festival | Saturday, October 17, 3:00 to 5:00 PM | €10 per person |
| Pisa: A Story of Flavors: food-history walk through the Lungarni, Piazza dei Miracoli and Piazza dei Cavalieri | Sunday, October 18, 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM | €10 per person |
| Bike & Nature: guided ride in the San Rossore estate, bike rental included | Sunday, October 18, 9:30 AM to 1:00 PM | €20 per person |
| Weekend of History and Flavors: one night with breakfast plus a guided walk | Festival weekend | €199 for two |
| Bike and Nature Package: one night with breakfast plus a guided ride to San Rossore | Festival weekend | €244 for two |
A few details from the fine print. On the bike ride, helmets are not included, and the package version runs on paved and gravel roads, so you need to be comfortable on a gravel or mountain bike.
The two packages include one night in a double room in a selected 3-star hotel, B&B or agriturismo, but not the city tourist tax, which you pay at the property. Places are limited on all of them.
The organizer’s pages describe the walks in Italian and do not say whether an English-speaking guide is available, so ask when you email.
How to Get There: Train, Airport and Parking
This is one of the easiest festivals in Tuscany to reach without a car. Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II is a few minutes’ walk from Pisa Centrale: you leave the station and you are practically there.
By train from Florence, regional trains run to Pisa Centrale throughout the day. Our Leaning Tower guide covers the journey and the city buses from the station to Piazza dei Miracoli, handy if you want to do both on the same day.
From Pisa airport, the PisaMover shuttle takes you to Pisa Centrale, and from there you walk to the square. Landing in Pisa but based in Florence? Here is how to get from Pisa airport to Florence.
By car, there is a car park right on the square (Parcheggio Saba Vittorio Emanuele II) and more parking around the station, between Via Quarantola and Via Cesare Battisti.
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Make a Weekend of It in Pisa
The square sits at the start of Corso Italia, the pedestrian street that leads to the river, past the shops, all the way to the Lungarni.
Two of Pisa’s best-known murals are in this part of town: Keith Haring’s Tuttomondo and the portrait of Galileo by the Brazilian artist Eduardo Kobra. Both make an easy detour between one tasting and the next.
If you decide to stay the night, our selection of hotels in Pisa includes options near the station, which is exactly where you want to be for this weekend.
With a car or a spare day, San Miniato, halfway between Pisa and Florence and also part of the Terre di Pisa, is famous for its white truffle fair later in the autumn.
For everything else happening in the region this month, check our Tuscany events calendar.
If your trip lines up with October 16 to 18, plan Piazza dei Miracoli for the morning and keep the afternoon for the festival. And set that reminder for October 6.
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