Wine Festivals in Tbilisi: The New Wine Festival and More

Tbilisi is known for its wine, and a few times a year the winemakers bring it to the city and pour it in public. The big one is the New Wine Festival on Mtatsminda in May, with natural wine fairs, a sparkling wine day and the harvest stalls of Tbilisoba around it. Here's what you need to know about each festival, the 2026 dates, tickets, getting there and tasting well.

Tbilisi wine festivals in 2026: the calendar

Most of the action falls in two windows: the first nine days of May, when last year's qvevri wine is ready, and the harvest weeks of late September and October. Here is every wine festival in and around the city, with the 2026 dates.

The 2027 dates are announced on each festival's Facebook page, usually a few weeks to a month ahead. If the New Wine Festival keeps to its second Saturday of May, it lands on 8 May in 2027.

The New Wine Festival at Mtatsminda Park

If you only make one wine festival in Tbilisi, make it this one. Every spring, winemakers open the qvevri they sealed after the autumn harvest and bring the first of the new wine up to Mtatsminda Park, the hilltop park above the city. Entry is free, the pours are free, and you can walk from a big Kakheti estate to a family cellar from Racha in the space of ten tables.

The Wine Club, a Tbilisi wine society, has run the festival since 2010, and the 2019 edition was its tenth. It takes over the park for a Saturday in May, usually the second one, and the crowd is a mix of local families, wine people, restaurant owners and visitors who planned their trip around it.

What happens at the festival

The day opens with a ceremony: qvevri of new wine are opened in front of the crowd, and singers start with Mravalzhamieri, the old feast song, in Georgian polyphonic singing. After that the tables open, and the rest of the afternoon is yours.

Producers come from every wine region: Kakheti, Kartli, Imereti, Racha, Lechkhumi, Samegrelo, Guria, Adjara and Javakheti. More than 100 producers take part, from large wineries to families who sell a few hundred bottles a year. Most pour wine made the old way in clay qvevri buried in the ground, with classic European-style bottlings alongside, and a few bring experimental batches you won't find in any shop.

Food is part of it. Many wineries put out cheese, nuts, bread and fruit at their tables, and the stalls grill mtsvadi, Georgian shashlik, all afternoon. There's a craft market for souvenirs and a stage with folk bands and pop singers. The view over the city from the edge of the park is the same one you'd ride up for on any other day, except now you have a glass in your hand.

Getting up to Mtatsminda

The classic way up is the funicular from Daniel Chonkadze Street, a few steep blocks above Rustaveli Avenue. It costs about 10 to 12 GEL one way, paid on a 2 GEL Mtatsminda Park card bought at the lower station, since Metromoney and cash don't work at its gate. The cable car from Rustaveli Avenue, behind the Academy of Sciences, is the other quick route and one of several cable cars in Tbilisi. Bus 124 from Rustaveli metro is the budget option at 1 GEL.

How the tasting works

Once you're in, you taste for free. There are no tokens and no per-glass charges at most tables: you hold out a glass and the winemaker pours. Branded festival glasses sell for 10 to 15 GEL near the funicular building and the fountain square, and they're the only real cost of the day. You can also bring your own glass, which plenty of locals do. Without one, you'll get plastic or paper cups.

Pours are generous and spittoons are rare at an outdoor festival like this one, so sip, tip out what you don't want and skip tables freely. I'd pick a theme for the first hour, say amber wines from Kakheti or the reds of Racha, and go table to table with it before wandering.

Natural wine festivals in early May

Natural wine has its own festivals in Tbilisi, and they cluster in the first days of May, a week before the New Wine Festival. These are smaller, indoor and ticketed, and they're where you'll meet the winemakers making the most talked-about bottles in the country.

Zero Compromise

Zero Compromise is the Natural Wine Association's festival, two days of additive-free, low-intervention wine, most of it organic or biodynamic and much of it made in qvevri. In 2026 it ran on 1 and 2 May at Radio City, a multipurpose venue at 3 Bairamashvili Street in Gldani. Tickets were 30 GEL for one day or 50 GEL for both, sold through TKT.ge.

The crowd is half trade, half drinkers: buyers, sommeliers and importers share the room with curious visitors. Guest producers fly in from Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Slovenia and Taiwan, so you can taste a Georgian amber next to a Slovenian one and judge for yourself. Spittoons are on the tables here, which makes it the best event for tasting a lot without losing the afternoon. If amber wine is new to you, the Georgian skin-contact amber wines are the place to start.

Saamuri Wine Salon

The Saamuri Wine Salon is the natural wine party of early May, run by Saamuri, a natural wine bar and shop in the Old Town. In 2026 it took place on 3 May in a conference room at Fabrika, the converted Soviet sewing factory in Chugureti, with tickets on Biletebi.ge.

About 30 to 40 Georgian wineries pour, joined by guests from Austria, Turkey, Italy, Greece, France and Spain. The wines lean bold and experimental, and the room is intimate enough to talk to every maker, though it can feel packed by mid-afternoon.

If you like what you taste, the Saamuri bar itself keeps many of the same producers by the glass the rest of the year.

Wine Ambassadors and WinExpo Georgia

These two are the structured tastings: ticketed, indoors and built for people who want to compare wines rather than spend an afternoon in a park.

Wine Ambassadors is the one I'd pick of the two. Only small wineries that pass a professional tasting get a table, around 70 to 80 of them, so the overall standard is high and the wines are serious and well made. In 2026 it ran on 3 May in a central hotel, the Wyndham Grand near Freedom Square, with tickets on TKT.ge. Winemakers stand behind their own tables, the tables are well spaced, and there's a food court and a top-floor terrace for breaks. The room gets stuffy in the afternoon, so go early.

WinExpo Georgia is the trade fair, open to the public, with 140 or more producers across several pavilions at the ExpoGeorgia exhibition center. It ran on 5 and 6 June in 2026, with tickets on TKT.ge. The big wineries sit in Pavilion 11 and the smaller producers in the side halls and outdoor areas. It also runs an international wine competition and a program of seminars. I'd only go if you missed the May festivals or want the big names in one place, since many smaller producers will already be familiar from spring.

The Sparkling Wine Festival in June

The Wine Club, the people behind the New Wine Festival, also run a free summer festival for bubbles. It's held in mid-June at the Underwheel Club, under the Ferris wheel in Mtatsminda Park, and the 2025 edition was its third. Just over 30 wineries from Kartli, Lechkhumi, Imereti and Kakheti poured traditional method sparkling wine, tank-method fizz and pet-nat, which was the star of that year.

It's indoors, which is a relief in June heat, and the terrace has the same city view as the rest of the park. It gets noisy later in the day, so the first couple of hours are the time to talk to the makers. Getting there is the same as for the New Wine Festival: funicular, cable car or bus 124.

Wine at Tbilisoba in October

Tbilisoba is the city's own festival, a weekend of concerts, folk dance and food and wine stalls across the Old Town and Rike Park. It falls in late September or early October, on a weekend City Hall announces a few weeks ahead: 3 and 4 October in 2026. It isn't a wine festival in the tasting-table sense, but wine runs through both days, because the weekend lands in the middle of the harvest.

Down by the sulfur baths in Abanotubani, grapes are trodden in big wooden vats the old way, and passers-by get handed the fresh juice. Stalls through the Old Town lanes sell young wine and chacha, the grape brandy, and maghari, the cloudy, just-fermented new wine, is often poured for free. Tbilisoba is the autumn high point among the festivals and holidays in Georgia, and on that weekend the wine is the part I'd plan the day around.

Tbilisoba is also the easiest way to pair the city with the harvest itself. Rtveli, the grape harvest, runs from late September to mid-October, and a day of picking and pressing grapes in Kakheti fits neatly around a Tbilisoba weekend without changing hotels.

Wine festivals near Tbilisi

Several of the best festivals happen just outside the city, and each makes an easy day trip. Most are free or cheaply ticketed, and the winemakers are often the same families you'd meet at Mtatsminda.

Sherekilebi, "the eccentrics", gathers 10 to 15 mostly natural winemakers at a family cellar in Chardakhi on the same day as the city's two 3 May events. There's no shuttle, so take a Bolt or book a private transfer, which starts at about 69 GEL. Chardakhi and Mukhrani are also two of the easiest wineries near Tbilisi to visit on any other day.

The Merano Wine Festival is the Georgian edition of a festival founded in Merano, Italy, in 1992. It came to Georgia in 2022 and takes over Chateau Mukhrani, a restored royal estate, with large, medium and small producers, seminars and chef masterclasses.

The Bolnisi PDO Wine Festival pours only wines with a protected designation of origin, from 60 or more wineries, in the old German Quarter of Bolnisi. Look for Shala, a local white grape tied to the town's German settlers and hard to find anywhere else.

The Gurjaani Wine Festival is my pick for autumn. It fills the central park of a Kakheti wine town with commercial, boutique and family wineries, families selling homemade cheese, pickles and wine in recycled bottles, food stalls and a stage from about 2pm. Pair it with a Kakheti wine tour and you have the region's cellars and its party in one trip.

A wine week in early May

Because the spring festivals land so close together, early May is the best week of the year to come to Tbilisi for wine. Here's how I'd have spent the 2026 run. Expect a similar shape in 2027, with the exact dates confirmed in April.

Spring is also the best time to visit Tbilisi for walking: warm days, green hills and none of the 35°C heat of July and August, which makes an afternoon on Mtatsminda far more pleasant.

Tips for wine festivals in Tbilisi

• Eat a proper meal first. You'll taste dozens of wines, and the snacks at the tables won't carry you.
• Bring water. Free water isn't guaranteed, and a bottle from the food stalls costs money.
• Bring or buy a glass. A festival glass costs 10 to 15 GEL; without one you drink from plastic.
• Carry cash. Bottles, food and taxis at regional festivals run on lari, and cash still matters in Georgia at stalls and family tables.
• Check the venue the week before. Venues change from year to year, and the festival's Facebook page is where the change gets posted.
• Buy tickets early. Ticketed events go on sale a few weeks to a month ahead on TKT.ge or Biletebi.ge and can sell out.
• Talk to the winemakers. Most pour their own wine, and they're happy to explain it even with little English.

Wine bars for festival wine the rest of the year

No festival on your dates? Many of the same producers pour their wine by the glass in the city's wine bars all year, and a booked wine tasting in Tbilisi gives you the guided version. These two are where I'd send someone who wanted the festival feeling on a Tuesday.

Vino Underground

Vino Underground is a brick-walled basement on Galaktion Tabidze Street, a few minutes from Freedom Square, opened by a group of natural winemakers and the first bar in Tbilisi devoted to natural wine. The list leans on small qvevri producers, many of them faces you'd see at Zero Compromise. It opens at 2pm daily, glasses run 10 to 20 GEL and bottles 35 to 120 GEL, and the staff speak English. It tops my list of the best wine bars in Tbilisi for a first night.

8000 Vintages

8000 Vintages is a wine shop and bar with four branches in Tbilisi, stocking big and small producers side by side, which makes it the closest thing to a festival floor in a single room. The Old Town branch on Kote Afkhazi Street opens at noon, pours glasses for 8 to 16 GEL, sells bottles from 28 to 90 GEL and puts out cheese and charcuterie boards. Ask for a sommelier tasting if you want a guided run through the Georgian grape varieties before a festival.