Food Festivals in Tbilisi: The Calendar and What to Eat

Most of the city's food calendar hangs off wine: new bottles in May, grapes in September and October, and winter sweets made from the honey, walnuts and grape must after that. If you can only pick 1 week in 2026, make it the one around 3 and 4 October, when Tbilisoba is on in town and the harvest day trips are still running out to Kakheti.

When	Festival	Where	Eat and drink
Early May	Zero Compromise, the natural wine festival	Radio City in 2026, ticketed	Natural wine from the Natural Wine Association's members
A Saturday in mid-May	New Wine Festival	Mtatsminda Park	Last autumn's wine from about 200 producers
Early June	Cheese festival	Mtatsminda Park	Cheese from 45 makers at the 2023 edition
September to December	Rtveli, the grape harvest	Kakheti and the other wine regions	Grapes, fresh must and a harvest supra
October (3 and 4 October in 2026)	Tbilisoba	Rike Park and 5 more sites	Churchkhela, pelamushi, tklapi, honey, cheese, wine
17 December	Barbaroba, St Barbara's Day	At home	Lobiani, the bean-filled bread
1 to 7 January	New Year and Orthodox Christmas	At home, round the table	Turkey satsivi, gozinaki, churchkhela

The New Wine Festival is the big public pour of the previous autumn's wine. The Georgian Wine Club has run it since 2010, with the National Wine Agency and Tbilisi City Hall behind it, and it lands on a Saturday in mid-May, usually the second one, at Mtatsminda Park above the city.

The agency counted about 200 producers at the 2024 edition, from big wineries down to small ones, all pouring wine from the 2023 harvest after a ceremony opening the qvevri. That's a lot of Georgian wine in one park, and with qvevri opening the show, it's the obvious place to try amber wine from several makers in one afternoon.

Early in May, just ahead of the New Wine Festival, the Natural Wine Association runs Zero Compromise, its own festival, with the National Wine Agency's support. Only the association's member wineries pour, plus selected foreign natural wine producers, so it's a narrower and nerdier room than Mtatsminda.

It's ticketed, and in 2026 it moved to Radio City, a multifunctional space at 3 Bairamashvili Street. If you already drink in Tbilisi's natural wine bars, this is where you meet the makers behind that kind of bottle in person.

If you miss both May festivals, a wine tasting in an old-town cellar is the year-round version, with someone explaining every glass. These 4 places pour small-producer and qvevri wine between one May and the next.

Georgia's cheese makers get their own festival at Mtatsminda Park in early June. The agriculture ministry, which has backed it for years, counted 45 cheese producers at the 2023 edition, with the chair of the Georgian Cheese Makers' Association speaking for it.

That's the quickest tour of Georgian cheese you'll get in one afternoon. Pick one cheese, imeruli or sulguni, and taste it from 3 or 4 makers rather than 1 of everything, and you'll leave knowing which you'd order again.

Tbilisoba is the city's own festival, a harvest market with a concert at the end, and it has run since 1979. The tourism board puts the main event in Rike Park on the banks of the Mtkvari, where producers bring fruit, cheese, honey, wine and sweets from every part of the country for 2 days.

The tourism board's autumn guide reads like a shopping list: churchkhela and janjukha (its hazelnut cousin), pelamushi and tatara, dried fruit, tklapi, pickles, cheese and meat, with Europe Square named among the spots. The churchkhela, pelamushi and tatara are all made from the new season's grape must, so October is when they're freshest.

The old rituals are the other half. By the tourism board's account, grapes are trodden underfoot in a satsnakheli, a trough cut from 1 piece of wood, while people sing, the city honours its distinguished citizens, and the whole thing closes with an open-air concert in Rike Park.

With the ceremony and a concert in the evening, it's an easy start to a night out in Tbilisi. Festival stalls are also the best place for food souvenirs straight from the regions, and outside October these 3 wine shops have the same honey, churchkhela or cheese on record.

Rtveli, the grape harvest, is the one entry on this calendar you have to leave Tbilisi for. The tourism board says it starts in September with rkatsiteli in Kakheti and ends in December with chkhaveri in Guria and Ajara, so the Kakheti weeks in September and October are the ones within day-trip range.

A harvest day has a set shape: pick the grapes, tread them underfoot in a satsnakheli, then sit down to a supra, which opens with tone bread in the east and hot khachapuri in the west. The tourism board says visitors can join in, which is how you end up with purple ankles on the drive back to Tbilisi.

Without a family in Kakheti, the simplest way in is an organised harvest day trip. Eat This! Tours, a Tbilisi company, runs its harvest days from late August to early November, and its site priced them in September 2026 from 375 GEL a person for a 12-hour family harvest and from 410 GEL for a Telavi day capped at 8 people.

Winter's food festival happens at home. Christmas markets run from mid-December into early January, but the real calendar is the table: lobiani is baked on Barbaroba, 17 December, 1 and 2 January are official days off, and Orthodox Christmas falls on 7 January, after a Nativity fast that starts in late November.

The New Year supra, as the tourism board describes it, is built around turkey satsivi, turkey in walnut sauce, with fried and boiled meat, fish, mchadi corn bread, khachapuri and vegetables round it. The sweets are gozinaki, churchkhela and dried fruit, and the mekvle, the first person across a family's threshold on Bedoba, brings sweets and happiness in with them.

Gozinaki is the Georgian dessert that belongs to New Year. By the tourism board's recipe it's honey, walnuts and a little sugar, cut into diamonds with a wet knife while it's still hot, and in Racha it's still made with pumpkin seeds.

Christmas has a pie of its own in Guria: ghvezeli, a crescent-shaped Gurian khachapuri filled with cheese and boiled egg. Old New Year, on the night of 13 to 14 January, stretches the season, and Easter, which moves each spring, means red-dyed eggs and paska, the Easter cake.

The street food festival to know is Taste Tbilisi, a weekend of street food and music that held its eighth edition in June 2026. In October, Tbilisoba's culinary zones and fast food stands do the same job.

The rest of the year, Tbilisi's street food is a counter, not an event: a shawarma, or a khachapuri handed out through a window. Smaller festivals for bread, beer, ice cream and coffee come and go, so check the week you arrive rather than planning a trip around one.