The 2026 EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival opened on August 27 and runs through November 21. That is 87 days, three short of Flower & Garden this year, and long enough that you do not need to rush at it.
There is a better reason not to rush. Six of the festival’s selling locations are not open yet. Four of them arrive on October 2, including The Alps and India, and The Wedge opens on September 18 and then closes again on November 8. A visit this week gets you a festival that is not finished.
Every price below is 2026 and checked against Disney’s own menus. The opinions are ours, and you will find we did not like some of it. If you want every drink at the festival with its price and our take on it, that is in the separate 2026 Food and Wine drinks guide.
2026 Festival Basics
- Dates: August 27 to November 21, 2026
- Where: EPCOT, all four neighborhoods, not just World Showcase
- Included with admission? Yes. You still pay per item at every booth.
- Booths: more than 30 Global Marketplaces, plus permanent EPCOT spots adding festival-only items
- Booths open: around 11 a.m., which is probably earlier than you’re planning for
You do not need a separate ticket and you never have. What you need is a plan, because the booths are spread across the whole park now instead of clustering neatly around the lagoon, and a lap of World Showcase with no route is how you end up walking past the thing you came for.
Grab a free Festival Passport at the park entrance. It has the booth list, the menus, and the stamp pages for Emile’s Fromage Montage, and it costs nothing. Even if you never fill in a single stamp, it’s the fastest way to see what’s near you without standing in the sun squinting at your phone.
Love EPCOT Festivals? Don’t Miss These Adult-Focused Guides:
- Festival of the Arts for Adults
- Flower & Garden Festival for Adults
- Food & Wine Festival for Adults (you’re here!)
- Festival of the Holidays for Adults – COMING SOON!
Not Every Booth Is Open Yet
This one will save you an annoyed lap of the park. Six selling locations at the 2026 festival do not run the whole season. Five of them are not open right now, and one of them opens late and then closes again in early November while the festival keeps going.
Disney does list these dates, in tiny print, at the bottom of each menu entry. They’re very easy to miss. So if you’re visiting in the opening stretch and you have your heart set on the Tartiflette at The Alps or the Chicken Tikka Masala at India, we’re sorry, and also please look at this table before you walk over there.
Booth | Where | When It’s Actually Open |
|---|---|---|
Festival Favorites | CommuniCore Hall | From September 9 |
The Wedge, hosted by Dairy Does More | CommuniCore Hall | September 18 to November 8 only |
Coastal Eats | World Discovery, near Creations | From October 2 |
Earth Eats | World Nature | From October 2 |
India | World Showcase | From October 2 |
The Alps | World Showcase, near Germany | From October 2 |
October 2 is the real opening date for the full festival. Four booths land that day at once, including two of the best ones. If your trip is flexible and you’re coming for the food rather than the weather, October is the month.
The Wedge is the odd one out and it’s worth a note. It runs September 18 to November 8, so it opens three weeks in and shuts down almost two weeks before the festival ends. It’s also a cheese booth in an air conditioned building, which is a combination we are constitutionally incapable of walking past.
What Food and Wine Costs in 2026
Let’s do the math properly instead of hand-waving at it, because the shape of the 2026 pricing surprised us. The food is cheap. The drinks are not.
Across the whole festival, the typical food item runs about $6.49, the cheapest is $4.29, and only five dishes in the entire lineup break $10. Meanwhile the typical cocktail is close to $14, and there are now cocktails at $16.50 and $17.50. A 12-ounce beer is $9.75 almost everywhere. So the classic advice of “budget most of it for food” is backwards this year. Four dishes and four cocktails is roughly $26 of food and $56 of drinks.
Are these prices ridiculous? Of course they are. It’s a theme park and they know exactly what they’re doing. Do NOT let that talk you out of the day, though, because there are two real moves that bring it down and we use both of them every single time.
- Share everything. The portions are small, which sounds like a downside and is the whole point. You and one other person splitting six dishes both try six things for the price of three each. Bring a fork.
- Load a gift card with your number and stop when it’s empty. Old trick, still the only one that works on us. Put $120 on it, treat it as the festival’s credit limit, and keep the actual card in your bag for emergencies. Like a wine flight you didn’t plan for. Disney sells mini festival gift cards at every kiosk in the park and you can activate one with as little as $15, so you can do this without planning ahead.
Order the Wine Flights
We are going to be obnoxious about this one, because the numbers are absurd and they’re buried in a menu you’re reading while standing in the sun.
At the Australia booth, the three wines cost $6.50, $6.50 and $7.50 if you buy them one at a time. That’s $20.50. The flight of all three is $7.50. Greece is the same story, three pours at $20.50 or the flight at $7.50. The Alps flight is $8.50 against $21.75 for the three. Yes, the flight pours are smaller. They are not sixty percent smaller.
Beer flights are a smaller win but still a win. Germany, Belgium, Hops & Barley and Brew-Wing Lab all sell a three-beer flight for $12.75, and three 6-ounce pours bought separately run $18.00. If you want to try all three anyway, the flight is $5.25 cheaper and one fewer trip to the register.
On the beer itself, 2026 gives you a choice at most booths: 6 ounces for $6.00 or 12 ounces for $9.75. Per ounce the big one is the better deal by a mile, $0.81 against $1.00. But per ounce is the wrong question at a festival. If your goal is to taste eight beers instead of drinking four, the 6-ounce pour is the correct order and the extra nineteen cents an ounce is the price of getting through World Showcase upright.
Emile’s Fromage Montage in 2026
Disney’s official cheese crawl is back, and the format hasn’t changed. Twelve qualifying items are scattered around the park, you buy any five of them, collect a stamp in your Festival Passport for each, and hand the stamped passport over at Shimmering Sips for a festival-only prize.
Now here is the part we had to go count ourselves, because it isn’t printed anywhere. Six of the twelve Fromage items are at booths that aren’t open yet. The Wedge holds two of them and doesn’t open until September 18. Festival Favorites has one and opens September 9. Earth Eats has one and The Alps has two, all three arriving October 2.
Which means that before September 9 there are exactly six qualifying items in the whole park, and you need five. Your margin is one. Hit a dish you can’t finish and your crawl is over. After October 2 you get all twelve and you can pick the ones you want, which is a much nicer way to eat five plates of cheese.
Is the prize worth it? Not really. It’s a small dessert and it’s fine. Do it anyway, because five cheese dishes and a wine flight is a perfectly good reason to walk a lap of World Showcase, and having a goal makes the day feel like something other than standing in lines.
Where to Spend Your Money
Some of these booths are worth the walk across the park. Most aren’t, and we’d rather tell you which is which than pretend all thirty are equally good. We went in the opening week, so here’s where our money went and where we wish it hadn’t.
The Ones Worth Walking For
What to Order | Booth | Price | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
Wiener Schnitzel | Germany | $7.29 | Best thing we ate. Crisp, not dry, and the mustard earns its place. |
Hawaiian Rice Bowl | Hawai’i | $6.29 | SPAM and eel sauce, and it wins us over every year anyway. |
Rodizio-style Beef Skewer | Flavors from Fire | $6.99 | Tender, and the biggest portion you’ll get for seven dollars. |
Tostada de Osso Buco | Mexico | $8.25 | Pork falls apart, beans are creamy, tostada actually stays crunchy. |
Paleta de Moras | Mexico | $7.00 | Best dessert at the festival. Eat it fast, it melts. |
Cherry Nostalgia | Mexico | $13.50 | The right Mexico cocktail. Order this one, not the other one. |
The Wiener Schnitzel is new this year and it is the single best thing we put in our mouths. We did not see that coming from a festival booth. It’s a breaded veal cutlet, it stays crisp, and the veal underneath is not dry. The HEINZ Brauhaus mustard cuts through it instead of sitting there being mustard. There’s a watercress-radish salad alongside that sounds like garnish and is doing real work, because a heavy fried thing in September needs something green next to it. Get this one, and get it first, before you’re full of cheese.
The Hawaiian Rice Bowl is SPAM, eggs, eel sauce, spicy mayonnaise and furikake for $6.29, and we know exactly how that reads. SPAM is not our thing. This bowl wins us over anyway, every single year. The spicy mayo is mild, the eel sauce is nowhere near as fishy as it sounds, and there’s enough crunch in there that it doesn’t turn into one soft texture halfway down. It’s also a big portion for the price, which at this festival is worth saying out loud.
Mexico is quietly having its best year in a while, and we say that as people who have historically walked past that booth. The Tostada de Osso Buco is great, the pork pulls apart with no effort, and there’s a guacamole layer hiding under everything. And the Paleta de Moras, a berry ice pop with sweetened condensed milk running through the middle and chili-lime on the outside, is the best dessert at the festival and it isn’t close. It will melt down your hand in about four minutes. Worth it. Get napkins.
Refreshment Outpost Is Not Overpriced
We want to head this one off, because Refreshment Outpost has the scariest-looking menu at the festival and it gets a bad rap it doesn’t deserve. Its cocktails run $16.50 to $17.50 and its beers and ciders are $10.00 to $12.50, which next to a $6.00 pour at Germany looks like highway robbery.
It isn’t. Refreshment Outpost is the one booth on the loop with no 6-ounce option on anything. Every other beer booth gives you a small pour and a big pour; this one just pours you the big one. You’re paying more because you’re getting more, and it has been a solid stop for us for years. Walk up knowing you’re buying a full drink rather than a taster and the number stops being offensive.
The one to watch your wallet on is the UK Beer Cart, and we’ll get to that in a second.
Skip Italy This Year
We tried, we really did. The Stromboli is $8.00 and it tastes microwaved, which we’d forgive if you could get a fork through it. The cheese has gone congealed, the crust is chewy and has no flavor of its own, and the tomato sauce underneath has set into something you have to scrape. The Pollo al Marsala is $9.00, which makes it one of the pricier plates on the loop, and the drumstick came out dry and tasting of nothing. The gnocchi and mushrooms were fine. Fine is not $9.00.
If you want a drink at Italy, that’s a different conversation and we’ll get to it in the drinks guide. The food, this year, is a hard pass from us.
Two More We’d Take Back
The Sparkling Cucumber-Gin Cocktail at the UK Beer Cart is $17.50, which ties it for the most expensive drink at the entire festival, and it tastes like cucumber syrup. That’s the whole flavor. There’s Fords Gin in there somewhere and you will not find it. At that price we want to at least taste the gin we’re paying for.
And at Mexico, skip the Fruta de la Pasión ($13.75) in favor of the Cherry Nostalgia. The passion fruit purée reads sweet and artificial rather than like fruit, and it separates in the cup as you walk, so you’re stirring a $14 drink with a straw the whole way to Norway. The salty chili rim is the best part of it, which tells you something.
The Scavenger Hunts, For Grown Adults
Remy’s Hide & Squeak
Buy a map and a sticker sheet, find the little Remy figures hidden around World Showcase, turn it in for a prize. It’s aimed at kids and there is no version of this where a cast member questions why a 40-something with a wine flight is hunting a plastic rat. Nobody cares. It’s a great excuse to walk the loop slowly.
Pluto’s Pumpkin Pursuit
The fall one, running September 25 to November 2, 2026. Same deal: buy a game board, find the pumpkins, redeem it. It ends nearly three weeks before the festival does, so if you’re coming in mid-November this one has already packed up.
Eat to the Beat 2026
The concert series runs at the America Gardens Theatre from August 27 through November 16, and the big change from previous years is that it’s nightly rather than a weekend thing. Three shows every night at 5:30, 6:45 and 8:00 PM, included with admission, first-come first-served seating. It ends five days before the festival does, so a very late November visit gets booths and no bands.
The 2026 lineup leans hard into the same nostalgia well it always does. Good. Hanson opened it. You’ve also got Yellowcard, New Found Glory, Smash Mouth, Tiffany, Bowling For Soup, The Fray, STARSHIP and Boyz II Men. Ben Rector is in there, The Beach Boys land in mid-November, and the new-for-2026 bookings include Fitz and The Tantrums, Lauren Alaina, Grace Potter and Allen Stone.
If you want a guaranteed seat there’s a Concert Series Dining Package, which pairs a meal at an EPCOT restaurant with a reserved-section seat the same day. We think most adults can skip it. You’re still first-come inside the reserved section, so you’re paying for a smaller queue rather than a specific seat. Worth it for a band you love on a Saturday. Not worth it on a Tuesday for a band you’re mildly curious about.
Our move is the 8:00 show. The 5:30 fights the last of the day’s heat and the 6:45 collides with everyone’s dinner plans, so the late one tends to have the most room and the best temperature. Go get a drink at Hops & Barley, which is right there, and come back.
Getting Through the Day
August and September at this festival are hot, and no photo you’ve seen has conveyed it to you. You will be sweating by the third booth and the Powerade will start looking like an appealing beverage choice. That’s normal. Plan around it instead of pretending you’re tougher than Florida.
- Go on a weekday. Friday through Sunday the crowd skews local, loud and thirsty, and the lines at the good booths get long fast. A Tuesday is a completely different festival.
- Be there at 11. The booths open earlier than you think, and your first ninety minutes are the calmest of the whole day.
- Split the day. Two hours in the morning, leave for the worst of the afternoon, come back in the evening when it cools off. Nothing else on this list makes as much difference.
- Water at a two-to-one ratio. Every booth sells it and every quick-service counter will hand you a free cup of ice water. Ask.
- Bring a tray. Still true, still slightly embarrassing, still correct. A cheap collapsible tray means you carry two drinks and a plate without doing the shuffle-walk.
- Don’t backtrack. Pick a direction, commit to it, and let go of the one booth you missed. It’ll be there next year, probably with a different name.
Where to Sit Down and Cool Off
CommuniCore Hall is the good one. It’s indoors, it’s air conditioned, it has real seating, and in 2026 it’s also holding two festival booths, so you can eat and drink without going back outside. From September 18 to November 8 it’s also running a Cheers to Cheese exhibit, which is exactly as goofy as it sounds and is in a building with air conditioning, so we’ll be there.
The Odyssey is still the other one we send you to. It’s stayed good even with the Brew-Wing Lab booth moved in and sixteen drinks on its menu. It gets you out of the heat, and it’s where we head when an afternoon storm rolls through. In September that’s most afternoons. Getting rained on at this festival is not a maybe.
On crowds, a weekday is a different event. We were there in the opening stretch on a weekday and it was fine. No fighting for a table, no twenty-minute line at the booths we wanted. Weekends are still rough. If a Saturday is your only option, get there at 11 when the booths open and do your must-orders before the afternoon crowd lands.
Festival Merch
Disney puts out multiple Food and Wine collections each year and the good pieces go fast. The pattern is reliable enough to plan around: the drinkware and the logo pieces sell out first, the apparel hangs around longer, and anything left in November gets marked down.
So your rule is simple. If you see something you love in the first half of the festival, buy it right then. If you’re only mildly interested, wait and check the outlet racks later in the run. We have talked ourselves out of exactly one Corkcicle in our lives and we still think about it.
Is It Worth It?
Yes, with conditions. Food and Wine is expensive and it’s uncomfortable in the early weeks, and on a Saturday it’s a mob. It’s also the best three hours you can spend in EPCOT if you go on a weekday, split your day around the heat, order the wine flights, and let go of the idea that you’re going to hit every booth.
Come in October if you can. Four of the best booths aren’t open before then, your Fromage Montage stops being a race against a six-item menu, and the weather finally stops working against you.
Next stop, the part you came for. Every beer, cider, wine, cocktail and non-alcoholic drink at the festival, with 2026 prices and our take on each one, lives in the 2026 Food and Wine drinks guide. Planning the trip around the festival rather than the other way round? Planning the Mouse handles the resort, timing and strategy side of an adults-only Disney trip.
