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Subscribe Melbourne Food & Wine Festival 2026: The Full Program, Highlights and Unmissable Events
A Greek feast stretching 600 metres, a global cake phenomenon, and chefs flying in from every corner of the world — MFWF 2026 is going to be huge!
Each March, Melbourne proves its appetite for excellence, yet the 2026 Melbourne Food & Wine Festival arrives with a different charge — as though the city has paused, gathered itself, and decided to host a ten-day expression of pure culinary imagination. More than 200 events span the program, not as a list but as a portrait of a city offering its heart through food.
The festival opens in Kings Domain, where the World’s Longest Lunch stretches out in its sweep of white linen — part ceremony, part communal gesture: this year’s table honours Greece, a community woven deeply into Melbourne’s palate. Ella Mittas begins with meze: dill-bright fritters, sour-cherry dolmades, fava sharpened with pickled shallots. Alex Xinis follows with slow-roasted lamb and chickpeas, echoing Athens tavernas. The Christopoulos–Konis–Kafeneion trio closes with a radiant portokalopita. The menu speaks to lineage, generosity and the flavours the city instinctively reaches for.
Then comes the festival’s most exuberant arrival: the Southern Hemisphere debut of CAKE PICNIC. What began in San Francisco as a small exchange has grown into a global, sugar-fuelled phenomenon that sells out in minutes across London and New York. Its appeal lies in its simplicity — bring one cake, share in many. Bakers of all stripes will spill into Kings Domain with tiers, roulades, tarts and daring constructions balanced on buttercream and ambition. For a city that treats pastry with near-religious devotion, the scene promises joyful disorder.
A quieter thread runs elsewhere. Helen Goh — psychologist, baker, Ottolenghi collaborator and author of Baking and the Meaning of Life — hosts an intimate lunch at Zinc. Her three-course menu, drawn from her book, leads into a conversation with Emelia Jackson about memory, ritual and the private solace of baking. In a festival known for scale, Goh’s presence marks a reminder: flavour can carry emotional truth.
The Global Dining Series forms the festival’s intellectual anchor, shaped not by star wattage but by exchange. Le Doyenné — the French dining room critics cross oceans to revisit — arrives at Brae with menus rooted in place and quiet precision. New York’s Bridges brings its Basque-leaning confidence to Cutler, a meeting of minds that suits Fitzroy’s appetite for edge.
First Nations and Pasifika chefs deliver some of the program’s most resonant work. Mindy Woods brings Bundjalung technique and native botanicals to Residence; Monique Fiso reframes expectation at Farmer’s Daughters; Daniel Motlop joins Yiaga to continue an evolving conversation around Indigenous foodways. These events sit at the program’s centre — not as gestures, but as expressions of identity and depth.
Playfulness moves through the city. Andy Ricker turns Dessous into a laab-driven fever dream. Daniela Maiorano brings an Italo-street menu to Sunhands with the charisma that has made her a beloved online presence. Abi Balingit brings her New York Filipino baking sensibility to Musings & Merienda. Cariñito arrives in Carlton with Mexico City tortillas coloured by Southeast Asian brightness. Across a week, Melbourne plays host to Paris, Manila, Oaxaca, Chiang Rai and Valletta, absorbing each with ease.
When the festival returns to Fed Square, it does so with unabashed sweetness. Baker’s Dozen, now in its fourth year, expands with more patissiers, more interstate guests and an open embrace of pastry devotion. Helen Goh collaborates with Mietta by Rosemary; Dröm joins Abi Balingit; early lines form for Lune, Amann, Monforte Viennoiserie, Raya, Tarts Anon and a wave of emergent talents. It feels almost civic — a collective celebration of craft.
Beyond the city, the Regional Roadtrip sharpens Victoria’s sense of place. Across the Otways, the Macedon Ranges, Gippsland’s dairy country and the Peninsula’s vine-lined hills, the festival expands into long tables, fire-led gatherings, coastal meals and collaborations anchored in local produce. Events range from Zoe Birch’s irreverent countryside pizza party to Phillip Island Winery’s forage-and-fire dinner with ethnobotanist Jess Moulynox — not detours from Melbourne, but parallel expressions of Victorian identity.
Together, the 2026 program reveals a region intent on evolution. There is memory, but never nostalgia; respect for tradition, but always in conversation with reinvention. Above all, it reflects a belief in what the table can hold: connection, hospitality and the steady pleasure of shared experience.
Tickets will move swiftly — they always do — but the story is larger than demand. This festival doesn’t exist to prove Melbourne’s standing. It exists to articulate it: confidently, creatively and with the unshakeable understanding that food is culture, and Melbourne knows exactly how to express it.
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