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Taste the Harvest: Olive Oil Festivals to Plan Your 2025 Italy Trip Around
- Alessandro Loja
- Mar 22
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 11
Italy’s olive oil is more than a kitchen staple: it’s a cultural artefact, a living expression of landscape and legacy. It begins in ancient groves where gnarled trees meet sun-drenched soil, and continues through generations of hands, calloused and patient, that harvest each season’s yield.
From late October through early December, villages across the Italian countryside come alive with sagre dell’olio, spirited olive oil festivals where locals gather to taste, toast, and honor the first pressings of olio nuovo. The air hums with tradition, the scent of fresh oil mingling with roasted chestnuts, music, and the quiet pride of centuries-old craft.
In 2025, many of Italy’s most iconic olive oil celebrations return. Follow the oil trail, and you’ll discover more than flavor; you’ll discover Italy at its most authentic.
Here, a curated guide to the season’s unmissable festivals: where to go, when to visit, and why this time of year is an invitation to travel deeper..
Olive Oil Harvest in Canino, Lazio
WHEN: November 8th - 9th ,2025
Canino, a small town in northern Lazio, hosts Italy’s oldest olive oil festival, and it shows in all the right ways. The Sagra dell’Olio di Canino brings together centuries of agricultural heritage in a warm, unpolished setting where visitors are welcomed like family.
During the weekend, expect guided visits to ancient olive mills (many still working with stone presses), tastings of the prized Canino DOP oil, folk music in the piazzas, and food stalls serving hearty regional dishes — all finished, of course, with a golden drizzle. It’s festive, it’s real, and it’s the kind of place where you leave with oil on your fingers and stories in your pocket.
Frantoi Aperti (open olive oil mills) in the Umbria region
WHEN: Weekends from October 25th to November 23rd, 2025
Umbria doesn’t host one festival, it hosts many. Frantoi Aperti (Open Mills) is a five-weekend celebration across towns like Trevi, Spello, Spoleto, and Giano dell’Umbria. Each weekend, different villages open their mills and throw olive-themed parties with tastings, concerts, art walks, and harvest experiences.
This is one of the best ways to understand how olive oil connects with the land. You can walk through centuries-old groves, see traditional and modern extraction methods side by side, and taste oils so fresh they almost bite back. It’s easy to pair this with local events like chestnut festivals, truffle markets, and wine tastings — all happening in the same season.
Olive Oil Harvest in Calenzano, Tuscany
WHEN: November 15th - 16th, 2025
Just north of Florence, the hill town of Calenzano hosts an annual olive oil market that blends small-scale production with big heart. The Mostra Mercato dell’Olio is part tasting event, part rural gathering. Local producers offer their new oils — green, sharp, intensely aromatic — alongside crusty bread, aged pecorino, seasonal soups, and new wine.
There’s often live folk music and cooking demos in the main square. The pace here is slower, more reflective. It's a chance to chat with passionate producers and learn how they still prune trees by hand and pick olives in the early morning mist. For those who love stories as much as flavor, Calenzano delivers both.
Olive Oil Harvest in Presicce, Puglia
WHEN: December 6th - 8th, 2025
Down in the Salento region of Puglia, the whitewashed town of Presicce transforms into a lively food village for the Sagra dell’Olio di Oliva. Held annually in early December, this southern sagra showcases the rich, fruity oils of the region in a celebratory setting filled with music, open-air markets, and sizzling street food.
You’ll taste everything from friselle topped with oil and tomatoes, to fried panzerotti and grilled local sausages. As night falls, the historic streets come alive with live performances, while producers invite you into their underground oil mills carved into limestone, some dating back to the Middle Ages. It’s as much a sensory experience as a cultural one.
Other Notable Olive Oil Festivals in 2025
If your trip doesn’t align with the big names, or you’re looking to venture further off the path, Italy offers a constellation of regional olive oil events worth the detour:
CARTOCETO, MARCHE
When: November 2nd & 9th, 2025
The Cartoceto Dop Festival is all about certified quality. Expect tastings of Cartoceto DOP extra virgin olive oil, artisan foods, local wines, and exhibitions in a hilltop town with sweeping views.
IMPERIA, LIGURIA
When: November 14th –16th, 2025
The Olioliva Festival brings olive oil culture to the Ligurian coast with cooking shows, tastings, and a strong focus on the connection between oil and seafood. A perfect stop if you're driving along the Riviera.
SESTRI LEVANTE, LIGURIA
When: November 22nd – 23rd, 2025
Pane & Olio is a coastal celebration pairing Ligurian bread and fresh oil, right by the water. With hands-on workshops and olive oil sommeliers explaining what to look for in a good EVOO, this weekend is a foodie’s dream.
VILLA BARTOLOMEA, VENETO
When: mid-November, 2025
This smaller event in the Veneto countryside offers guided tastings and local specialties, perfect for travelers wanting to escape the crowds and dig into regional flavors in a quiet, welcoming setting.
Olive Oil and Culinary Escapes
Every autumn, Italy’s countryside comes alive with olive oil festivals, vibrant celebrations of harvest, tradition, and flavor. From the golden groves of Apulia to the rolling hills of Marche, these events invite you to taste freshly pressed extra virgin olive oil, meet passionate producers, and discover time-honored culinary secrets. At Rural Escapes, we turn these moments into unforgettable journeys, pairing festival visits with charming rural stays, local dining, and immersive activities.
Sicilian Culinary Escape
Marche Olive Oil Weekend
Apulian Culinary Getaway
These aren’t just tastings; they’re intimate journeys into the heart of Italian food culture. At olive oil sagre, you’ll find local dishes made to showcase the season’s fresh press, hands-on workshops where you learn to taste like a connoisseur, and open-air markets where artisans proudly share their craft. This is olive oil as an experience: touch the just-picked olives, watch them crushed into liquid gold, inhale the scent of the fresh press, and dip warm bread while chatting with the producer who made it.
Each festival has its rhythm. Some lean into cooking demonstrations, others into folk music and regional traditions, but all invite you to slow down and explore the nearby villages and countryside. Along the way, you’ll start to understand the vocabulary of olive oil - bitterness, pungency, fruitiness - and how these qualities shift depending on the land, the olive variety, and the precise moment of harvest.
