EPCOT's Food & Wine Festival opens Aug. 27 with new marketplace dishes and raclette on the cheese stroll

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EPCOT's International Food & Wine Festival runs Aug. 27 through Nov. 21, 2026, with dozens of new dishes across the Global Marketplaces, two new cheeses on Emile's Fromage Montage, and an Eat to the Beat bill that adds Lauren Alaina, Fitz and the Tantrums and Grace Potter. Here is the full new-bites list, the cheese stroll rules and every concert date.

EPCOT's Food & Wine Festival opens Aug. 27 with new marketplace dishes and raclette on the cheese stroll

EPCOT's International Food & Wine Festival opens Thursday, Aug. 27, and this year's edition runs a full 87 days, closing Nov. 21. Three decades after the first one sent guests around the World Showcase promenade with a passport and a plan, the shape of the event has not changed: one lap of the lagoon, a few dozen small plates. The menu behind it is mostly new, the cheese stroll has grown by two stops, and the Eat to the Beat stage has three EPCOT debuts on the bill.

EPCOT's Food & Wine Festival opens Aug. 27 with new marketplace dishes and raclette on the cheese stroll

Festival dates and what park admission covers

The run from Aug. 27 to Nov. 21 puts the festival in the park through the whole of Halloween season and up to the doorstep of EPCOT's holiday festival. Getting in costs nothing beyond a valid EPCOT ticket. The Global Marketplaces that ring World Showcase are open to everyone in the park, and food and drink are priced item by item, so the festival costs whatever your appetite decides it costs. Indoor programming spills into CommuniCore Hall over in World Celebration, which has become the festival's wet-weather refuge since it opened in 2024.

The central gardens and pathways of World Celebration at EPCOT in Walt Disney World .
The central gardens and pathways of World Celebration at EPCOT in Walt Disney World . Photo: Jedi94 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
A wide view shows a large crowd of people walking along a wet, paved pathway at an outdoor park, with trees, palm trees, buildings, and a body of water visible under a cloudy sky.
A wide view shows a large crowd of people walking along a wet, paved pathway at an outdoor park, with trees, palm trees, buildings, and a body of water visible under a cloudy sky. Photo: Theme Park Tourist via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
A wide shot shows a colorful flower garden in front of a pond with floral arrangements floating in it, under a monorail track with a blue building and trees in the background.
A wide shot shows a colorful flower garden in front of a pond with floral arrangements floating in it, under a monorail track with a blue building and trees in the background. Photo: Mommy Musings via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

Key Details

The Buzz

Opening week is the point where the full menu and the whole concert calendar finally sit in one place, and the 30-year mark gives this one extra weight. Orlando's WKMG ClickOrlando ran a rundown of the new bites and the Eat to the Beat schedule as the gates were about to open, and Disney fans have spent the days since arguing over which marketplaces deserve the first lap.

The new dishes debuting at the 2026 Global Marketplaces

Dozens of new items are joining the marketplace menus this year. The ones drawing the most attention:

The rest of the new lineup travels the same route the promenade does. Spain picks up Croquetas de Jamón and a reworked version of the returning Paella Caldoso, Italy adds an Almond Panna Cotta, and Connections Café in World Celebration gets a Pistachio-Chocolate Mochi Doughnut, which is worth knowing for anyone who treats the front of the park as a walk-through rather than a stop.

Two things are worth planning around. The autumn-leaning items, meaning the pumpkin funnel cake, the brûléed sweet potatoes and the brisket melt, sit at the heavy end of a festival that is very easy to over-order early in the lap. And the drinks are where a festival bill climbs fastest: a cocktail like the Frozen Waffle Old Fashioned usually costs more than the small plates around it.

A wide shot shows a colorful flower garden in front of a pond with floral arrangements floating in it, under a monorail track with a blue building and trees in the background.
A wide shot shows a colorful flower garden in front of a pond with floral arrangements floating in it, under a monorail track with a blue building and trees in the background. Photo: Mommy Musings via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

Emile's Fromage Montage adds raclette and tartiflette

Emile's Fromage Montage returns, and it is still the best-value scavenger hunt on property. Qualifying items carry a cheese icon on the marketplace menu boards. Buy five of them, collect the stamps in your Festival Passport, then redeem the finished stroll at Shimmering Sips for a festival treat. The name is a Ratatouille joke: Emile is Remy's less discerning, cheese-devoted brother, which lands a little better now that Remy's Ratatouille Adventure sits in the France pavilion a few steps off the same walking route.

Two new stops join the stroll this year, both at The Alps. One is a Warm Raclette Swiss Cheese. The other is Tartiflette, a potato gratin with caramelized onions, bacon, thyme, crème fraîche and brie.

If five stamps is not enough cheese, The Wedge, hosted by Dairy Does More inside CommuniCore Hall from Sept. 18 to Nov. 8, adds an interactive cheese exhibit, a Cannoli Milk Shake and a new Crab and Corn Macaroni and Cheese loaded with smoked cheddar sauce, bacon, roasted corn and jalapeños. Watch those dates. A trip built around the cheese programming before Sept. 18 will find the CommuniCore Hall half of it closed.

Eat to the Beat 2026: the full concert schedule

The Eat to the Beat Concert Series presented by Enterprise is back at the America Gardens Theatre. Three acts make their EPCOT debut this year, Lauren Alaina, Fitz and the Tantrums and Grace Potter, alongside the returning names that have become fixtures of the run: Boyz II Men, Yellowcard, The Beach Boys and Smash Mouth.

August

September

October

November

Every show is included with valid EPCOT park admission, and seating is first-come, first-served, which in practice means queueing well before showtime for the bigger names on a weekend. Anyone who would rather not gamble on a seat can book the Concert Series Dining Package, which pairs a meal at a participating EPCOT restaurant with guaranteed concert seating. Reservations for it opened July 16.

One quirk of the calendar is worth flagging: the concert run ends Nov. 16, five days before the festival itself closes on Nov. 21. That last stretch of Food & Wine is marketplaces only.

Opening day is Aug. 27, and here is the first lap to plan

Evolution: Motown takes the America Gardens Theatre stage on opening night, with Hanson holding the following four days, so the first weekend already has a headliner attached. Pick up a Festival Passport on the way in. It tracks your Fromage Montage stamps, and it is how you redeem the stroll reward at Shimmering Sips. If handing over a card at every kiosk sounds tedious, the festival's Disney Gift Card wristlets featuring Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck need a $15 minimum activation and move the marketplace line along faster.

Two dates are worth holding, though. The Wedge in CommuniCore Hall does not open until Sept. 18, and the Eat to the Beat calendar does not thin out until November, so a first-time visitor trying to catch both the indoor cheese programming and a debut act has a narrower window than 87 days suggests. Everything else is on from the moment the park opens Thursday.

Originally reported by clickorlando.com. GenieGrove rewrote this story; the original reporting is theirs.