The Cyprus Wine Festival in Limassol
Every year in late September the Municipal Gardens in Limassol fill with wine stands for nine consecutive evenings. The Cyprus Wine Festival is a municipal celebration rather than a trade fair, and for a visitor it is the easiest way to taste across a large part of the island's production without driving anywhere.
What the festival is
The festival has run in Limassol since the early 1960s and reached its sixty-fifth edition in 2026. It is organised by the Municipality of Limassol and held in the Municipal Gardens, a sixty-thousand square metre park on the seafront laid out in 1888.
Wineries pour at stands through the evening alongside food, music and dancing. The tone is closer to a town celebration than to a tasting room — outdoors, busy and social rather than studious.
Dates and practicalities
The 2026 edition runs from Saturday 26 September to Sunday 4 October. Entry is ticketed and inexpensive, and the festival is an evening event rather than a daytime one.
Published opening hours differ between sources, so confirm the current programme with the Municipality of Limassol before travelling. The dates shift by a few days from year to year, but the pattern — nine evenings spanning late September and early October — has been stable for a long time.
What to taste while you are there
The value of the festival is breadth. Tasting Xynisteri from several producers side by side in one evening teaches you more about the grape than a week of separate visits, because you are comparing directly rather than across days.
Commandaria is usually well represented, and it is worth trying more than one — the differences between producers are wider than newcomers expect. Zivania, the island's pomace spirit, tends to be poured too.
Using it to plan the rest of a trip
Treat the festival as a shortlisting exercise. Note the producers whose wines you liked, then go and see them in the days afterwards, when you can walk the vineyard and talk to whoever made the wine.
Omodos is about an hour's drive up from the gardens and has several wineries inside the village itself — Ktima Gerolemo, Linos Winery and Oenou Yi are all within walking distance of the square, which makes it an easy morning after a festival evening.
Related wineries
Contact details and locations for each are on their page.
More guides
The Krasochoria: Limassol's Wine Villages
The dense cluster of wine villages on the southern Troodos slopes holds more wineries than anywhere else in Cyprus. Here's how the region fits together.
Wine stylesCommandaria: The World's Oldest Named Wine
Still made in fourteen designated villages from sun-dried Mavro and Xynisteri, Commandaria has a documented history stretching back to the Crusades.
GrapesThe Indigenous Grapes of Cyprus
Xynisteri, Mavro, Maratheftiko and a handful of rare varieties being brought back from near-extinction — a guide to what actually grows on the island.