Festa d’Autunno in Lugano: three days to rediscover the pleasure of simplicity

Some seasons arrive on tiptoe. They keep you waiting through a slow handover between summer temperatures and a new promise of cooler air. The days grow shorter, the sun gives more and more minutes to the night and seems to take its leave with greater care, the shadows lengthen and the colours deepen; the city begins to take on a different rhythm. On the trees, the leaves give way to a palette that runs from yellow to orange to brown. Autumn is a season of passage, marking the border between the cheerfulness of summer and the certainty of a winter destined to whiten the mountains that guard and shelter the lake.

In Lugano this transformation becomes a reason to celebrate: the Festa d’Autunno.

From 2 to 4 October 2026, the Festa d’Autunno will once again bring the city centre to life with three days devoted to the colours and flavours of the grape harvest season.

The streets of the old town will host the traditional grottini, where you can discover local country cooking and taste Ticinese wines, browsing the stalls to music from folk groups. Three festive days to spend together, designed for the whole family.

When the city centre changes rhythm

During the Festa d’Autunno, the streets and squares of the centre become shared spaces, places to stop, to meet, to taste local produce or simply to follow curiosity and instinct.

This is perhaps one of the most genuine aspects of the event: the celebration does not take place away from the city but in its heart, drawing in the streets of the old town and leading residents and visitors along a sensory route of scents, sounds and colours.

The point is to live these days calmly, without the anxiety of reaching a finish line. You can walk without following a set route, stop to look at what a stall has on display, listen to music coming from somewhere further along, sit down at a table or keep walking, letting the city suggest the direction.

The time of the harvest

The Festa d’Autunno celebrates a season deeply tied to the land and to human work.

The grape harvest in particular is the moment when a long winemaking tradition comes to fruition. Behind every bunch of grapes picked there are months of work, favourable weather or unpredictable downpours, gestures handed down from one generation to the next and repeated over time. Every harvest tells of a distant world, one in which the value of waiting sits awkwardly against today’s hurried rhythms. The harvest belongs not only to the making of wine, then, but carries a wider meaning.

This is precisely the atmosphere the Festa d’Autunno brings into the centre of Lugano.

You do not need to be standing in a vineyard to feel the connection with the season. It is enough to cross the streets of the centre and let yourself be drawn into an event born from the wish to celebrate autumn.

We look forward to seeing you in Lugano, to raise a glass of Ticino wine to autumn together.

You will find that wine speaks of more than taste: it speaks of a climate, a landscape, a piece of land and the work of the women and men who commit themselves every day to passing on a tradition rooted in a distant time. A glass of wine holds the memory of the seasons, the cycle of the vine and the transformation of the grape. Wine becomes a collective experience, something to share. You do not need to be an expert to enjoy a glass: it is enough to let your curiosity go, to pick out a scent, to give yourself the time to listen to what a wine can tell you.

During the festival, then, wine returns to its most natural dimension, the one bound up with sharing.

The grottini and the pleasure of being together

The grottini set up along the streets of the old town give the event a deeply Ticinese character. They are places where traditional local cooking meets the pleasure of good company.

You come over to taste something and often stay to share a moment. It is that sharing, the pleasure of exchange and company, that makes eating together something more than a simple necessity. Taking the day simply means falling in with the values of country cooking, which needs no special effects to satisfy body and spirit: plain ingredients, preparations handed down over time and a direct, inseparable bond with the land.

During the Festa d’Autunno these flavours enter the heart of the city and join the scents, the voices, the music and the murmur of people making their way through the central streets.

Tradition and the present come together here: this is the moment when the city acknowledges its own history without stopping looking ahead.

The Festa d’Autunno takes in both those who live in Lugano and those visiting for the first time. For residents it is a chance to find the centre in a different guise, recognising traditions and flavours that belong to the local culture; for visitors it is a way to come closer to the city’s liveliest spirit.

LUGANODANTE, centre stage

LUGANODANTE’s central position lets you experience the Festa d’Autunno from the middle of it. We are in the heart of the city, and the main central streets, Via Nassa among them, are a few steps away.

Staying here means being able to step out of the hotel and into the stalls, the music, the grottini and the flavours of the region. It also means always having a welcoming place close by to come back to for a pause. There are many ways to get to know a city; one of the truest is to be there when it celebrates its own traditions, when the streets fill with people, scents and sounds, and unexpected encounters become possible.

LUGANODANTE is the ideal starting point for stepping into that atmosphere, and the place to come back to at the end of the day for the pleasure of feeling looked after, because a stay is made not only of what you visit but also of the way you experience it.

We look forward to welcoming you to LUGANODANTE to celebrate the Festa d’Autunno together.