The Alba White Truffle Fair

The calendar

Eight weeks a year

The International Alba White Truffle Fair runs from the second weekend of October to early December in Alba, a town of the Langhe hills in Piedmont. In 2026, its 96th edition, it opened on October 10 and closes on December 6. In 2025 it ran from October 11 to December 8. The 2027 dates were not yet announced in November 2026; if the pattern holds, the 97th fair opens on Saturday, October 9.

The window is the white truffle’s. In Piedmont the harvest opens on October 1 and closes on January 31. Alba marks the opening at midnight, with a parade of truffle hunters through the town to Piazza Risorgimento and a glass of Alta Langa sparkling wine.

The fair puts its experiences on sale in summer: hunts, cooking classes, dinners. For 2026 that was July 1. Book then.

One date stands apart. The fair’s charity sale, the World Alba White Truffle Auction, linked live with Grinzane Cavour Castle, was set for November 8 in 2026, its 27th edition. Since 1999 it has raised more than €7.7 million.

The wood

A trifolau and his dog

The white truffle grows underground, from the roots of certain plants. It cannot be cultivated, and it can only be found with a dog. The man with the dog is the trifolau; the fair says the craft passes from father to son. Since 2021, truffle hunting and extraction in Italy has been on UNESCO’s list of the intangible heritage of humanity. The hills have their own titles: UNESCO listed the vineyard landscape of the Langhe-Roero and Monferrato in 2014, and named Alba a Creative City of Gastronomy in 2017.

You can follow one. Langhe Experience, the local tourism consortium on Piazza San Paolo, sells half-day and full-day hunts in the woods with a trifolau and his dog. One of them, the merenda sinoira hunt, ends with an early dinner. The National Truffle Study Center also runs demonstration hunts in season.

Book it for the Saturday, before the market. Whatever the dog finds, you will have seen where a truffle comes from.

The white truffle cannot be cultivated, and only a dog can find it.

The courtyard

The market, Saturdays and Sundays

In town, the truffles are sold in the Cortile della Maddalena, a courtyard in the center, under a white marquee. The World Alba White Truffle Market opens every Saturday and Sunday of the fair. You buy directly from the sellers, trifolau and traders, at their counters and on their scales.

The market sells more than truffles: cheeses, cured meats, hazelnuts, pastries and wines of the hills, under the same roof. Tickets are sold online, on the fair’s site. The fair counts more than 600,000 visitors over its eight weeks: come early in the day.

Alba is 56 miles by car from Turin airport, about an hour and twenty minutes with no traffic, and about two hours from Milan Malpensa. During the fair, two festive trains run on the SFM4 line between Turin and Alba; the timetables are on Trenitalia.

The arch

Let the judge smell it first

In the middle of the market, where the aisles meet, stands a pale arch with a sign in Italian and English: The Judges of Alba White Truffle. You cannot miss it. The judges are trained by the National Truffle Study Center. The fair says every truffle offered for sale is examined by them, by eye, by nose and by hand, and a Quality Commission oversees the trade.

Use them. Pick a truffle at a counter, then take it to the judges before you pay: the fair puts them there to guide your choice. Go back after, with your questions. That is the service the fair offers, and the reason to buy here rather than anywhere else.

To train your own nose, the fair holds truffle sensory-analysis seminars at MUDET, the Alba Truffle Museum, on Piazza Falcone. It opens from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., and entry is €5.

The paper

How to carry it home

The fair’s instructions are short. Keep the truffle in the fridge, wrapped in blotting paper, in a glass jar with a lid. It keeps for about a week. Before eating, brush it under running water, dry it, and let it rest at least ten minutes. Never cook it: shave it raw, with a truffle slicer.

Its scent, the fair says, is made of 120 volatile molecules. A week is all you get of them, so plan the dinners before you buy.

The plate

Tajarin on the main square

If you would rather someone else shave it, cross to Piazza Risorgimento, the square where the season’s toast is raised. La Piola sits at number 4. The Ceretto family opened it in 2005 as an everyday restaurant on the main square; Dennis Panzeri cooks, and Andrea Canaparo runs the room. The day’s dishes are written in chalk on two big blackboards.

The November 2026 menu priced the white truffle at €8.50 a gram. Three dishes are built on it, at €58 each: an egg in cocotte with potato cream, raw Fassona beef, and tajarin cut by hand. Order the egg to start, the tajarin next, and if you have room, the fior di latte ice cream with white truffle, €50. Without truffle, the agnolotti del plin are €16 and the bunet, a chocolate pudding, €9.

La Piola serves lunch from 12:15 p.m. and dinner from 7:15 p.m. It closes on Mondays and Sunday evenings, and through December 6 it also opens for Sunday lunch; it then shuts from December 22 to January 1. Book through the form on its site, or call +39 0173 442800, on the day you book your hunt. Ask for a table near the glass doors, on the square.

The white truffle harvest in Piedmont closes on January 31. Then nobody digs for it again until October.