It’s making its southern hemisphere debut at the 2026 Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, which also includes an epic Greek feast and events with local favourites Iain “Huey” Hewitson and Helen Goh.
Baked goods for days, a 1600-person Greek feast and dozens of international chefs will take over the state when the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival returns next year. It runs from March 20 to 29, spanning 200 events across Melbourne and regional Victoria.
Leading the bumper program is the southern hemisphere debut of Cake Picnic, which started in San Francisco as a 15-person cake swap but has erupted into a viral sensation, with wildly successful events attended by thousands in the US and London. The premise is simple: “No cake, no entry”. Buy a ticket, bake a cake and bring an appetite for everyone else’s creations.
“It’s gonna be big, it’s gonna be fun,” says festival creative director Pat Nourse of the picnic happening at Kings Domain, with room for 1600 people. “The last couple of events sold out in seconds.”
Staying sweet, another headline act is Helen Goh, the Melbourne-raised pastry chef and a longtime collaborator with Yotam Ottolenghi. Goh will not only host a one-off three-course lunch, but also contribute sweet treats to the Baker’s Dozen, a bigger-than-Ben-Hur bake sale by Victoria’s best, back for a fourth year. There’ll be a hot cross bun bar with “butter butlers” and interstate guest bakers.
The flagship World’s Longest Lunch, also in Kings Domain, will go Greek in 2026. “There’s a real resurgence of cool and interesting things happening in [Melbourne’s] Greek scene,” Nourse says. “We’re surfing that wave” by recruiting the teams from trailblazing diners Kafeneion in the CBD and Tzaki in Yarraville, plus chef and author Ella Mittas, to cook a course each.
Meanwhile, iconic chef and TV presenter Iain “Huey” Hewitson will revive his influential Collingwood fine-diner Clichy after more than 40 years with a pop-up at Carlton’s Bistra.
Some of the festival’s hottest tickets are part of the Global Dining Series, which lures internationally acclaimed chefs to Melbourne. Idyllic French farmhouse restaurant Le Doyenne – led by Aussie chef James Henry – is bound for Brae. And one of New York City’s most talked-about new restaurants, Bridges, is transporting its Parisian and Basque stylings to Cutler.
Other highlights put First Nations food and culture centre stage. Proud Bundjalung woman Mindy Woods, who recently received the World’s 50 Best Restaurants Champions of Change Award, is popping up at Residence in Parkville, while Larrakia man (and former AFL player) Daniel Motlop is bringing the best of his Indigenous food business Something Wild to Yiaga, the new Australiana fine diner by Vue de Monde chef Hugh Allen. Championing a cuisine that’s lesser seen in Melbourne is Samoan chef Henry Onesemo, whose contemporary Auckland diner Tala is taking up residence at Stokehouse.
For a food festival that Nourse estimates will attract 65,000 punters, the big-ticket events are just the tip of the iceberg. Leave your wallet at home for The Festival of Korean Fried Chicken and Something Saucy: The Pizza Party, which will each serve 1000 of their namesake items for free. The Spicy Side of Collins Street is a two-day celebration of hot sauce by Collingwood retailer Mat’s Hot Shop, and will do a fiery brunch and lunch in the CBD.
Melbourne Food & Wine Festival runs from March 20 to 29, 2026. Subscriber pre-sale starts at 10am today; general tickets are on sale from 10am on Thursday, November 27.
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