ST. MORITZ GOURMET FESTIVAL

The St. Moritz Gourmet Festival is six days of cooking across the Upper Engadin, in which ten guest chefs are brought in from around the world and set to work in the kitchens of nine hotels.

It ran in winter for thirty-one years. From 2026 it runs at the end of August.

The Move

The festival was founded in 1994 and held every January or February until 2025, when the last winter edition was staged.

The reason for shifting it is plain enough. St. Moritz in winter is already full. The skiing, the polo on the lake, the racing on the same ice a fortnight later. A gourmet festival competing with all of that gets the hotels’ second-best week. In August the valley is in full summer, the houses are quieter, and the food can be eaten outdoors.

The format moved with it and loosened. There is now a walk up a side valley to an open table cooked over fire, and a lunch served in a historic carriage on the mountain railway.

The Form

Over the years they have come from more than thirty nations. Each is attached to one of the partner houses for the week and cooks in that kitchen alongside its own chef.

The Opening Kitchen Party at Badrutt’s Palace is the one to choose. Every visiting chef cooks at once, and the guests walk through the hotel’s kitchens rather than sitting in its dining room, eating as they go.

The Four Hands Dinners put two chefs and two kitchens against six courses. The Gourmet Safaris move a party between five hotels across an evening, a course at each.

The festival puts those who have come over its first thirty years at around eighty thousand. Some eighty thousand have been through it since 1994.

What to Know

Events are ticketed individually and priced separately. Nothing is sold as a package.

The partner houses are spread across the valley, at St. Moritz, Pontresina, Silvaplana, Sils and La Punt, so a car or the post bus is needed.

Take the Opening Kitchen Party first. It sells before anything else, and it is the one people talk about afterwards.

There is a programme for young Engadin cooks running alongside the visiting names, and the food at those events is frequently better than its billing.

The mistake is treating it as a run of expensive dinners. The chefs talk to the room about what they have made, and the explanation is half of what you are paying for.

Questions

When is the St. Moritz Gourmet Festival 2027?

The festival gives 24 to 29 August 2027 for its second summer edition. Its thirty-second edition, in 2026, was the first held in summer: six days, 35 events and 15 gourmet dinners, with ten guest chefs and nine partner hotels.

Is there a dress code at the St. Moritz Gourmet Festival?

It is set event by event. In 2026 the festival’s ticket pages gave smart casual for the Gourmet Dinners and Gourmet Safaris, summer chic for the Garden Party, outdoor clothing for the Val Chamuera Tavolata, and black tie for Fascination Champagne at Suvretta House. The Court wears a lounge suit, and black tie where an evening sets it.

How do you buy tickets for the St. Moritz Gourmet Festival?

Each event is booked separately from the programme on the festival’s website, which links to its ticketing partner; some four-hands dinners are booked directly with the hotel. No ticket is needed for the bars of the partner hotels. As of October 2026, a 2026 Gourmet Safari cost CHF 400, drinks and transport included.

What is the Kitchen Party at the St. Moritz Gourmet Festival?

It opens the festival. Badrutt’s Palace opens its kitchen, and all the guest chefs and their teams cook there, with champagne, wine, spirits and music. In 2026 it was held on Tuesday 25 August, the festival’s first evening.

The Court

The St. Moritz Gourmet Festival is not the Court’s own. Places at the dinners, the Kitchen Party and the safaris are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay, and the table afterwards.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.