Grape harvest in France 2026: a small vintage and the Montmartre harvest festival

France · Harvest & city

France’s 2026 grape harvest is smaller than it has been in decades. Meanwhile, from 7 to 11 October Paris is preparing the 93rd Fête des Vendanges, the harvest festival around the city vineyard Clos Montmartre.

France is bringing in a small grape harvest in 2026. Agreste, the statistics service of the French Ministry of Agriculture, estimated wine production for 2026 on Monday 7 September at 33.8 million hectolitres. In the week of 7 October, Paris celebrates: that is when Montmartre marks the harvest of its own vineyard. Two sides of the same vendange, and in both the year 2026 plays a part.

A harvest among the smallest in thirty years

According to the trade journal Vitisphere, which reports the Agreste figures, the estimate of 33.8 million hectolitres is 6 per cent less than in 2025 (35.9 million) and 17 per cent below the average of the five years 2021 to 2025 (40.6 million). It would be one of the smallest harvests of the last thirty years, Agreste sums up, as quoted by Vitisphere. The service names two causes: the area of vineyard land in production is shrinking, by 2.5 per cent in a single year, and yields were held down by drought and heatwaves in the summer.

The picture varies by region, writes Vitisphere. In Languedoc-Roussillon, Agreste expects 5 per cent more than in the small harvest year of 2025, at 9.5 million hectolitres. In Bordeaux it is 10 per cent more, 3.5 million hectolitres. In Champagne, by contrast, the report says the harvest will be halved compared with 2025: 1.3 million hectolitres against 2.5 million. Bunch weights there are the lowest in twenty years. According to the service, Burgundy is losing more than 50 per cent of its pinot noir.

Agreste itself warns that the estimate should be read with caution. It is based on observations up to 1 September and cannot take account of what happens afterwards.

Montmartre: the vineyard that almost became a housing estate

You will find a very different scale on Montmartre. The Clos Montmartre on the Butte is a city vineyard, and the organisers of the Fête des Vendanges de Montmartre tell its history themselves. As early as the twelfth century, the nuns of the Abbey of Montmartre planted the first vines. Before the Butte was built over, three quarters of it was covered with vineyards. In 1928 they disappeared completely; in 1933 they returned, to prevent a property development on the corner of Rue des Saules and Rue Saint-Vincent. Vines donated by municipalities from all over the country were planted by the City of Paris.

The vineyard was celebrated as early as 1934, under the patronage of the singer Mistinguett and the actor Fernandel. Since then, according to the organisers, the festival has been held every year on the second weekend of October. The Cuvée du Clos Montmartre is made under the supervision of an oenologist, and the proceeds from its sale go to the social welfare work of the 18th arrondissement.

What is happening this year

The 93rd edition runs from Wednesday 7 to Sunday 11 October 2026 and is devoted to music, with the motto "Le 18e donne le rythme": the 18th arrondissement sets the rhythm, the organisers report. On Saturday 10 October, two harvest rituals are on the programme: the Ban des Vendanges in the vineyard, which according to the organisers marks the start of the harvest, and the Grand Défilé, the big parade. On 9, 10 and 11 October, the Parcours du Goût, a tasting trail with producers, takes place around the Sacré-Cœur.

Since 2008 the festival has expanded to all neighbourhoods of the arrondissement. The organisers themselves call it the third most visited event in Paris, after Paris-Plage and the Nuit Blanche.

A different way of looking

France is bringing in one of the smallest grape harvests in thirty years, and yet the festival in Paris goes ahead around a vineyard no bigger than a city street corner. That is less strange than it seems. The Clos Montmartre does not deliver volume, but a story: it is a vineyard that survived because residents wanted to keep it. A small harvest calls for a different yardstick than hectolitres.