Alba white truffle season opens at record prices

Alba white truffle season is underway with prices averaging €1,853 a kilogram, according to the market's most recent price update, setting up a costly run into the region's 96th truffle fair this autumn.

The average, updated on August 28, spans a range of €1,350 to €2,300 a kilogram depending on size and shape. Alba's Tuber Magnatum Pico has for several seasons run at elevated prices as drought and unusually high autumn temperatures have periodically cut yields in Piedmont's truffle grounds, tightening supply even as demand from restaurants abroad keeps growing.

The premium becomes clear next to other varieties tracked on the same market: fine black truffle averages €1,325 a kilogram, black autumn truffle €655, and bianchetto €625. No other truffle commands anything close to the white Alba's price.

Between drought and demand, the world's most expensive fungus keeps setting its own price.

The 96th fair runs into December

The Alba White Truffle Fair opens on October 10 and runs every Saturday and Sunday through December 6 at the Cortile della Maddalena in the town's medieval centre. The World Truffle Market operates from 9:30am to 7:30pm on those days, where certified trifolai, or truffle hunters, and traders sell fresh truffles by weight, each one inspected for quality before it reaches the stall.

General admission costs €6.30, with a €10.60 coupon adding a wine tasting. The fair draws more than 600,000 visitors a year, and organisers point to the second and third weekends of November as typically offering the best truffle quality and the fullest events programme.

An auction for the biggest specimens

The World Alba White Truffle Auction, an invitation-only sale of the season's standout specimens, is scheduled for November 8 at Grinzane Cavour Castle outside Alba. Past editions of the auction have set some of the highest per-truffle prices recorded anywhere, well above the season's already elevated averages.

The fair has run in some form since 1929 and was formally inaugurated in 1933, making 2026 its 96th edition. For restaurants building autumn menus around the ingredient, the message from this year's market is the same one that has held for several seasons: as with cocoa's own price spiral, a scarce harvest leaves little room for prices to fall back.

Traders on the ground caution that figures move week to week with the harvest and with the size and shape of each truffle, so the average now is a starting point rather than a ceiling as the fair's peak weeks approach.