A single knobbly white truffle on a wooden board beside a small brass truffle shaver and a nest of thin egg tajarin pasta, with oak leaves and a Lagotto dog's paw at the edge of frame, in cool autumn light

White Truffle Season Opens in Piedmont, and Alba Gets Ready

The Pantry Pulse, 15 September 2026.

Updated 28 September 2026: rewritten and re-sourced.

Piedmont's hunters may dig for Tuber magnatum, the white truffle, again from Thursday 1 October, after a September in which the region closes the harvest of every truffle species. Nine days later Alba opens the 96th edition of its international white truffle fair, whose World Market has a panel of judges examine the truffles offered for sale and place each one approved in its own numbered bag. That starts four months in which the most expensive truffle there is can be legally sold in Piedmont, under rules that say a good deal about what a buyer pays for.

The calendar that opens on 1 October

Piedmont set its current calendar in a regional decision, D.G.R. n. 15-8506 of 29 April 2024, in force from 1 September 2024. It opens the search and harvest of Tuber magnatum on 1 October and closes the harvest of all truffle species from 1 to 30 September. The calendar attached to that decision runs the white truffle season from 1 October to 31 January. The region presents the change as a response to climate change under way. The Centro Nazionale Studi Tartufo, based in Alba, told Città del Tartufo it had long asked to move the start, previously fixed at 21 September, to lengthen the rest period and protect quality after very hot summers.

The Centro Nazionale Studi Tartufo and the union of Piedmontese truffle hunters' associations describe the September closure as a truce, a pause that keeps the woods from being overworked while the truffles' fruiting bodies mature. Antonio Degiacomi, president of the Centro, frames respect for the season as part of loving the truffle.

National law sets the frame. Italy's Law 752 of 16 December 1985 leaves the calendar to the regions and says Tuber magnatum may normally be gathered from 1 October to 31 December. It lets a region vary those dates after hearing specialist research centres, and Piedmont's season runs a month past the national default, to 31 January. The same law bans trade in any species of fresh truffle while its harvest is closed.

How the hunt works under Law 752

The law treats hunting as a licensed skill. A collector must pass an exam to receive a card carrying their personal details and photograph, must be at least 14, and may then hunt anywhere in Italy. People gathering truffles on their own land do not need the exam or card. The search must be made with a trained dog, and digging, with the small spade the law calls a vanghetto, is limited to the point where the dog began. The law also forbids digging unripe truffles, leaving holes unfilled, and hunting from an hour after sunset to an hour before dawn, unless regional rules based on local custom say otherwise.

The Alba fair describes the same dig from the hunter's side. The trifolao relies on a dog trained to recognise the truffle's aroma, lifts the truffle out with a small hoe and great care, and finishes only when the loosened soil has been pressed back.

A 2022 paper in Molecules by researchers at Germany's Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -Prüfung ran an experiment with 19 truffle dogs and concluded that the dogs probably recognise truffle mainly by two sulfur compounds, dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide. The authors add that training a truffle dog starts very soon after birth and takes at least a year.

What happens at the Alba market

The 96th Fiera Internazionale del Tartufo Bianco d'Alba runs from 10 October to 6 December 2026. Its heart is the World Market of the Alba White Truffle, in the historic centre, where hunters and traders sell directly under the supervision of a quality commission. Each year the Comune di Alba appoints a commission of experts that writes the rules for selling truffles at the fair, and every seller must follow them. A commission of experienced sensory-analysis judges sits in the market for all its opening hours. Sellers present their truffles, the judges assess them, and those judged fit for sale are weighed and counted. Each approved truffle then goes into its own numbered, coded bag. The code lets a buyer exchange a truffle within 48 hours if it proves unfit to eat, by writing to the Centro Nazionale Studi Tartufo.

The fair's best-known event is closed to the public. The 27th World Auction of the Alba White Truffle takes place on Sunday 8 November at the Castello di Grinzane Cavour, as a private event by invitation, organised by the Enoteca Regionale Piemontese Cavour. The finest lots of Tuber magnatum are auctioned with large-format bottles from producers in the Barolo, Barbaresco, Alba, Langhe and Dogliani consortium, over live links to major cities abroad. The organisers say the auction has raised more than 7.2 million euros for charity since 1999.

Supply is thin. INRAE, France's national research institute for agriculture, food and environment, says the white truffle is harvested naturally in Italy and the Balkans, more rarely in Switzerland and south-eastern France, and that annual production is only a few tens of tonnes. Controlled cultivation has been much harder to develop than for black truffle.

The season in dates and in euros

Date What happens Authority
1 to 30 September 2026 Harvest of all truffle species closed in Piedmont Regione Piemonte, D.G.R. n. 15-8506 of 29 April 2024
Thursday 1 October Piedmont opens the Tuber magnatum hunt; the national default opens the same day Regione Piemonte; Law 752/1985
Saturday 10 October 96th Alba fair and World Market open Ente Fiera di Alba
Sunday 8 November 27th World Auction, Castello di Grinzane Cavour, by invitation Enoteca Regionale Piemontese Cavour
Sunday 6 December Alba fair closes Ente Fiera di Alba
31 December National default season for Tuber magnatum ends Law 752/1985
31 January 2027 Piedmont season for Tuber magnatum ends Regione Piemonte calendar

No 2026 price has been published yet, and the Borsino, the Centro Nazionale Studi Tartufo's official quotation for the Alba white truffle, lists figures only up to 2025. The two 2025 figures below measure different things.

  • Price paid to the hunter, Alessandria and Asti markets, 2 October 2025 (Borsa Nazionale del Tartufo bulletin): 150 to 180 euros per hectogram for medium-small truffles of 10 to 40 grams, and 180 to 220 euros per hectogram for medium-large truffles of 50 to 100 grams.
  • Alba Borsino, 2025, average price per hectogram for pieces of 15 to 20 grams: 400 euros on 11 October, 450 on 18 October, 480 on 25 October and 500 on 1 November. The Borsino does not state who pays that price.

At 100 grams to the hectogram, the 2 October bulletin puts the hunter's price at 1.50 to 2.20 euros a gram across both size bands, while the Alba Borsino stood at 4.00 euros a gram on 11 October and 5.00 on 1 November. A 20-gram truffle sits inside both the bulletin's medium-small band and the Borsino's size range, and it works out at 30 to 36 euros to the hunter on 2 October and 100 euros on the Borsino on 1 November. The gap cannot be read as a markup: the figures come from different markets on different dates, and only one of them says who is paid.

Within a season the Borsino follows no single pattern. It rose 25 percent from 11 October to 1 November 2025, rose 50 percent from 400 euros on 12 October to 600 on 8 December 2024, and held between 430 and 450 euros through its 2023 listings. For scale, INRAE's 2021 release put the white truffle at 1,500 to 3,000 euros a kilo, or 150 to 300 euros per hectogram, and said prices can reach up to 50,000 euros a kilo during auction season.

What goes into a truffle jar

The same Molecules study measured the aroma of a Tuber magnatum sample and identified 2,4-dithiapentane, dimethyl sulfide and a small amount of methanethiol. 2,4-dithiapentane made up 44 percent of the aroma compounds measured in the sample, and the authors treat it, with dimethyl sulfide, as a main aroma component of the white truffle. It is a natural truffle compound, one the scientific literature names as a marker substance. The team also analysed a commercial oil labelled as black truffle oil, with small pieces of truffle visible at the bottom and the word flavours on its ingredient list. Of the aroma compounds measured, 33.2 percent were methanethiol, 30.9 percent 2,4-dithiapentane and 14.4 percent p-dithiane-2,5-diol. The authors infer that the oil probably mixes natural and synthetically added flavourings, and that p-dithiane-2,5-diol, which does not occur naturally in truffles, is probably used by the industry to mimic truffle flavour. On the analysis, they add, the oil imitates white truffle more than black, despite its name.

That makes a truffle product neither a fresh truffle nor a fraud. It makes the ingredient list worth reading: look for a named truffle species, and check whether the word flavouring or aroma appears.

On the shelf

A jar or bottle is a seasoning in its own right, not a stand-in for fresh Tuber magnatum. Jacobsen Salt Co. White Truffle Salt (shop Jacobsen Salt Co. White Truffle Salt), an infused sea salt, is a finish for eggs, buttered pasta or popcorn. Regalis White Truffle Infused Arbequina Extra Virgin Olive Oil (shop Regalis White Truffle Infused Arbequina Extra Virgin Olive Oil) is for a few drops over risotto or beans at the table rather than for the pan. Morelli Pappardelline with Truffle (shop Morelli Pappardelline with Truffle) is an egg pasta that needs little more than butter and grated cheese. The Dispatch's truffle products guide sorts out the categories, and Piedmont in Autumn covers the region's other autumn foods, hazelnuts and gianduja among them.

The dogs go back into the woods on 1 October.

Sources & Further Reading

Back to blog

Leave a comment

Please note, comments need to be approved before they are published.

Shop this story

Shop this story (3)

Keep reading

More from The Pantry Pulse