Olbia Events

Olbia's calendar is modest next to the coastal season, and better for it.

San Simplicio

The patronal feast falls in mid-May and runs for several days around the basilica, with processions, a fair, pariglie horse riding and a communal distribution of mussels — a nod to the gulf, which is a significant shellfish producer. It is the town's own occasion, held before the season starts, and is a far better measure of Olbia than anything in August.

The coastal season

From June to mid-September the Costa Smeralda runs its own parallel calendar of regattas, club nights and events at Porto Cervo. The sailing is the serious part: the waters off this coast host major international regattas, and the Maddalena strait is among the best-regarded sailing grounds in the Mediterranean, with reliable wind, deep water and islands to work around. Much of it is visible free from the headlands, which is the cheapest way anyone will ever watch that class of boat race.

Summer in town

Concerts and open-air events along the waterfront and in the squares, aimed at residents as much as at visitors, and free almost without exception. Olbia's summer programme is the counterweight to the coast's: nothing is ticketed, nothing is exclusive, and it runs on the evenings when the town is at its most pleasant.

Autumn and winter

Harvest festivals in the Gallura villages, and the new Vermentino. Winter is genuinely quiet: the resorts close, the airport schedule shrinks to a domestic core, and Olbia returns to being a working port town with a Christmas market and very few visitors. For anyone who wants the coast without the coast's economy, this is when to see it.