Tbilisoba

First held on October 28, 1979, Tbilisoba has grown into Georgia's most beloved annual festival, celebrating the founding, diversity and history of the capital city. Created at the initiative of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic's leadership, the festival had the notable, and likely unintended, effect of drawing Georgians closer to their own national history rather than away from it, and it has endured well beyond the political circumstances that first gave rise to it.

Centred on Old Tbilisi and spreading across Rike Park and Orbeliani Square, the festival brings together open-air concerts of traditional music and dance, exhibitions of local crafts, and an enormous spread of Georgian food and wine. Beyond celebrating the city's past, people from across Georgia represent their own regions at a harvest fair coinciding with the festival, connecting Tbilisi's urban celebration directly to the country's rural winemaking traditions. A particular highlight involves visitors joining in traditional grape crushing at a large communal vessel set up in the city centre.

Held each October, Tbilisoba offers visitors an immersive look into both Tbilisi's own layered history and the broader Georgian traditions of hospitality, food and wine that the capital draws together from every corner of the country.