The Flower Floats of Sanremo in Fiore 2026
The Sanremo Carnival is scheduled for Sunday, March 29, 2026. It will be a carnival of flowers, welcoming the arrival of spring with the parade of the famous Flower Floats along the Italo Calvino seafront and in Piazzale Carlo Dapporto, where stands will be set up for approximately a thousand people. The theme: "What JOY! ... between emotions, colors, and broadcasts." There is great anticipation to see how the participants, the municipalities of the province of Imperia , will organize it, where the floriculture tradition is deeply rooted.
It will be a journey through the history of Italian television, beginning with the unforgettable Mike Bongiorno. The TV programs that will be performed will be the "Sanremo Festival" of the Municipality of Matuziano (out of competition), "Rischiatutto," "Lascia o raddoppia," "Fantastico," "Canzonissima," "Portobello," "Discoring," "Giochi senza frontiere," "Quark," "Ballando con le stelle," and "Linea Verde." The pairings will be drawn as usual. Approximately 60,000 spectators will watch the Corso Fiorito, with the luckiest ones being the first to book a hotel in Sanremo for the Flower Floats.
The preparatory work for Sanremoinfiore takes months to design and build the floats, which are then only adorned with the famous fresh Sanremo flowers on the night between Saturday and Sunday. The result is a blend of elegance, creativity, and admirable technique. Every year, the awards ceremony is broadcast live on Rai Uno, not coincidentally within Linea Verde, which on Sunday morning showcases the finest examples of Italian flower and agriculture. It was precisely television that brought the event national prominence and established it as one of the most popular festivals in Italy. Furthermore, the connection to Sanremo for the Flower Floats has always been a peak audience for Rai Uno, with an average of 3.5 million viewers.
A show within a show, the floats alternate with marching bands and folk groups, creating a lively and colorful festival, where even the sun smiles happily. The marching bands and folk groups will be the undisputed stars with a parade through the city center on Saturday, March 28th. It's advisable to stay in one of the hotels in Sanremo for the Corso Fiorito, as Sanremoinfiore will offer a busy program of collateral events entitled "Flower Festival" starting Wednesday, March 25th in various parts of the city, with shop windows in bloom and the usual market. The grand finale will be a crowd-pleaser who tries to grab a fragrant souvenir from the floats. Each individual float, in fact, uses between 20,000 and 50,000 fresh flowers.
But how did the Sanremo Flower Carnival originate? In the midst of the Belle Époque, in 1904, the floats were carriages, and Sanremoinfiore was called the Festa della Dea Flora ( Flower Festival). Initially, it was a spectacular way to showcase the latest innovations in modern floriculture. With the passage of time and growing success, since 1980 the event has become an annual highlight in the city's calendar of events, second only to the Italian Song Festival, held a few weeks later. Thanks in particular to the Sanremo Festival, the connection between the City of Flowers and television is deep and long-standing. This is why the theme of Sanremoinfiore 2026 is chosen to celebrate the small screen since its broadcast debut on January 3, 1954.
One last interesting fact : Sanremo's Corso Fiorito holds the all-time Sunday morning ratings record on Italian television. 4.9 million viewers, with a 29% share, attended the January 28, 2007, edition, when the floats paraded along the seafront on a splendid sunny day with a temperature of 18°C, while the rest of the country was covered in snow. More recently, in 2011, the city council decided to postpone Sanremoinfiore from the last weekend of January to March: a successful promotional move that brought a taste of spring to Italian homes on Rai Uno.