Piedmont overtook Tuscany in Italy’s wine exports in the first half of 2026.

Piedmont gained ground in Italy’s wine export market in the first half of 2026 while Veneto and Tuscany both lost sales, reshaping the ranking among the country’s biggest wine-exporting regions, according to Istat data released on Sept. 14 and reviewed by WineNews.

Veneto remained Italy’s largest wine exporter by value in the January-June period, with €1.3 billion in foreign sales. But that was down 8.4% from the same period a year earlier. Tuscany, which had ranked second in 2025, fell 7.4% to €543.6 million. Piedmont moved ahead of Tuscany after posting a 2.4% increase to €566.9 million.

Using the rounded values published in the data, Veneto’s decline works out to an approximate loss of €119 million from the first half of 2025, while Tuscany’s drop was about €43.5 million. Piedmont’s increase was about €13.3 million. Those figures are estimates based on rounded totals, and they reflect nominal values only. The data do not separate changes in shipment volume, pricing, inflation, product mix or exchange-rate effects.

The shift matters because the three regions dominate Italian wine exports. Together, Veneto, Piedmont and Tuscany accounted for about €2.4 billion in export value in the first six months of the year, or close to 67% of Italy’s wine shipments abroad. That concentration means changes in a small number of regions can quickly alter the national picture.

Veneto’s leading position still gives it a wide margin over the rest of the country, even after the decline. The region is home to some of Italy’s biggest export labels and styles, including Prosecco, as well as wines from Valpolicella, Soave and Pinot Grigio areas. But the 8.4% drop shows that even the country’s strongest export base is under pressure in 2026.

Piedmont’s advance was one of the clearest signs that the slowdown is not being felt evenly across Italy. While other major regions lost ground, Piedmont extended a growth trend that had already appeared earlier in the year. The region, known for Barolo, Barbaresco, Barbera, Gavi, Asti and Alta Langa, was the only one among the top three to post growth in the first half.

Tuscany’s decline left it in third place despite the global reputation of wines such as Chianti Classico, Brunello di Montalcino, Bolgheri, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and Vernaccia di San Gimignano. The gap between Tuscany and Piedmont was narrow in value terms, but the movement was enough to change the order of the two regions after Tuscany had held the No. 2 position in the previous year.

Below the top three, Trentino-Alto Adige ranked fourth with €265.6 million in exports, down 12.2% from a year earlier. That made it one of the weaker performances among the larger exporting regions in the first half. Emilia-Romagna was fifth and one of the few regions to grow, rising 5.6% to €205.3 million.

The rest of the top 10 showed a mixed picture. Lombardy exported €152.5 million worth of wine, down 7.1%. Puglia rose 6% to €121.6 million, narrowly ahead of Friuli Venezia Giulia, which increased 2.5% to €121.4 million. Abruzzo fell 9.5% to €108.5 million, and Sicily declined 5.9% to €78.5 million.

The data point to a split market inside Italy’s wine sector. Some regions with strong identities and established international demand, such as Piedmont, Emilia-Romagna, Puglia and Friuli Venezia Giulia, managed to expand even as larger export bases contracted. Others, including Veneto, Tuscany and Trentino-Alto Adige, recorded clear declines despite their scale and brand strength.

Because the figures are measured in value rather than volume, they do not show whether the changes came from weaker demand, lower prices, different sales mixes or currency-related effects in foreign markets. What they do show is that the downturn in Italian wine exports in early 2026 was not uniform across the country, and that the balance among its leading regions changed in a meaningful way over the first six months of the year.