The international cake sensation makes its Southern Hemisphere debut at Festival 2026, brought to life in Australia by Melbourne Food & Wine Festival.

What started in San Francisco as a humble 15-person cake swap has grown into an event that sells out tickets by the thousand in London and New York. CAKE PICNIC, presented in Melbourne by QUEEN®, has captured the world’s attention with a delicious proposition: you bring an amazing cake to the picnic, and then you get to eat everyone else’s amazing cakes. That’s a winning ratio of one whole cake for every person in attendance!

“I am so excited to bring CAKE PICNIC to Melbourne and to be working with the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival in staging this event,” says founder Elisa Sunga. “I am so excited to see what flavours and styles Australia’s bakers bring to the table. I’ve heard only great things about Melbourne’s food scene, and this world-class food and wine festival, so my excitement is at a high!”

The New York Times captured the specific allure of the event in great detail as it detailed the way the thousand-person event unfolded in California last March: “Smaller groups went up for cakewalks. Each person was given a pastry box and instructed to collect slices at will. Once everyone had a turn, the tables were opened for ravenous seconds, thirds and fourths, until no crumbs were left behind.”

We’re aiming to make the MFWF edition of CAKE PICNIC its best outing yet, and we’ve teamed up with QUEEN® to bring a dash of majesty to proceedings with photo ops, a vanilla masterclass, decorating tips and giveaways, and our friends at Dilmah Tea will be there to complement the cake with a can of Dilmah iced tea for everyone on arrival from the tea bar, where you can also grab your choice of four hot teas as well as Dilmah Elixir tea cocktails (both alc and non-alc) and tap the Dilmah tea sommelier for cake-and-tea pairing suggestions.

CAKE PICNIC’s last San Francisco outing sold out 2,000 tickets in less than a minute – if cake is your thing, you’re in for a treat. As Elisa says, “let’s create cake heaven together”.