Kelowna Is Canada's First UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy — Here's What That Means for Visitors
On October 31, 2025, something quietly remarkable happened. A city of roughly 165,000 people in the interior of British Columbia — not Montreal, not Toronto, not Vancouver — became the first place in Canada to be designated a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy.
The announcement surprised much of the country. It surprised almost no one who lives in the Okanagan Valley.
What Is a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy?
UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, established its Creative Cities Network in 2004 to recognize cities that place culture and creativity at the centre of how they develop. Today, more than 400 cities worldwide participate across seven creative fields: architecture, crafts and folk art, design, film, literature, media arts, and music — and gastronomy.
A City of Gastronomy designation isn't simply about having good restaurants. It's a recognition of something broader and harder to manufacture: a deeply connected food ecosystem where agriculture, culinary tradition, education, Indigenous knowledge, and community life are genuinely intertwined. UNESCO evaluates cities on eight criteria, including the diversity of food culture, the participation of Indigenous peoples in food systems, the use of local cooking techniques and ingredients, the sustainability of food practices, and how food ties into the city's identity and history.
Kelowna was one of only eight cities worldwide to receive the gastronomy designation in the 2025 round, and the only one in Canada. Deliberations took nearly eight months after the city, Westbank First Nation, Tourism Kelowna, and Okanagan College submitted their joint application in February 2025. The result placed Kelowna alongside global food cities like Jeonju, South Korea (celebrated for bibimbap and centuries of culinary tradition) and Mérida, Mexico — cities where food isn't just consumed, but lived.
Why Kelowna? The Numbers Tell Part of the Story
The statistics behind Kelowna's designation are striking. Agriculture occupies 45 per cent of Kelowna's land base — nearly 10,000 hectares — and the Central Okanagan region is home to 807 farms and more than 20,000 hectares of farmland protected within BC's Agricultural Land Reserve. The Okanagan Valley as a whole is home to 286 wineries, making it one of the most significant wine regions in the world, and one increasingly recognized on the international stage. The gastronomy sector alone attracts more than two million visitors to Kelowna annually, generating $1.17 billion in tourism revenue. The city's 500-plus restaurants contribute $394 million to the economy each year and the broader food and agriculture sector supports nearly 5,000 jobs.
But numbers only go so far in explaining what Kelowna actually feels like as a food destination.
The Land Behind the Plate
The Okanagan Valley's semi-arid climate — more in common with parts of Spain and southern France than with the rest of Canada — creates conditions that allow crops to thrive here that simply won't grow elsewhere in the country. Long, warm summers. Cool nights that build acidity and complexity in fruit and grapes. A single large lake, Okanagan Lake, that moderates temperatures and extends the growing season. The result is an agricultural bounty unlike anything else in Canada: cherries, peaches, apricots, apples, pears, plums, and an increasingly celebrated range of wine grapes — Riesling, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Merlot, Cabernet Franc — that regularly earn international awards.
This is the landscape that Kelowna's chefs, bakers, winemakers, and producers work with. Farm-to-table isn't a marketing phrase here — it's a reflection of what's available at the farmers' market on Saturday and what shows up on menus on Sunday. Kitchens respond to what's harvested that week. That responsiveness to season and place is central to what UNESCO was recognizing.
Rooted in Indigenous Stewardship
Kelowna sits on the traditional, unceded territory of the syilx/Okanagan people, and the UNESCO application was a collaborative effort that placed that relationship front and centre. Westbank First Nation co-led the application alongside the City of Kelowna, and the syilx people's deep stewardship of the land — the forests, the waters, the seasonal cycles that have sustained life in the valley for thousands of years — is understood as foundational to everything that came after.
Traditional syilx teachings around the Four Food Chiefs — Bear, Salmon, Bitterroot, and Saskatoon Berry — reflect a food culture rooted in balance, reciprocity, and respect for the land. In recent years, Westbank First Nation has led efforts to reintroduce sockeye salmon to Okanagan Lake, a project that connects food sustainability with cultural restoration. The Kekuli Café in West Kelowna offers Indigenous-inspired food prepared with local ingredients, and the sncəwips Heritage Museum provides context for the deep relationship between the syilx people and the valley's food systems.
What It Looks Like in Practice
For visitors, Canada's first UNESCO City of Gastronomy designation is less an abstract honour than a framework for how to experience Kelowna. Here's what it actually means on the ground:
The wineries. The Okanagan Valley's 286 wineries aren't just places to taste wine — they're working farms, often third-generation family operations, whose vineyards reflect the specific character of the soil and microclimate where they sit. The Terrace Restaurant at Mission Hill Winery in West Kelowna and the Home Block Restaurant at CedarCreek Estate Winery in Kelowna are two of the most celebrated dining experiences in the province, with menus that change weekly based on what's being harvested nearby.
The farmers' markets. The Kelowna Farmers' and Crafters' Market, held every Saturday, gathers more than 150 vendors selling local produce, cheese, baked goods, honey, preserves, and more. It's one of the most direct expressions of the region's agricultural identity, and one of the best ways to taste the Okanagan outside of a restaurant. Haskap Farms, Ltd. — the farm at our vacation rental — has its own booth at the market every Saturday, where you can pick up frozen haskap berries, jams, and syrups year-round.
The farm experiences. Davidson's Orchard in Lake Country offers farm tours and a farm market with a direct connection to the land. The Westside Farm Loop is a self-guided driving route connecting orchards, apiaries, and produce stands across the region. Several tour companies, including Okanagan Foodie Tours and A Taste of Kelowna, run guided food tours for those who want a curated introduction to the region's producers.
The restaurant scene. Eater.com, one of the world's most respected food and dining publications, named Kelowna one of the top 15 places to eat in the world in 2026 — placing it alongside Cape Town, Milan, and the Isle of Skye. The piece, written after a visit to the Okanagan in 2025, noted that Kelowna is "smack-dab in the farm-to-table heartland," surrounded by family farms, orchards, forageable forests, and 200-odd wineries that supply some of Vancouver's best restaurants. Highlighted spots included Kin & Folk and Wildling downtown, Home Block at CedarCreek, and The Terrace at Mission Hill. They also recommended The Jammery for breakfast — which should tell you something about where Kelowna's food culture lives, not just in special-occasion restaurants, but in the everyday.
The craft beverages. Beyond wine, Kelowna is home to a thriving craft brewery scene centred largely in the city's North End, along with cideries, distilleries, and meaderies that all draw on local agricultural products. Okanagan Spirits Craft Distillery produces its spirits entirely from locally grown fruit and grain. Soma Cidery highlights Okanagan-grown apples. These aren't ancillary to the food story — they're woven into it.
What This Means for Travellers Right Now
The UNESCO designation is still fresh, and Kelowna is only beginning to build out the initiatives and programs that will flow from it. A new Gastronomy Advisory Council has been formed, co-chaired by Mayor Tom Dyas and Okanagan College President Dr. Neil Fassina, to guide the city's multi-year action plan. Okanagan College's new Centre for Food, Wine and Tourism — currently under construction — will become a hub for culinary education and industry collaboration.
What this means practically for visitors is that the momentum is building. Culinary festivals, chef collaborations, farm partnerships, and Indigenous-led food experiences are all areas earmarked for growth. The recognition from UNESCO and the subsequent attention from international food media have put Kelowna firmly on the radar of food travellers who might previously have known it only as a wine destination.
It's an exciting moment to visit. The city is newly aware of itself as a food destination of international standing, and that energy is palpable — in the restaurants, at the markets, and in the conversations between the producers and makers who built this reputation long before anyone gave it a formal name.
Staying in the Middle of It All
There's no better place to experience Kelowna's food culture than by staying close to where it starts — on a farm. Haskap Farms Vacation Rental sits on a nine-acre working berry farm in Southeast Kelowna, just minutes from the South Slopes and Myra Canyon, and a short drive from the wineries, markets, and restaurants that make up the city's UNESCO-recognised food ecosystem. Waking up on a working farm, surrounded by rows of haskap bushes that produce some of the most antioxidant-rich berries in the world, is its own kind of immersion in what the Okanagan is actually about.
The haskap berry itself — still largely unknown outside BC — is a small piece of that larger story. An early-ripening fruit, bursting with flavour, grown on land that's been farmed for generations. It tastes like the valley in a way that's difficult to describe until you try one.
That's Kelowna as a UNESCO City of Gastronomy. Not just world-class restaurants and acclaimed wineries, though it has those too. It's the sum of its farmers, its seasons, its Indigenous heritage, its craft and care — all of it in the same valley, all of it within reach.
Check availability and book your stay at haskapfarmsvacationrental.com