SPECIAL EDITION · PRESENTED BY PARKWAY FOOD GROUP
Five days at SIAL Paris 2026: the trends, the award winners, the best bites in Paris, and a side trip to Champagne.
OCTOBER 2026
SIAL PARIS 2026 · OCTOBER 17 TO 21
Picture a food hall the size of a small town. Now fill it with 8,000 exhibitors from around the world, all handing you something to taste. That is SIAL Paris, the world's biggest food show, and it happens every two years. We walked the halls with full stomachs and one question: what is coming to our plates next? Spoiler: a lot of pastry, a surprising amount of protein, and snacks that crunch in ways you did not know you wanted.
exhibitors
food pros
innovations entered
innovations selected
Sources: SIAL Paris organizer projections for 2026; Food and Drink Technology.
THE 60-SECOND APPETIZER
Five things worth knowing from the show floor.
Pastry is the main event: European bakery classics are everywhere, and they are getting new flavours, fillings and formats.
Frozen got fancy: freezer cases full of cakes, cookies and pastries designed to taste fresh-baked.
Protein crashed the snack aisle: from salami chips to a Paris grocery store with a whole hyper-protein range.
Your gut is invited: probiotic pasta, yogurt bites with three kinds of biotics, and fizzy fermented pineapple.
Texture is the new flavour: crystallised soy sauce flakes, crepe chips and purple goat cheese bites. Yes, really.
ON THE FLOOR · 01
In Paris, pastry is not dessert. It is breakfast, a snack and a reason to leave the house. At SIAL, the bakery booths were some of the busiest we saw, with croissants, pains au chocolat and pastel de nata stacked high. SIAL even ran a live bakery on the floor in Hall 5B with demos and tastings.
WHY WE CARE
Classic European bakery is getting a makeover: new fillings, new flavours and frozen formats that bake off in minutes.
ON THE FLOOR · 02
Forget sad freezer desserts. We saw glass freezer cases filled with cheesecakes, tortes and pastries made to taste like they came out of a bakery that morning. One booth's slogan said it all: perfectly frozen, ready to enjoy.
WHY WE CARE
A gorgeous dessert you can keep in the freezer for a last-minute dinner party is a very good idea.
ON THE FLOOR · 03
Protein is not just a gym thing anymore. In Paris, a grocery store had a whole Hyper Proteine range up front. At SIAL, one award winner turned Italian salami into baked, gluten-free chips (Bejerky), and another enriched surimi noodles with omega-3 and marine collagen (VICI).
WHY WE CARE
Expect protein to keep popping up in places you do not expect, from snacks to pasta.
ON THE FLOOR · 04
SIAL gave street food its own space, the StrEat Lab, and that global, grab-and-go spirit showed up all over the halls. Our favourite find: frozen soba noodles from South Korea (Ourhome) packed with their own ice cubes, so they stay cold after you microwave them.
WHY WE CARE
Handheld, global and craveable is the formula. Your freezer is about to get more interesting.
ON THE FLOOR · 05
Functional food was everywhere. Yogurt-coated fruit bites with pre-, pro- and postbiotics took silver (Patislove, Turkiye). There was probiotic pasta developed with the University of Naples (Liguori), and a lightly sparkling fermented pineapple drink called tepache (Labo Dumoulin).
WHY WE CARE
The best ones do not taste like health food. That is the whole point.
ON THE FLOOR · 06
Some of the most fun products were all about how they feel in your mouth: crystallised soy sauce flakes for a salty crunch (Chef Seasons), crepe chips made from Breton pancakes (Brets), and purple ube goat cheese bites with white chocolate and coconut (Die Kasemacher).
WHY WE CARE
Crunchy, chewy, crispy and colourful. Food is getting more playful.
SIAL INNOVATION 2026
775 products made the cut out of 2,750+ entries. Here is who took home the hardware.
GOLD
Switzerland
A cooking system that fries, dries and cooks food in water, with no oil and no air.
SILVER
Turkiye
Yogurt-coated fruit bites with pre-, pro- and postbiotics.
BRONZE
France
Vegan matcha latte capsules for Nespresso machines.
OUR FAVOURITE CATEGORY WINNERS
Brets, France
Chips made from Breton pancakes. Sweet grocery winner.
Die Kasemacher, Austria
Purple goat cheese bites with white chocolate and coconut.
Bejerky, Italy
Baked, gluten-free cured meat chips.
Ourhome, South Korea
Frozen soba packed with ice cubes so it stays cold after microwaving.
Chef Seasons, Turkiye
Soy sauce crystallised into crunchy flakes with sea salt.
Nukt, Switzerland
Salted chips with no added oil.
Jeune Montagne, France
Breaded bites of aligot, the cheesy mashed potato, made with Aubrac tome.
Mousline, France
French potato gnocchi that keeps outside the fridge for up to 12 months.
Labo Dumoulin, France
A lightly sparkling, low-sugar fermented pineapple drink. Start-up award.
Vieille Graine, France
Organic, gluten-free pasta, high in fibre and iron. Jury's favourite.
Source: SIAL Innovation 2026 awards, as reported by FOODStuff SA, October 26, 2026.
ON THE MENU
Paris through a food pro's eyes: four stops we would send you to.
12 rue Dupetit-Thouars, 3rd
Known as le pape du panettone. He trained in Italy and still uses his mentor's sourdough starter. Order the pain au chocolat, then grab orange blossom madeleines for later.
42 rue Charlot, 3rd
A tiny ham shop packed with charcuterie from France, Spain and Italy. Get the jambon-beurre, the classic Paris ham and butter baguette, and do not skip the 36-month Basque ham.
Anywhere with a terrace
Steak frites and a glass of red. It is on every menu in Paris for a reason, and it never gets old.
Any neighbourhood supermarket
A food pro's favourite tourist stop. Frozen and chilled cases with doors, ready meals everywhere, and the hyper-protein range we spotted.
Sources: Time Out Paris (Christophe Louie); David Lebovitz (Caractere de Cochon).
VIRAL BITE
In a hall full of serious business, a towering cone of pastel macarons, dotted with tiny French flags, turned grown buyers into tourists with phones out. It is a reminder of something French bakeries know by heart: people eat with their eyes first. Colour, height and abundance sell before anyone takes a bite.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
During the trip, we headed to Reims and went underground at Veuve Clicquot.
Barbe-Nicole Clicquot is widowed at 27 and takes over the house.
Credited with the first known vintage champagne.
She and her cellar master invent the riddling table, still used today.
The steady temperature of the chalk cellars, 55 to 65 feet underground.
Source: Veuve Clicquot history, via Wikipedia.
THE BIG PICTURE
Our wish list after five days of tasting.
A proper pastry case: more real viennoiserie in grocery bakeries, and frozen versions good enough to serve guests.
Freezer desserts worth showing off: cakes and tortes that come out of the freezer looking bakery-fresh.
Snacks with a twist: crepe chips, salami chips and crunchy soy flakes. Let us have more fun with texture.
Treats that are good for you, and taste like it: gut-friendly bites and lighter indulgences with no compromise on flavour.
The overarching takeaway: shoppers want health, indulgence, convenience and value, all at once. The products that pulled that off were the ones everyone was talking about.
PRESENTED BY PARKWAY FOOD GROUP
Parkway Food Group is a Toronto-based food advisory, sales brokerage and capital partner helping food manufacturers scale from strategy to execution. Reach Drew Rankin, Founder and Managing Partner, at [email protected].
Know someone who would love Behind the Bite? It is free, every Wednesday morning.