Festival della Canzone Italiana 2026: B2B merch for artist teams at Teatro Ariston in Sanremo

Merchandising for the teams around the Festival di Sanremo

Dates

24–28 February 2026 (five evenings, with technical and dress rehearsals in the days before)

Venue

Teatro Ariston, Via Matteotti 1, Sanremo, Imperia, Liguria

Organiser

RAI — Radiotelevisione Italiana (with Carlo Conti confirmed as artistic director for the 2026 edition)

The Festival della Canzone Italiana is the most-watched live music event in Italy, and each February it turns Sanremo for two weeks into the centre of the national music industry. The five evenings at the Teatro Ariston combine the Big Artists competition and the Newcomers showcase, international guest performances and an off-calendar of side events that spreads from the Casinò Municipale to the Palafiori, the Porto Vecchio, the Teatro del Casinò and the Riviera hotels. For record labels and artist teams that accompany the evenings, the workable window to set up their merch is usually under ten weeks, because the artist graphics are often locked close to the eve of the show and the final quantities arrive only after the Big Artists line-up is announced in late December.

For B2B merchandising around the Festival della Canzone Italiana, Corp-Merch.IT runs the full supply chain from the Milan hub: intake of the labels’ master graphic files (AI, EPS, PDF/X-4 with CMYK images at 300 dpi), art adaptation for the different decoration methods (digital print on GOTS-certified organic cotton, water-based screen-printing on T-shirts and sweatshirts, embroidery on polos, spark shawl engraving on Maniago metal accessories, hot stamping on Scandicci small leather goods), physical pre-production sample with Pantone colour map and technical sheet, production on Italian districts (Como silk and textiles, Scandicci leather, Maniago steel, Faenza ceramics for limited editions, Murano glass for numbered pieces, Capannori paper mills for FSC paper), and delivery to the hotel in Sanremo or to RAI’s Rome studios on slots the label lead has agreed. For programmes serving several artists or several labels we split into lots labelled per recipient, with distinct delivery addresses if the artistic direction wants a share of the kit routed to the Festival press room.

The audience around the Festival is multi-layered: the historical fan club that follows the evenings from the Riviera, the colleagues from other labels at the Casinò, the accredited press that follows every press conference at the Teatro del Casinò, the national and international radio stations broadcasting from the Palafiori, the delegates from the major and streaming partners, the crews from foreign broadcasters covering the event. Each tier wants something different: the fan wants the merchandise of the artist they have followed for years; the press wants a small, well-finished object that fits in luggage; the delegates from other labels want a distinctive piece that lasts; the crews want practical kits they can use through the five evenings. A merch programme that respects those four tiers almost always converts better than one that tries to address all of them with the same item.

A recurring case for our clients is the official merchandise of the competing artist for the first three days of dress rehearsals at the Teatro Ariston, when the singer receives dozens of visits in the dressing room from colleagues, journalists and guests of the artistic direction. In these jobs we propose a neutral graphic base — coordinated marks on rehearsal T-shirts, branded sweatshirt, organic cotton tote — and add the evening’s details in a second wave at short run, so that each visitor finds a coordinated keepsake of the evening. Screen-printing quality on FSC-certified paper and organic cotton is a frequent request from labels attentive to the environmental claim, and we handle it with screen-printing and digital-printing partners registered with FSC and GOTS certification circuits. For labels that bring alcoholic merchandise to the Festival (end-of-evening toasts, press gift bags with a bottle of spumante or liqueur), we coordinate temperature-controlled inserts so that the bottle and the merchandise travel together in the same lot without risk of condensation damaging paper or leather parts.

Why the Milan hub matters for Sanremo

Most labels, managers and artistic directors running a merch programme for the Festival della Canzone Italiana coordinate their Italian operations from Milan. The Milan hub lets us consolidate graphic files and Pantone references with the label team, run the pre-production sample on Italian districts (Como textiles, Scandicci leather, Murano glass, Faenza ceramics, Maniago blades, Capannori paper) and dispatch the lot to the Sanremo hotel or to the RAI studio in Rome on a 24-to-48-hour courier slot from the Lombardy–Liguria corridor. For programmes pairing an Italian imprint with an international distribution partner we handle bilingual materials (Italian and English at minimum) and, on request, full multilingual release with text translations aligned with ISO 17100. For programmes pairing the Festival di Sanremo with the Eurovision Song Contest in the same season we replicate the logistics across both dates with a single operations contact and a dedicated MOQ schedule for the international volume.

Merchandising timeline across the five evenings

The Festival window is unusual because the event is short while the merch programme has to be planned against a calendar that includes technical rehearsals at the Teatro Ariston in the days before the debut, the five evenings (with the cover evening and the grand final on Saturday), the side-events calendar at the Casinò Municipale and at the Palafiori, and the traditional week of Sanremo Young that RAI broadcasts from Sanremo in February. For labels and artist teams the gap between the Big Artists announcement and the opening night is usually under eight weeks, and any object that has to be on the rehearsal counter at the Teatro Ariston, in the press room of the Casinò or in the Sala d’Onore of the Comune di Sanremo for the opening night must be locked and shipped at least one week before the debut. We work backwards from that hour: production must close two to three weeks before the debut; the courier slot must be booked for the Tuesday or Wednesday of Festival week; the addressee list must be finalised at the same time as the Big Artists announcement; the competing artist’s details (song title, single artwork, communications claim) only add a small reprint to an already produced neutral base.

For teams following the Festival from Milan or Rome we also handle the kit in two waves: a pre–Festival shipment that arrives on Tuesday or Wednesday of Festival week in Sanremo, and a post–Festival shipment that returns any unused items to the label’s office for storage until the artist’s summer tour. This split is a frequent ask because the audience of fans and accredited guests who actually take a Festival souvenir home is far smaller than the press room or Casinò audience, and most labels do not want surplus kit left in Sanremo after the closing evening.

Production and logistics toward Sanremo

Before production kicks off we lock master graphic files, per-artist and per-recipient quantities, packaging and the named pickup point. The final delivery address is confirmed against the artistic direction’s calendar and the label’s logistics lead: the label’s reference hotel in Sanremo, the RAI studio in Rome for material destined to the broadcaster, or the label office in Milan for programmes that stay in Lombardy. The ZTL of Sanremo’s historic centre and the access constraints at the Teatro Ariston and at the Casinò Municipale condition the loading slots, which is why most teams opt for early-morning or post–20:00 deliveries, when heavy goods vehicles are again admitted in the central zones.

For an Italian programme routed via Milan, deliveries are consolidated at the hub and shipped to Sanremo (or to the Genoa hub for destinations redirected onto the Ligurian capital) with 24–48-hour windows via BRT, SDA, GLS or DHL Express Italia, by appointment for venues that require phone pre-notice. For programmes above 1,000 pieces we offer appointment delivery with phone pre-notice and, on request, on-site set-up by our staff at the rehearsal counter of the Teatro Ariston or in the press room of the Casinò. For materials that require controlled-environment conditions (silk, leather, Murano glass, Faenza ceramics, limited-edition spumante or liqueur) we coordinate climate-controlled transport with specialised partners, so that the bottle and the merchandise travel together in the same lot without risk of condensation. For kits destined to international delegations we manage multilingual labelling (Italian, English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic) and tamper-evident pouches with a bilingual packing list addressed to the recipient. For clients subject to CSRD reporting (D.Lgs. 125/2024, transposing Directive (EU) 2022/2464) we attach a sustainability data sheet per order with a Scope 3 CO₂e estimate following the GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain on the Milan–Liguria route and from the production districts involved, with material and leg-level disaggregation useful for the client’s sustainability statement.

All Italian B2B orders are invoiced in EUR at the standard 22% VAT rate (with reduced 4%, 5% and 10% rates applied where the product category allows: publishing, art objects, GI-labelled food) and routed through the Agenzia delle Entrate’s Sistema di Interscambio (SdI) to the buyer’s codice destinatario or PEC address. Corp-Merch.IT is a registered Italian VAT operator, listed on VIES for intra-EU operations, and handles reverse charge, split payment and pubblica-amministrazione self-invoicing under current Italian rules. For corporate clients subject to IFRS reporting we also produce an attachment with the valuation of inventory and equity contributions split between income statement and balance sheet.

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