One of Ontario’s top 100 festivals returns to Mississauga with a Venice theme

You won’t have to fly to Italy to get a taste of Venice this summer.

A sampling of culture from the iconic “city of canals” will be at the centre of the 11th annual Mississauga Italfest, taking place Aug. 11-12 at Celebration Square in the downtown core.

Named one of Ontario’s top 100 festivals/events many times over the past decade, Mississauga Italfest offers something for everyone to enjoy, organizers say.

Music concerts, comedians, performances and activities for kids, local culinary experts demonstrating their skills, numerous food vendors, crafts and artisans, and much more are all on tap as the festival enters its second decade as a must-attend on the Mississauga summer festival calendar.

“It’s a free event celebrating the beauty of Italian music, heritage and culture,” organizers say.

“The 11 years have gone by very quickly,” Patti Jannetta, board president of Mississauga Italfest, told Mississauga City council last week.

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Jannetta appeared before councillors to let them and Mississauga residents know what the 2023 festival has in store.

She said that coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, Italfest organizers had no idea what to expect, but they ended up being at capacity for the 2022 festival, attracting a record 31,000 visitors.

“Looking out at the crowds (last year), we really don’t know where more people could have been. So, that was really a blessing for us,” Jannetta said. “We’ve grown so much and we added so much for our 10th anniversary (last year) that I think people were really excited. And we again won the top 100 Festivals in Ontario Award…eight years in a row now.”

Looking forward, festival organizers say 2023 Italfest promises to be as good or better than ever.

“Everyone comes and enjoys a little bit of being Italian for two days,” said Jannetta, noting that about half of people attracted to the festival are Italian while the rest “is the wonderful diverse mosaic of Mississauga, Ontario, across Canada and a lot of U.S. border cities, and we even had some Europeans come in 2022.”

Jannetta said the featured Italian region of the 2023 festival is Veneto, in the northeast of the European nation. The food, music and landscape of the area will be celebrated in Mississauga.

She added that a carnival straight from Veneto will be staged at Mississauga Italfest 2023, complete with “live performances as they do in Italy.”

And in partnership with Open Mic Canada, there will be a competition featuring a wide array of talent.

“So, we’ll be having our stages full of a wealth of young talent from every genre of music and from all diverse cultures. There’s a few Italians in there, but really the talent is from everywhere,” Jannetta said.

She added the festival headliner can be described as “a bit of a heartthrob.”

Singer-songwriter Sandro Giacobbe, “a huge name, a legend, an icon in Italy,” said Jannetta, will lead the list of live entertainers at the 2023 festival.