The Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival: Why a Cuban Sauce Keeps Going Back to Texas

The Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival is the oldest hot sauce festival in the country and the only one we know of run by a newspaper. The 36th edition is Sunday, August 30, 2026, 3 to 9 pm, at Radio/East, 3504 Montopolis Drive, Austin. Bárbaro Mojo has a table. Come find the Cuban one.

What happened last year

In 2025 we entered the Commercial Bottlers categories and Matanza, our habanero and Carolina Reaper sauce, took 2nd Place in Commercial Bottlers Pepper Sauce. For a Miami company built on sour orange and garlic, placing in Texas, in a pepper-sauce category judged by people who take pepper sauce seriously, was the result that told us the mojo base travels.

How the festival works

There are two halves. The competition is judged blind in the morning across individual, restaurant, and commercial bottler divisions, in red, green, special variety, and pepper sauce categories. The festival itself is the afternoon: hundreds of sauces on tables, bands on the stage, and a crowd that tastes with intent. Bring a bag of chips and a plan. Ours: start mild and work up, drink water not beer between bottles, and skip anything with extract in the ingredients so your palate lasts to 9 pm.

What we are bringing

All five sauces, in heat order: Jalabáo (3 of 10), Piñazo (6), Best Day Ever (8), El Havanero (9), and Matanza (10). Taste them in that order and you will feel the heat scale we print on the label. Ask for the pan con bistec pairing; we will explain.

If you cannot make it

The Chronicle’s festival page posts the winners the same week. Our events calendar has the rest of the season: Sabor Fest in Miami Lakes on October 10, the Upper Keys Nautical Market in February, and the National Fiery Foods & Barbecue Show in Albuquerque in March 2027.