Bialetti launches Moka Day to celebrate Italy’s iconic coffee pot

Bialetti is putting the moka pot back at the center of coffee culture with a new annual Moka Day, a move designed to make the aluminum stovetop brewer feel less like a relic and more like a living category. The celebration will land on April 21, alongside World Creativity and Innovation Day and the opening of Milan Design Week 2026, giving the brand a built-in design-world stage for a machine that has shaped home coffee for generations.

That timing matters because Bialetti is not just commemorating its own history. It is trying to protect a format that still carries real commercial weight. The company says it has sold more than 500 million units over its history, and that moka pots are now in close to 90% of Italian households, with an average annual growth rate of around 7%. In a market crowded with espresso machines, capsules, and cold coffee formats, Bialetti is making the case that manual stovetop brewing still has room to grow.

The company’s pitch leans hard on heritage. Bialetti says the original Moka Express was launched in 1933 by Alfonso Bialetti, and that the name comes from Mokha, Yemen. What began as a domestic shortcut for making coffee became a fixture in Italian kitchens and then a product sold far beyond the country’s borders. Some reporting puts Bialetti’s moka sales at about two million units a year, with distribution in more than 100 countries.

Moka Day is also arriving against a sharper business backdrop. In 2025, Bialetti agreed to be acquired by Luxembourg-based NUO Capital for about €53 million, a deal that gave the classic maker a new ownership structure just as it tries to refresh its relevance. That puts the celebration in a different light: not just as brand nostalgia, but as a repositioning effort for a company that still has one of the most recognizable names in coffee.

The first Moka Day will also spill beyond Italy. Participating locations around the world will serve coffee prepared exclusively with the moka pot, including New York restaurant Roscioli. That global rollout underscores the point Bialetti is making with this campaign: the moka pot is not only a symbol of Italian home coffee, but a brewing device that still has a place in modern routines, if the brand can keep turning memory into momentum.