Barilla unveils premium Riccioli pasta, signals fresh innovation at Tuttofood 2026

Barilla used Tuttofood in Milan to make a simple argument about the pasta aisle: even in a category built on tradition, there is still room to change how people cook at home. At Fiera Milano in Rho, the company unveiled Riccioli Al Bronzo, a premium shape in its Al Bronzo line, alongside a Formula 1-linked wheel pasta called Gran Ruote Racing Edition, putting texture, cooking performance and brand theater at the center of its pitch.

Riccioli Al Bronzo is the more serious commercial bet. Barilla says the shape is made in Italy from 100 percent Italian durum wheat and formed with micro-engraved bronze dies that leave a rough surface designed to grip sauce. The product page lists a 9-minute cooking time, a small but practical detail that matters to home cooks who want a premium pasta that still fits a weeknight dinner. In Barilla’s own framing, the Al Bronzo family is built around extraordinary sauce hold, a clear response to shoppers who want more from a dried pasta than just a familiar shape.

Gran Ruote Racing Edition takes a different path. The wheel-inspired pasta extends Barilla’s Formula 1 partnership, announced in April 2025, when Barilla became Formula 1’s Official Pasta Partner in a multi-year deal. Formula 1 said the collaboration would bring pasta bars to the Paddock Club and Paddock, with trackside and digital activations. The new shape, which Barilla said cooks in six minutes and is produced at the Pedrignano plant near Parma, feels designed to sell speed, novelty and a little bit of motorsport swagger as much as dinner.

That manufacturing tie matters because Pedrignano is not just a backdrop. Barilla describes the Parma site as the largest pasta production plant in the world, and the company says guided tours there are booked through December 2026. The launch connected that industrial scale to a premium message that Barilla has been sharpening for years, from its “making pasta since 1877” identity to its Al Bronzo focus on rough, sauce-gripping surfaces and scarpetta-style cues.

The company also wrapped the launch in sustainability language. Barilla says about 50 percent of its electricity consumption came from renewable sources in 2024, that 99.7 percent of its packaging is designed for recycling, and that its 2024 sustainable farming work involved more than 7,000 farmers and 815,000 tons of raw materials. At Tuttofood, Barilla said unused display products would go to Banco Alimentare, which helped 1,755,857 people in 2024, giving the booth’s excess a practical second life.

Tuttofood itself gave the launch a large stage, with more than 4,200 international food companies and 95,000-plus professionals moving through the fair. Barilla’s message was clear inside that crowd: the future pasta aisle is not just about more shapes, but about better sauce grip, better sourcing and, sometimes, a little spectacle.