There are many reasons to attend the Puro Vida Cigar Festival, November 21–22, 2026, but perhaps the most compelling is the combination of experience and extraordinary value.
Costa Rica is one of the world’s most desirable travel destinations: sophisticated, naturally spectacular and remarkably easy to reach from the United States. Yet this is also an opportunity to experience an international premium cigar festival at a cost significantly below that associated with many of the cigar world’s established destination events.
With thoughtful planning, an on-the-ground budget of approximately $1,000 can cover hotel accommodation, festival transportation, farm and factory visits, activities, workshops and educational sessions, as well as breakfasts, lunches and dinners. International airfare is separate, but with numerous nonstop connections into San José from major U.S. gateways, getting there is straightforward. For PCA members and aficionados who have considered traveling internationally for cigars but have hesitated because of cost or complexity, Costa Rica may be one of the most accessible opportunities yet.
Costa Rica possesses a fascinating boutique premium cigar industry, small in scale but rich in character, craftsmanship and ambition. The festival provides rare access to the people and places behind it—from tobacco cultivation and curing to fermentation, rolling and finished cigars.
One of the most extraordinary sights awaits in the mountains of Puriscal. Here, tobacco is not simply grown in a mountain region or on a valley floor surrounded by peaks. The plants grow on the hillsides and slopes of the mountains themselves, which rise more than 2,000 feet above sea level among tropical vegetation, mist, rivers and waterfalls. It is a striking landscape and an exceptionally unusual setting for premium tobacco cultivation—one of those experiences that even seasoned cigar travelers are unlikely to have encountered elsewhere.
Attendees will walk through the fields, visit the nursery and curing barn, see fermentation firsthand and follow the journey of the leaf before entering the factory and observing the craftsmanship that ultimately creates a premium cigar. That is the essence of Puro Vida: not simply smoking cigars in Costa Rica, but understanding Costa Rican cigars through the land, the people and the process that create them.
The festival is equally a celebration of the country itself. Costa Rica has built an international reputation around exceptional natural beauty and refined agricultural products, and the program deliberately brings these worlds together. Alongside tobacco and cigars, guests will experience Costa Rican specialty coffee, fine chocolate, local gastronomy, tropical ingredients and warm Pura Vida hospitality.
Farm and factory visits are balanced with rolling experiences, tastings, social gatherings, dinners, music, brand encounters and the relaxed camaraderie that makes destination cigar events memorable. In other words, this is as much a cultural and tourism experience as it is a cigar festival—an opportunity to enjoy mountains and tropical landscapes, discover an emerging cigar origin, taste some of Costa Rica’s finest products and still have time to enjoy San José and the surrounding region.
PCA is proud to participate as Co-Organizing Partner because Costa Rica represents precisely the kind of premium cigar ecosystem that deserves greater international visibility: entrepreneurial, artisanal and deeply connected to agriculture and craftsmanship.
“Costa Rica represents exactly the kind of premium cigar community PCA wants to engage more deeply: entrepreneurial, artisanal, quality-driven and connected to a proud agricultural tradition,” says PCA CEO Joshua Habursky. “We look forward to welcoming PCA members and aficionados to experience this industry firsthand, meet the people behind it and support its continued development.”
Education from The Cigar Academy by PCA will also form part of the weekend, giving attendees the opportunity to connect what they have seen in the fields and factory with structured cigar knowledge and professional certification.
Ultimately, the invitation is simple: Come to Costa Rica. Walk through tobacco growing on the side of a mountain. Enter the curing barn. Meet the cigarmakers. Taste exceptional coffee and chocolate. Enjoy the food, the landscape, the people and the cigars—and do it all in one of the world’s most sought-after destinations, at a level of value that is difficult to find elsewhere in the international cigar calendar.
—
Space is limited and early registration is encouraged. Festival & Registration: www.purovidafest.com/en, Information: info@purovidafest.com.
This story first appeared in PCA The Magazine, Volume 3, 2026. To receive a copy of this magazine, you must be a current PCA member. Join or renew today.
