How much more time will we have to wait for the mushrooms to come out?

GironaA year ago, the mushroom season was very good. In the months of October and November, the craze to find them filled the forests of Catalonia with cars and enthusiasts with full baskets. This 2026, however, the forecasts are much more pessimistic and the calendar has been delayed. Mushroom pickers, farmers, forest owners, and mycologists, who know the terrain closely and know exactly which shady spots to look in depending on how the weather evolves, agree on the diagnosis: everything is very dry and for the moment very few have come out, even though the heavy rains of the last few days may improve the situation. Mind you, it is necessary for the rainfall to remain constant for a few days, for the temperature to moderate, and the results will start to be noticed in two or three weeks.

"We are expectant and have a little hope. Basically, we need it to rain and also for there to be no wind, which is the worst enemy of mushrooms, as it lifts the surface layer of the forest where the fungi fruit," explains Miguel Ángel Pérez, a mycologist from the Girona association Joaquim Codina, linked to the University of Girona, which is in charge of X-raying the situation week by week and works with fairs and natural parks. Pérez points out that an easterly storm would be needed, with light rain for two or three days, and then, since it has been a very, very dry summer, a "spectacular fruiting" could occur. "Most of the mushrooms we cook to eat are mycorrhizal, those that form an association with trees and plants, and these, if they do not have the conditions, do not come out, but they can come out the following year or after two years. They do not need to fruit to stay alive, because the mycelium, the underground fungus, is waiting for the ideal moment," argues the mycologist.

If these meteorological conditions are met, by mid-October, porcini mushrooms, penny buns, and Caesar's mushrooms could start to appear. Others, such as mouse pinkgills, saffron milk caps, and pine mushrooms, which need the temperature to drop a little more, are usually later.

Fairs on hold and worried farmers

The presumed first bloom of October will coincide with the first mushroom fairs throughout Catalonia. One of the most famous is that of Llagostera, a town with a strong mushroom-picking tradition, flanked by the Gavarres and Cadiretes massifs, which is celebrated during the Immaculate Conception long weekend. "On the 11th we have a mushroom-hunting contest; we trust that some will have already sprouted, although it will surely be after the fair when the explosion derived from the rains of late September occurs," comments Adrià Guinó, Councilor for Culture and Festivals of the Llagostera City Council. Other fairs, such as the one in Albons, have been postponed until November in anticipation of better omens.

Faced with the possibility of few mushrooms, and with the recent experience of the harshest years of drought, the fairs have also become accustomed to seeking alternatives to freshly picked local mushrooms with offers of derivatives such as dried mushrooms, jams, creams, preserves, or pâtés.

For their part, farmers, who are accustomed to walking the forests and sensing the state of the land very well to know when to sow, are also a good thermometer: "As long as the reservoirs are full and they have water in Barcelona, everyone is calm. But the reality is that after a very hot summer, without rain, with low humidity and long days, we have a deep drought. The springs, which had a good dynamic, are back in regression. And many holm oaks, hackberry trees, ash trees, and oaks, which have had to draw water from the subsoil and have transpired more than normal, have died and are dropping their leaves," says Josep Valldossera, a farmer from Santa Coloma de Farners, who operates in the Selva and Garrotxa regions.

In the Pyrenees, a summer without mushrooms

And in the mountains, where conditions are usually more favorable, it is much the same. Above a thousand meters, mushrooms bloom during the summer until October, and this year there have been none. This is how Eva Martínez, an environmental activist and resident of Espinavell, near the Ulldeter valley, describes it. "It has been a terrible year, not only for mushrooms but also for the herbs. The drought has mistreated everything. Since it did not rain until the second half of August, the first bloom already passed by. Many days one sees people coming down with half-empty baskets and long faces. From time to time, one finds a sheltered spot and fills a basket, but in general, it is a bad season," she corroborates.

And towards the Cadí, the same. Josep Pintó, a forest owner from Sant Llorenç de Morunys, below the Port del Comte station, summarizes it: "Zero, and now in October, it is already too late. With the rain these days, I don't know if we will make it, because the temperature drops immediately and, with the frosts, they no longer come out." His land, in other years, was full of them, to the point that a constant trickle of mushroom pickers would come. To control the situation and encourage respect for the environment, Pintó established a system of access twelve years ago with a reservation phone number and a five-euro ticket. Last year he had to limit visitors to ten per day, but this summer no one has called to request entry.