Every article about New Glarus written in the past eighteen months ends with some version of the same sentence: big things are coming in 2026. The New Glarus Hotel is getting a $7 million restoration. The New Glarus Brewing Company is midway through a $55 million expansion at its Hilltop facility. Together that's more than $62 million of construction in a village of about 2,360 people, and both projects keep getting attached to the same headline year.
Live here and you already know the truth is more layered than that. One of those projects isn't opening to the public in 2026 at all. The other missed its own announced date by close to a year and still hasn't set a new one. Meanwhile, the town's actual dining rotation, the places you'd pick for a Tuesday dinner or a drink after Wilhelm Tell rehearsal, has already turned over without waiting on either ribbon cutting.
The Hilltop Won't Take Visitors Until Next Summer
New Glarus Brewing Co. broke ground on its Hilltop expansion on Oct. 29, 2024. The 65,000-square-foot addition, designed by architect Katherine May (daughter of founders Dan and Deb Carey), will roughly double the brew hall, add a distillery under the Sugar River Distillery name, and quadruple Hilltop parking to 183 stalls. Keller Inc., the Wisconsin-based employee-owned contractor running the job, has kept it on schedule, and construction is still on track to wrap this fall, which is where most of the "2026" coverage stops.
Finishing the building and reopening it are two different dates. According to a November 2025 update from All About Beer and WMTV15's reporting, the brewery plans to spend the winter and spring of 2027 moving in equipment, hiring staff, and starting up the new kettles before it opens to visitors again, sometime in early summer 2027. That's roughly nine months past the fall 2026 completion date that shows up in most write-ups, and it means anyone circling this Oktoberfest as the brewery's comeback moment has the wrong year.
In the meantime, the gift shop, tasting room, and Beer Depot are running out of a temporary space at 218 Hoesly Drive, open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. If you want an early look at the construction, the brewery runs Hard Hat Tours every Friday at 1 p.m. And in a bit of a role reversal, the original Riverside Brewery on the village's north side, quiet on the public side since Hilltop took over in 2007, is back to offering self-guided tours while its successor sits behind scaffolding.
The Hotel's "Fall 2025" Opening Still Hasn't Happened
The New Glarus Hotel has an even longer gap between announcement and reality. The building at the corner of First Street and Sixth Avenue, built in 1853 and added to the State Register of Historic Places, closed its restaurant in 2021 and lost its ground-floor tenant, Ticino's Pizzeria, the following year. A group of about 20 investors, organized as New Glarus Hotel Group and including Dan Roe, Christina Bleifuss, and Seven Acre Dairy Co. owner Nic Mink, bought the building in February 2024 with plans to bring it back as a supper club called the Yodel Room, alongside a restored Sunken Bar and eight boutique guest rooms upstairs.
Roe told the Monroe Times in August 2024 that the team was aiming for a "grand opening in fall 2025." That date came and went. A follow-up piece from the Monroe Times in March 2026 shows Bachmann Construction still deep into the build. As of this summer, the hotel's own website still asks visitors to join a list for opening updates rather than book a room, which tells you the project has slipped again with no new public date attached.
When it does open, the details are worth knowing. The main-floor music stage is being renamed the Roger Bright Stage, after the late New Glarus bandleader whose group anchored the hotel's polka nights for decades. The restaurant will display family crests from some of New Glarus's original settling families from the canton of Glarus, Switzerland. The balcony overlooking First Street is being restored to its historic open-air layout, with heat lamps planned so it can stay open through winter.
While the Landmarks Waited, the Restaurant Map Redrew Itself
Here's the part that doesn't show up in the construction updates. While both marquee projects sat behind scaffolding, New Glarus's smaller restaurant scene already reorganized itself.
Kristi's, the longtime restaurant in the green Queen Anne Victorian at 119 Fifth Avenue, didn't close. It moved a few blocks to 1407 Second Street. Its old building is now Canter Inn, opened this year by chefs Jon Nodler and Sam Kincaid, a couple who returned to Wisconsin in 2021 after running restaurants in New York and Philadelphia, including their own spot, Cadence, which Food & Wine and Bon Appetit both named among the best new restaurants of 2018. Nodler most recently ran Amara at Hilldale in Madison before the couple settled in Green County. Their menu at Canter Inn leans into that background, with a smashed kalberwurst patty sourced from New Glarus butcher shop Hoesly's Meats and rösti sticks served with Wisconsin fondue, according to a Madison Magazine profile.
"There's a ton of momentum in New Glarus right now," Nodler said, pointing to the brewery expansion and the winery activity around town as part of what made the move make sense.
A few blocks away, Ohana Kitchen has taken over the space that used to be Tofflers Pub & Grill. Reviews from residents describe the room keeping the same sports-bar feel Tofflers had, just with a Hawaiian menu now running the kitchen, poke bowl included.
None of this required a TIF district or a $55 million capital plan. It happened at the pace restaurants actually change hands, which is faster than most construction schedules.
Two Dates on the Calendar That Aren't Waiting on Anything
Whatever happens with the hotel and the brewery, New Glarus's festival calendar runs on its own clock, and two dates are close enough right now to plan around.
- Wilhelm Tell Festival, Aug. 22-23. The pageant has run on Labor Day weekend since 1938, staged by more than 200 local volunteers on the Wilhelm Tell Grounds just east of downtown. Tickets are sold at the gate only, $10 for adults and $5 for kids. The Chamber of Commerce does not sell them.
- Oktoberfest, Sept. 24-27. Free admission to the festival tent on First Street all weekend, with New Glarus Brewing Co.'s own Oktoberfest release, Staghorn, on tap alongside the usual lineup. Because the Hilltop facility is still closed, the beer is coming from existing production, not a reopened tasting room.
That last detail is worth sitting with. This Oktoberfest will look and feel like every other one, but the brewery pouring the beer is still a construction site to visitors. The festival doesn't need the Hilltop reopening to happen. New Glarus rarely waits on its own landmarks to keep moving.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
If you're waiting for a ribbon cutting to feel like New Glarus has turned a corner, you're looking at next summer at the earliest for the brewery, and an undetermined date for the hotel. But if you've already eaten at Canter Inn, or noticed Kristi's new sign a few blocks over, or ordered a poke bowl where you used to order wings at Tofflers, the corner has already been turned. It's just happening in smaller buildings than the ones getting all the press.
That's usually how it goes in a town this size. The big capital projects make the headlines and set the timeline everyone repeats. The actual texture of daily life, where you eat, where you sit, whose name is on the sign, moves on its own schedule, and it doesn't ask anyone's permission first.
If you're watching how a town like New Glarus changes and wondering what it means for property values or timing a move, that's the kind of on-the-ground read our team stays close to. MHB Real Estate works Dane County and the surrounding communities every day. Get started whenever you're ready to talk it through.
