Olive Garden's Never-Ending Pasta Pass Is Back After Six Years, And There Are Only 10,000
Olive Garden announced on July 13, 2026 that its Never-Ending Pasta Pass is returning for the first time since 2019, offering 10,000 lucky customers 13 consecutive weeks of unlimited pasta, homemade sauces, protein toppings, soup or salad, and breadsticks for a flat fee of $100 plus tax. Passes go on sale at 2 p.m. ET on July 16 at PastaPass.com, with each customer having exactly eight minutes to finalize their purchase once a pass is in their cart before it is released back into the pool. When the passes sell out, which history suggests will happen within minutes, an all-claimed notification will appear on the site. Passholders will receive a physical Pasta Pass by mail and gain early access to the Never-Ending Pasta Bowl promotion beginning August 24, a week before it opens to all diners on August 31. The promotion runs through November 22. The menu spans 120 possible combinations of pasta shapes, sauces, and toppings, with two new additions debuting in 2026: Spicy Alfredo sauce and Crispy Shrimp Fritta.
The Pasta Pass first launched in 2014 with only 1,000 available, sold out almost immediately, and developed a cult following that never quite went away after the pandemic prompted Olive Garden to streamline its operations and quietly retire the promotion. Fans asked about it every year it was absent. The math on the pass strongly favors frequent diners: at $100 for 13 weeks of unlimited visits, passholders break even after approximately seven trips, and in previous eight-week editions of the promotion the average passholder returned ten times. A 13-week pass offers five additional weeks of visits beyond the earlier format, meaning the value proposition is better than it has ever been. The 10,000 quantity available in 2026 is notably smaller than the 24,000 offered in 2019 or the 23,000 offered in 2018, which means competition will be fierce and anyone interested should be on PastaPass.com well before 2 p.m. ET on July 16. Jaime Bunker, Olive Garden's senior vice president of marketing, said the kind of enthusiasm fans had maintained for the pass over six years is rare, and that it had become part of Olive Garden lore. Bringing it back, she said, felt like the right way to recognize that loyalty.
