Concordia: Quai d'Orsay Gets Its Second Limited Edition, and a Vitola It Has Never Had
Premiered at Las Ventas in Madrid before more than 400 guests, the Concordia is a new 50 x 145 mm Preciosos, aged at least two years in every leaf, in boxes of 20 at 914 euros. It is the only Edición Limitada announced for 2026 so far.
Habanos, S.A. has given its most French brand the rarest honour in its gift. The Quai d'Orsay Concordia Edición Limitada 2026 was unveiled in a world premiere on October 24 in Madrid, during La Nuit d'Orsay at the Las Ventas bullring, and Habanos published its full release on October 27. Quai d'Orsay dates to 1974, and in all that time it has been given a Limited Edition only once before, the Senadores of 2019. Concordia is the second. Trade coverage of the launch also notes a wider distinction: as the calendar stands, Concordia is the only Edición Limitada announced for 2026, in a program that usually runs to about three releases a year.
When a brand releases this rarely, each edition has to carry the whole argument for the brand in a single box.
The evening was built as a Parisian set piece inside a Spanish monument. Organized by Club Pasión Habanos, the premiere welcomed more than 400 guests and restyled the bullring in the manner of the Belle Epoque, the period the brand treats as its spiritual home. An aperitif was served beneath the interior arches, dinner followed under a marquee in the arena, and the music ran from jazz at the table to a headline set that opened with La Vie en Rose and worked forward through the decades from 1974, the year the brand was founded.
A new size, and a darker leaf
Concordia arrives in a factory name the brand has never used: Preciosos, a straight-sided parejo measuring 145 mm in length with a 50 ring gauge. The format is new to the Quai d'Orsay portfolio, and it carries the full Limited Edition treatment. Wrapper, binder and filler have each been aged for at least two years, and the wrapper has had extended fermentation, which deepens its colour and gives it an oily texture. The result is a visibly darker cigar than the light-toned wrappers the brand is known for. The cigar is totally handmade with long filler from Vuelta Abajo leaf, and each one carries three bands: the brand band, the 2026 Limited Edition band and a foot band.
Juan Girón, Communications Director at Tabacalera, presented the cigar in Madrid in terms of its proportions: "With a ring gauge of 50 and a length of 145 mm, it is a cigar of incredible proportions. It is visually stunning, which is why its vitola de galera is, quite fittingly, called 'Preciosos'." Habanos lists the strength as light, in keeping with the brand's character, and gives a smoking time of 45 to 50 minutes. Its published tasting notes, which are the maker's own and not a review, describe cedar and toasted hazelnut before lighting, cocoa and a floral note once lit, and a progression through creamy smoke and nuts to woody and citrus touches, closing on leather and dark chocolate.
The diplomatic brand
The name is a Paris address. Concordia honors the Place de la Concorde, and the reference is deliberate. Habanos traces the brand to Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who held the finance portfolio in Paris at the time: France, on that account, should have a cigar house of its own, its cigars made to be presented, a diplomatic gift able to stand beside the country's other luxury goods. A brand invented as an instrument of French presentation has kept that register for fifty years, which is why a bullring dressed as the Belle Epoque is less a theme than a homecoming staged abroad.
That history also explains the restraint of the release pattern. Quai d'Orsay is one of the smaller names in the Habanos portfolio of 27 brands, and Limited Editions have not been spent on it often: one in 2019, and now one in 2026. When a brand releases this rarely, each edition has to carry the whole argument for the brand in a single box. Concordia makes that argument with format and time rather than with strength: a new vitola, an extra two years on every leaf, and a wrapper fermented past the house norm.
Price, and what is not yet known
The presentation is a specially designed box of 20 cigars, and the recommended retail price Habanos published with the release is 914 euros for the box, which works out at 45.70 euros per cigar. Spain, as the premiere market, is expected to see the cigar first. Habanos has not announced a worldwide release date, and no production number has been published, so collectors outside Spain are in the familiar position of watching their distributors and Casa del Habano stores for allocation news rather than a date.
What is settled is the shape of the thing: the year's only announced Limited Edition belongs to the portfolio's quietest French name, in a size it has never rolled before. For a brand created to be given away beautifully in 1974, a 914 euro box premiered in a bullring dressed as Paris is a coherent piece of theatre. Whether the cigar itself justifies the staging is a question the first smokers in Spain are now answering.
