The accordion industry began as hundreds of workshops and settled into a handful of clusters. This is the map as it stands in October 2026 — compiled from the makers’ own sites and the trade press, with the caveats stated where the picture is less tidy than the brochures suggest.
Italy: the Castelfidardo cluster
No town on earth has shaped the instrument more than Castelfidardo, in the Marche region — recognised by the regional government itself as one of the world’s principal accordion-production centres. A community-maintained roster currently lists around thirty-five active firms carrying the town as their seat (with more small workshops likely uncounted).
The names most players know are all still within a few streets of each other: Pigini and Scandalli, Bugari Armando — which absorbed Zero Sette and the Giulietti heritage in 2007 — Paolo Soprani (now under Pasco Italia), Victoria and Beltuna, hand-building since 1982. Not all the cluster’s history runs smooth: Dino Baffetti lost part of its workshop to a fire in March 2024 and was manufacturing again by that summer.
The wider Marche is part of the map too: Castagnari builds its diatonic instruments in Recanati, and Serenellini works in Loreto. And one newer name came from far away: Siwa & Figli, founded in Belgrade in 1985 by Ivan Stanojlovic, moved to Castelfidardo in 2005 and now advertises 100% made-in-Italy production.
Germany: one survivor and one silence
Hohner still builds in Trossingen, its home since 1857. The company’s own careful phrasing is worth quoting exactly: “a significant proportion of the instruments are still manufactured in Germany”. A significant proportion — not all. The budget lines (Bravo, Amica, Nova) are widely reported by the community as Chinese-built and quality-checked in Germany; that is a report, and this archive labels it as one. The Trossingen factory runs tours, if you ever want to watch the craft in person.
Weltmeister, the Klingenthal brand that was the GDR’s accordion giant, is a different entry: the firm entered insolvency in 2023, and production stopped in November 2024, with no confirmed restart as this map was compiled. Its website is gone — a reminder that a brand can be “active” in search results long after the workshop falls silent.
France: a creator’s address, an unpublished workshop
Saltarelle has been creating diatonics since 1984 from Chênôve in Burgundy, with more than forty models across three collections. Where exactly the instruments are physically assembled is — by the company’s choice — not published anywhere. An honest blank on the map.
United States: the Seattle house
Petosa, “North America’s accordion company” since 1922, works from Seattle: house lines petosa and Americana pairing Italian reed work — a partnership with the reed-maker Voci Armoniche, whose BlueStar voices have topped the range since 2022 — with American assembly. The shop also sells Bugari, Hohner, Anacleto and Roland alongside its own names, a map of the modern retail side in itself.
Russia: both factories are alive
Contrary to the assumption that the Soviet bayan works went quiet, both answering factories are still at it. Tula (“Тульская гармонь”) builds bayans from student models to concert instruments marked “Made in Russia”, with repair services and even factory tours. Jupiter (“Юпитер”, Moscow), founded in 1994 on the base of the old Experimental Musical Instruments Factory, still makes bayans by hand — “techniques that cannot be replaced by conveyor production”, in its own words — and sells directly to players.
The caveats this map owes you
1. “Active brand” is not the same as “producing right now.” Weltmeister stopped in late 2024; Dallapè, one of Italy’s oldest houses, closed in October 2010. Both still have proud websites and active search results. Our brand pages carry the true status.
2. Zero Sette is in limbo: associated with Bugari since 2007, but its own site errors out; its 2011 catalogue survives while current production cannot be confirmed from open sources.
3. “Made in” belongs to a line, not always to the brand. The Hohner case above is the clearest example: the same badge covers German-built conservatory instruments and Chinese-built student lines.
4. One maker simply does not say. Saltarelle’s country of manufacture is not published at all.
For dating, this map has a practical reading: the further an instrument is from the golden age of published ledgers (Wheatstone) and dated serial charts (Hohner to 1987), the more the answer comes from model generations and catalogue years rather than serials — except for one modern window that really is decodable: Weltmeister’s YY/#### format and Roland’s alphabetic date code, 1989–2010.