As I write this, Oktoberfest in Munich is about to end on October 3rd. Oktoberfest, which begins in September, is by far Germany’s largest and most famous folk festival (Volksfest), but there are many other attractive options all across Germany.

An aerial view of the Cranger Kirmes in Herne just after sunset. Herne’s fair is the biggest folk festival in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, and one of the largest in Germany. It takes place in August. Learn more below. PHOTO: © Stadtmarketing Herne GmbH, Markus Reddig

These other events take place at different times of year than Oktoberfest, with two of them celebrated right in Munich, at the same Theresienwiese location: the Frühlingsfest spring festival in April and May, and the Tollwood Festival in December.

But what about the many other beer (or wine!) folk festivals in Germany? To qualify for our list a festival has to have most of the same features as Oktoberfest:

• A festive event with food and drink served in tents or halls.
• A celebration of a historic event or tradition.
• Amusement rides with a fun-fair kind of atmosphere.
• A duration of at least a week or more.

In fact there are many such events all across Germany in the course of a year. Depending on the location, a city may have a spring, a summer, a fall, or a winter festival. Some cities have festivals in two different seasons – for instance, spring and fall editions of the same or a similar festival. But for our list, the event has to be one of the bigger festivals, and have a noted tradition. Some of the bigger ones are located in places with less familiar names. (Herne, anyone?)

One more point worth mentioning: Some of the events listed below can still be visited in 2023! Among those are folk festivals in Bremen and Stuttgart. For those that have already happened in 2023, our guide can help you plan for next year! I myself have added the Wurstmarkt wine festival in Bad Dürkheim to my personal list of events I would like to visit next year (in September).

Cannstatter Wasen (Stuttgart)
This annual fair is only a few years younger than, and second in size to Oktoberfest in Munich. Officially known as the Cannstatter Volksfest, the “Wasen” (meadow, fairground), as it is known locally, begins about a week after Munich’s big beer festival, and lasts until 8 October in 2023. The Wasen is held at the Neckar Park in the Stuttgart district of Bad Cannstatt, which was a separate community named Kannstadt when the festival began in 1818.

Stuttgart’s Volksfest began as an agricultural fair, largely in response to the impact of the Napoleonic wars and the Year Without a Summer in 1816 – caused by the massive eruption of Mount Tambora in April 1815 in the Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia). The resulting cooling of the planet in following years was a global agricultural disaster, including in Germany. Crop failures caused food shortages and economic hardship. In 1818, the hard-hit Kingdom of Württemberg decided to establish both an agricultural festival and an agricultural educational institution, today’s University of Hohenheim. Ever since its first celebration with 30,000 guests and workers, the Wasen has been a popular annual event in Stuttgart. Now in its 176th edition, the Wasen has only been canceled occasionally by wars or pandemics.

A view of the Cannstatter Wasen in 2012 taken from the 60-meter-high Ferris wheel. PHOTO: Zavijava2, via German Wikipedia, CC-BY-SA-3.0

Many people who have attended both the Munich and Stuttgart events prefer the latter for its lower emphasis on beer guzzling, its family friendly atmosphere, and its more manageable crowd sizes. Like its counterpart in Munich the Wasen opens with a beer keg tapping ceremony on the opening Friday (22 September in 2023). The festival parade takes place on the first Sunday, featuring decorated horse-drawn brewery wagons, historical vehicles, colorful groups in traditional costumes and bands, agricultural displays, and a variety of groups from throughout Baden-Württemberg proceeding from the Cannstatter Kursaal to the Wasen. Wednesdays are Family Day, with half-price parking and events catering to kids and families. Four local breweries offer their beer brands. The amusement rides, sales booths, halls and tents draw visitors for a total of 17 days, ending on Sunday, 8 October in 2023. A smaller version of the fair, the Stuttgarter Frühlingsfest, is held at the same site in the spring.
WEB > 176th Cannstatter Volksfest (official site, 2023)
WEB > Cannstatter Volksfest-Verein – This organization in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2022. Its local 151st Cannstatter Volksfest took place on 2-4 September 2023 (Labor Day weekend).

Cranger Kirmes (Herne)
The word Kirmes is Low German or Dutch for kermess or kermis, originally meaning the feast day of a local patron saint. Later the term was used to refer to a fair or carnival honoring the saint on their feast day. Kirmes is a common term for a fun-fair in northwestern Germany’s Rhine-Ruhr region. The Cranger Kirmes is a folk festival (Volksfest) that takes place near the Rhine–Herne Canal in the Crange district of the city of Herne (pop. 156,621) in the Ruhr metro region between the much larger cities of Bochum and Gelsenkirchen. With some 3.8 million visitors in 2023, Crange is the biggest folk festival in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, and one of the largest in Germany. It runs for eleven days beginning on the first Thursday in August, and ending on a Sunday.

With an event area of only 8.3 ha (110,000 sq. meters, 1,200,000 sq ft), Herne’s festival has under a quarter of the area that Oktoberfest and the Wasen have. Along with some 500 vendors and ride operators, the Cranger Kirmes is often called the “most overcrowded fair in the world.” Yet an online travel portal has proclaimed it the most popular one in all of Germany.

Although the first known record of the fun-fair (Jahrmarkt) in Herne dates back to 1703, one can only speculate about why it was established in a proclamation by the Royal Prussian government in Kleve, near the Dutch border. The 1703 document refers to a long tradition going back another 200 years to about 1500. The 2023 event was labeled the 539th edition of the Kirmes in Crange. Today’s festival features all the usual attractions, including Ferris wheels, carousels, roller coasters, carnival games, food stalls, and raffles. Beer takes a back seat at this event, with only a single beer hall. Next year’s 2024 Kirmes is scheduled for 1-11 August.
WEB > Cranger Kirmes (official site)

Wurstmarkt in Bad Dürkheim
Although you’d never guess it from its name, the Wurstmarkt (“sausage market”) is actually a wine festival! In fact it claims to be the world’s largest wine festival, with over 600,000 visitors each year. This September event takes place in the small town of Bad Dürkheim (pop. 18,576), in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate (Rheinland-Pfalz), within a day trip from several larger nearby cities (Kaiserslautern, Mannheim, Heidelberg, Worms, Ludwigshafen a. Rh.) in the Rhine-Neckar metro area. Bad Dürkheim is a scenic spa town located on the German Wine Route (Deutsche Weinstraße). The Isenach river flows west to east through the town, and Bad Dürkheim earned its official “Bad” (spa) designation in 1904, thanks to its seven mineral springs.

The Bad Dürkheimer Riesenfaß (Giant Wine Barrel) is a landmark of the Wurstmarkt. Today the huge former wine barrel houses a restaurant. PHOTO: Urbanus, via German Wikipedia, CC-BY-SA-2.0

The Wurstmarkt got its start in 1417 as a pilgrimage event called “Michaelismarkt” atop a 147-meter tall hill named the Michelsberg, located about a kilometer away from Bad Dürkheim. The growing number of pilgrims to the chapel attracted farmers, vintners, and merchants in the area, who carted their goods up the hill and sold them to the hungry and thirsty visitors. Over time, the September 29th (Saint Michael’s Day) pilgrimage market moved down from the hill to the Brühlwiesen, the same meadow where today’s Wurstmarkt takes place, selling pretty much the same fare (wine, sausages, and bread) that was consumed in the 15th century. Following the Protestant Reformation, the religious aspect of the event faded, and it became a bit more of a commercial festival, soon expanding to a three-day event. In the early 1800s the Michaelismarkt festival was renamed Wurstmarkt, and the event further expanded to its current length. 2023 marked the 607th Wurstmarkt in Bad Dürkheim, now a ten-day event, split into two five-day long weekends on the second and third weekends of September. (More about that below.)

A unique and very popular feature of the Wurstmarkt is the Literarische Frühschoppen (“literary morning with wine”), a special event that began in the 1960s. On the first Monday of the festival, local and regional poets, musical artists, and writers gather early in the day to read aloud or sing their works in the regional Pfalzer dialect. Even people who don’t understand everything can enjoy the unique atmosphere of the readers’ spoken words, singers’ songs, and the unusual aspect of wine and literature. The Frühschoppen name comes from the Germanic custom of (mostly men) meeting socially for breakfast or lunch served with a glass (or two) of beer or wine, often on Sundays. Der Schoppen is an old German word for a half-liter glass of beer or wine.

Of course, if you’re not that into literature, you have many other options: the many amusement rides, drinking wine (Wein), wine spritzers (Weinschorle), and sparkling wine (Sekt). There’s even beer or cocktails if you prefer! And don’t forget the sausages and other food. The atmosphere of this wine festival has been compared to that of a typical German Christmas market. It is a bit more laid back and intimate than the larger festivals in Munich and Stuttgart. You can also pay a visit to the Weindorf (“wine village”) and watch the crowning of the wine queen. Or you may choose to dine in the Dürkheimer Riesenfaß, a giant wine barrel (world’s largest!) that once had a capacity of 1.7 million liters of wine, but is now a restaurant.

The 2024 Wurstmarkt will take place for ten days, split into two five-day segments on 6-10 and 13-16 September. In between those two segments, there is limited access to festival activities on Wednesdays and Thursdays, a quieter period known as Zwischenmarkt (“in between market”).
WEB > Dürkheimer Wurstmarkt (official website)
WEB > A Guide to Bad Dürkheim’s Wurstmarkt: The Best German Festival You’ve Never Heard Of – An amusing first-hand account of a recent visit to the Wurstfest by a Canadian lady in Germany. Tip: Watch her Wurstmarkt video.

Other Folk Festivals

Below you’ll find brief descriptions of some other German folk festivals in various parts of Germany. In the future we hope to add them to our guide to other Oktoberfest-like events, providing more details.

Rheinkirmes (Düsseldorf)
Until 2022, this big folk festival was officially known somewhat boldly as the Größte Kirmes am Rhein (“largest kermess/fair on the Rhine”), and it is indeed one of the largest fun-fairs in Germany. This ten-day affair takes place annually in Düsseldorf on the left bank of the Rhine in the third week of July (12-21 July 2024). This fair, supported by Düsseldorf’s St. Sebastianus shooting club, has a long history, dating back more than 500 years. The event originally honored St. Apollinaris, the patron saint of marksmen, on 23 July, his feast day. The Rheinkirmes now attracts about 4 million visitors each year.
WEB > Rhine funfair (duesseldorf-tourismus.de)

Freimarkt in Bremen
Bremen’s Freimarkt public fair is the largest in northern Germany and one of the oldest in Germany, dating back to 1035. The word Freimarkt translates as “free market/fair.” Lasting a total of 17 days, Bremen’s Freimarkt is celebrated in the last two weeks of October on the Bürgerweide fairgrounds (100,000 sq. meters), with a smaller version (Kleiner Freimarkt) also in the city center. The second Saturday of the fair features a grand parade called the Freimarktsumzug. The 988th edition (!) takes place from 13 to 29 October 2023. The event draws about 1.5 million guests each year. Reflecting the event’s Karneval-like aspects, the dates of the Freimarkt are referred to as the “Fifth Season,” a Mardi Gras phrase also used for Fasching and Karneval in other parts of Germany.
WEB > Freimarkt Bremen (bremen.eu, in English)

Kieler Woche (Kiel Regatta)
Although this big, international nautical event held in June is primarily a sailing regatta, in recent decades this world-famous affair has added Kiel Week events known as “Sommerfest” that take place in and around the city of Kiel, the capital of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. On the Friday before the official opening, the “Soundcheck” music festival takes place on many stages within the city. The 2024 edition (the 143rd) of the world’s biggest sailing event is scheduled for 22-30 June. The website states: “Tough Sailing – Great Entertainment.” The 2023 Kiel Week regatta in the Olympic Harbor of Schilksee and further out in the Bay of Kiel attracted 3.8 million visitors. In addition to the sailing events, in 2023 there were also many Sommerfest events, including an international food market, (mostly free) concerts of all kinds, live theater, art events, hot-air balloon flights, and much more. The ten-day event always ends on the last Sunday in June with a big fireworks display.
WEB > Kieler Woche (official website, in English)
WEB > Kieler Kultursommer (official website, in German)

– HF

Related: Also see Oktoberfest in North America and What Not to Do at Oktoberfest.