It began with a royal wedding
On 12 October 1810, Crown Prince Ludwig of BAVARIA married Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen, and the people of MUNICH were invited to celebrate on a meadow outside the city gates. The festivities ended with a horse race. People enjoyed it so much that it was held again the next year, and the year after. The meadow was named Theresienwiese, Therese's meadow, in honour of the bride, and locals still call the festival the Wiesn, the meadow.
Oktoberfest now mostly takes place in September. It was moved earlier because the weather in late September is warmer, and it ends on the first Sunday in OCTOBER. Around six or seven million people visit over about two weeks, making it one of the biggest festivals in the world. It has been cancelled a number of times, during wars, in two outbreaks of cholera in the 1800s, and in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic.
It is tapped!
The festival officially opens at noon on the first day, when the Mayor of Munich knocks a tap into the first BARREL in one of the big TENT halls and shouts O'zapft is!, Bavarian for it is tapped. Only breweries from Munich itself are allowed to serve drinks at the festival. Some of the tents hold several thousand people at long tables, with an OOMPAH band playing brass music and POLKA tunes from a central stage, and servers carry armfuls of heavy one-litre glass mugs, a STEIN in each hand and often many more. In 2017 a German server set a record by carrying twenty-nine full mugs over forty metres.
Lederhosen, dirndls and a bow that sends a message
Many visitors wear traditional BAVARIAN clothes. Men wear LEDERHOSEN, leather shorts with braces, once practical working clothes for farmers and hunters because leather lasted for years. Women wear the DIRNDL, a dress with a fitted bodice, blouse and apron. The side on which the apron bow is tied is said to send a message: on the left means single, on the right means married or taken, and at the back is traditionally for widows and waitresses.
On the first Sunday, a huge costume PARADE of around nine thousand people in traditional dress from all over Bavaria and beyond, with horse-drawn carts, marching bands and rifle clubs, winds through the city. It is one of the largest FOLK parades in GERMANY.
A fair as well as a festival
Oktoberfest is also a giant funfair, with a Ferris wheel, roller coasters and an old-fashioned CAROUSEL, and families come for the rides as much as anything. The food is hearty: a giant PRETZEL, a grilled BRATWURST or other SAUSAGE, roast chicken and gingerbread hearts on ribbons, iced with messages and worn around the neck. Visitors raise a MUG and a TOAST with a cry of CHEERS, prost in German. The horse races that started it all carried on until 1960. Oktoberfests are copied all over the world, and some of the largest outside Germany are held in Blumenau in Brazil and in Kitchener-Waterloo in Canada, both settled by German immigrants. Our European countries page covers Germany and its neighbours.