Rosenheimer Herbstfest

Every summer's end, Rosenheim's Loretowiese fills for sixteen days with the Rosenheimer Herbstfest, Upper Bavaria's big autumn answer to Munich's Oktoberfest. The 2027 edition runs Saturday, August 28 through Sunday, September 12, opening with a festival parade and barrel-tapping ceremony at the AuerBräu Festhalle and Flötzinger Festzelt around midday. Grounds and hall entry are free — you pay only for rides, food, and drinks — and Tracht is welcome, though far from required. Kindertag Wednesdays bring reduced ride prices for families, and a fireworks display lights up the Festwiese partway through the run.

The festival's roots trace to 1861, when a five-yearly regional agricultural exhibition on the Loretowiese was expanded with a shooting competition and singing contest into a genuine Volksfest. The 2026 edition marked its 165th year, but that's a long history rather than an unbroken one: the festival was cancelled during a regional cholera outbreak in 1873, throughout the First World War, and again in 2020 and 2021 for COVID-19. Regional press describes it as Bavaria's third-largest Volksfest, a claim worth taking with its own caveat — Bavaria's official tourism materials more conservatively scope Rosenheim as the largest Volksfest in southeastern Upper Bavaria, and several of the state's other big Volksfeste, including Augsburg's Plärrer and Nuremberg's Volksfest, draw comparable crowds, so any single statewide ranking depends on how you count.

Beyond the beer tents, the festival's second week brings a distinctly local highlight easy to miss if you only plan around the AuerBräu Festhalle and Flötzinger Festzelt: the Erntedankfest, a harvest-thanksgiving church procession on the first Sunday in September that carries the Erntekrone, a woven harvest crown, from Max-Josefs-Platz through town and back to the Festwiese, with Trachtenvereine and marching bands in tow. It's a genuine, recurring piece of the festival's cultural program, not a beer-tent sideshow. The 2026 edition backed up the Herbstfest's reputation as a well-run, welcoming event — organizers, brewers, and showmen called it a full success, with roughly one million visitors over the run, good weather throughout, and fewer police incidents than the year before. Reserve a tent table ahead by phone if you want a guaranteed evening seat; otherwise, the grounds are free to wander, and the sixteen-day span makes it easy to pick a quieter weekday visit over a crowded weekend. See the Rosenheimer Herbstfest or explore Upper Bavaria.