Civic festival · Munich
Oktoberfest
Munich’s civic festival, which began as a horse race at a royal wedding in 1810 and became the occasion the whole city organises its autumn around.
The festival’s own information service states that the 191st Oktoberfest opens at twelve o’clock on 19 September 2026 with the tapping in the Schottenhamel tent.
Why it started
Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria married Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen on 12 October 1810, and the official festivities ran for five days. A cavalry officer, Andreas Michael Dall’Armi, proposed closing them with a horse race on a meadow outside the city, held on 17 October. The meadow was named Theresienwiese after the bride, and it is still the festival ground. Beer was not the reason it started.
What it is
It is worth being clear about what Oktoberfest actually is, because the international version of it is a caricature. It is a Munich civic festival: a fairground with rides and a shooting range and a livestock heritage, family afternoons, a costume and marksmen’s parade, and beer tents that are the size of small buildings. Munich calls it the Wiesn, after the meadow, and treats it as the city’s own occasion rather than as a beer event that tourists attend.
The beer is tightly controlled. Only Munich breweries may serve, and Münchner Bier has been a protected geographical indication since 1998, held by the six city breweries — Augustiner, Hacker-Pschorr, Hofbräu, Löwenbräu, Paulaner and Spaten. OKTOBERFEST-BIER is separately registered as a collective mark. Both facts come from the German Patent and Trade Mark Office, which is the body that keeps the registers.
What is poured is Festbier: a pale, strong-ish, malt-forward lager built to be drunk by the litre over an afternoon. The amber Märzen that Americans call Oktoberfest beer is the historical predecessor rather than what is served in the tents today, and the divergence is real enough that the two are separate styles in BeerHQ.
The festival has been interrupted repeatedly across two centuries — by war, by epidemic, by inflation, and most recently in 2020 and 2021. That discontinuity is part of the record rather than a footnote to it: an unbroken annual tradition is exactly what Oktoberfest is not.
What happens
Tapping the first caskAnstich — „O’zapft is!“
At noon on the opening Saturday the Mayor of Munich drives a wooden tap into the first cask in the Schottenhamel tent and declares "O’zapft is!" — it is tapped. Nothing may be served anywhere on the ground until this happens, twelve gun salutes then signal the other tents, and the first Maß goes to the Minister-President of Bavaria. The ceremony dates from 1950, not from 1810. How the custom works.
The MaßMaßkrug
Beer is sold only by the litre, in a stamped handled glass. The measure is legally defined, so the fill line is enforceable, and the strength and bitterness of Festbier are set by the fact that a litre is the unit. How the custom works.
The costume and marksmen’s paradeTrachten- und Schützenzug
A parade of traditional-costume associations, marksmen’s clubs, bands and brewery drays through Munich on the first Sunday. It is a nineteenth-century civic invention rather than a folk survival, and it is the part of the festival that is most clearly about Bavaria presenting itself.
The brewery draysEinzug der Wiesnwirte
The tent landlords and the six breweries process onto the ground in decorated horse-drawn carriages on the opening morning, ahead of the tapping. The drays are working brewery vehicles kept for the purpose.
What is poured
What is eaten
- Roast chicken — Hendl — is the tent staple, and is the dish most Munich residents associate with the festival rather than anything more elaborate.
- Ox on the spit, roast pork, giant pretzels, Obatzda and Weisswurst appear across the tents; the food is deliberately plain, salty and built to be eaten alongside a litre of lager.
- Steckerlfisch — whole fish grilled on a stick — is a Bavarian festival food that predates the tents and still has its own stands.
How it has changed
Festivals are usually much less continuous than they are described as being, and the discontinuities are part of the record rather than a footnote to it.
- It began as a horse race with an agricultural show attached. The race was dropped in the twentieth century; the agricultural show survives, held every few years, and is the oldest continuous element.
- The tents grew from small beer stands into permanent-scale temporary buildings over the nineteenth century, as Munich brewing industrialised and the breweries had volume to sell.
- The dates moved earlier into September during the nineteenth century, for the straightforward reason that the weather is better — which is why a festival called Oktoberfest mostly happens in September.
- The beer changed. Märzen gave way to the paler Festbier through the later twentieth century, so the beer served now is not the beer the style name abroad refers to.
- A quieter, traditional-music "Oide Wiesn" section was added in 2010 for the two-hundredth anniversary and retained, in deliberate contrast to the amplified music in the large tents.
What people get wrong
Oktoberfest is a beer festival.
It is a civic folk festival with fairground rides, parades, a marksmen’s tradition and an agricultural show, at which very large amounts of beer are served. Munich treats it as the city’s festival; the beer-festival framing is largely how it is understood abroad.
It has run every year since 1810.
It has been cancelled many times — for war, epidemic and economic crisis, and most recently in 2020 and 2021. The 2026 edition is numbered the 191st despite more than two hundred years having passed, which is the arithmetic of those gaps.
The tapping ceremony is an ancient tradition.
It began in 1950, when Mayor Thomas Wimmer tapped the first cask and needed seventeen blows to do it. It is a hundred and forty years younger than the festival.
Oktoberfest beer is the amber Märzen sold under that name abroad.
The tents serve Festbier, which is paler and drier. Märzen is the historical predecessor, and the amber "Oktoberfest" beer widely sold outside Germany follows the older profile rather than what is actually poured on the Theresienwiese.
Any brewery can sell beer there.
Only Munich breweries may serve. Münchner Bier is a protected geographical indication held by the six city breweries, and the festival’s operating regulations restrict service to them.
Questions
What beer is served at Oktoberfest?
Festbier — a pale, malt-forward lager of around 5.8–6.3%, brewed for the festival by the six Munich breweries and sold by the litre. It is not the amber Märzen sold as "Oktoberfest beer" in the United States; that is the older style the tents moved away from during the twentieth century.
Why is Oktoberfest in September?
Because the weather is better. The festival started in October 1810 with a horse race on 17 October, and the dates were moved progressively earlier during the nineteenth century so that more of it fell in warmer weather. It still ends on the first Sunday in October, which is the surviving link to the original date.
Which breweries serve at Oktoberfest?
Only Munich breweries. Münchner Bier has been a protected geographical indication since 1998, held by the six city breweries — Augustiner, Hacker-Pschorr, Hofbräu, Löwenbräu, Paulaner and Spaten — and the festival’s operating regulations restrict service to them.
When did Oktoberfest start?
With the wedding of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen on 12 October 1810. The festivities closed with a horse race on a meadow outside the city on 17 October, and that meadow — named Theresienwiese after the bride — is still the site. The city took the festival on as an annual event from 1819.
Connected
Breweries with a formal role: Hofbräu München
Where it happens: Beer hall
Brewing traditions: Bavarian lager brewing
Last reviewed 2026-08-29. Status checked 2026-08-29.
Evidence
What BeerHQ knows about this, and how. Every statement carries the state of the evidence behind it rather than being presented flatly as fact.
BeerHQ publishes no attendance or consumption figures for major beer festivals, because the figures in general circulation are organiser estimates repeated without attribution and BeerHQ cannot check them.
BeerHQ’s own reading Last checked 2026-08-16.
OKTOBERFEST-BIER is registered as a collective mark, under German registration DE 1040818 and European registration EM 220772.
Checked against the source Applies in European Union. Last checked 2026-08-16.
Source: DPMA, "It’s tapped" — trade marks and geographical indications for German beer, paragraph on the OKTOBERFEST-BIER collective mark
The beer served in the Oktoberfest tents today is Festbier — pale and dry — rather than the amber Märzen widely sold internationally under the Oktoberfest name, which follows the older profile the tents moved away from during the twentieth century.
BeerHQ’s own reading
Oktoberfest has not run continuously since 1810: it has been cancelled on many occasions for war, epidemic and economic crisis, most recently in 2020 and 2021, which is why the 2026 edition is numbered the 191st.
Backed by a source
Source: Oktoberfest.de — the official Munich Oktoberfest information service, festival numbering on the opening ceremony page
Oktoberfest originates in the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria to Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen on 12 October 1810, whose festivities closed with a horse race on 17 October on a meadow subsequently named the Theresienwiese after the bride.
Backed by a source
Source: Oktoberfest.de — the official Munich Oktoberfest information service, history of Oktoberfest, section on 1810