Events and festivals in Saarland on the weekend of September 19 and 20, 2026: the Erntedank harvest festival in Orscholz marks more than six decades by the Saar loop, alongside village fairs and a jazz festival across the region.
Orscholz, high above the Saar loop. From the Saar loop to the St. Wendel district, festival tents, fairgrounds and a concert hall fill up across Saarland on September 19 and 20, 2026. First stop: Orscholz.
The harvest festival by the Saar loop
High above the Saar loop, in the Mettlach district of Orscholz, a long-established festival of the Saar loop region opens on Saturday at the Cloef-Atrium. It is nothing new.
The Erntedank harvest and heritage festival in Orscholz is more than six decades old and counts as a fixed point on the calendar of the Saar loop region. Every September it draws thousands of visitors around the Cloef-Atrium and the river bend itself.
Saturday belongs to the Erntegaudi harvest party in the festival tent, right at the Cloef-Atrium, while Sunday brings the big procession through Orscholz, followed by a farmers market and a traditional Weisswurst breakfast in the village centre. Visitors who come both days see the Erntegaudi first and the procession the day after.
Both days are fixed for 2026: on September 19, 2026 the tent opens for the Erntegaudi, and on September 20 the procession, market and breakfast follow, with the Cloef-Atrium as the meeting point on both days. The address is Cloefstraße, 66693 Mettlach.
The 19–20 September 2026 dates mark the opening of a festival more than sixty years old in the Saar loop region, its thousands of visitors spread across both days, from the tent on Saturday to the procession on Sunday.
The rest of the weekend across Saarland
In Völklingen, two programmes run side by side: the ten-day FREISTIL_FESTIVAL turns the Völklingen Ironworks into a stage for independent performing arts from the wider region, with theatre, dance, performance and a dedicated programme for young audiences, carried by German-French-Luxembourg cooperations under the motto Get moving. Close by, a second programme begins. Around the new town hall, the Völklingen autumn fair runs at the same time, with fairground rides, stalls, Saarland street food and a flea market of around 45 traders spread across three squares, one of the fixtures on the calendar of the Saarbrücken regional association.
The archangel sets the tone in Wemmetsweiler. The Michelskerb marks the traditional patronal fair of Saint Michael the Archangel, with beer stands, rides and a large fire show at the Bahmert sports ground. Night draws the crowd in Bexbach. The Betschbacher Kerb turns Aloys-Nesseler-Platz into a fairground, with a night market by moonlight as its highlight, where craftspeople and exhibitors from Saarland, Rhineland-Palatinate and Lorraine open their stalls. Ten more days wait further south. Further south on the Saar, the Oktoberfest Bous has been part of the Saarland festival calendar since 2004, running for ten days with a festival tent, live bands, children's days and the long-standing Peter-und-Paul fair, a folk-festival marathon that turns the town into a stronghold of lederhosen and dirndls.
Four more dates cluster in the St. Wendel district this weekend:
- Age counts most in jazz. The International St. Wendel Jazz Days – WND JAZZ rank among the oldest and most renowned jazz festivals in the German-speaking world; organised since 1987 by the St. Wendel jazz society, they mark their 35th edition with a Norwegian focus at the Saalbau St. Wendel and the Kurhaus Harschberg.
- Primstal keeps things familiar. The Kirmes Primstal brings four days of folk festival with a festival tent, live music, carousels and a Sunday morning gathering at the edge of the Saar-Hunsrück nature park.
- Sotzweiler joins in too. The Kirmes Sotzweiler, in the municipality of Tholey, runs four days with a beer tent, rides, club catering and a Sunday morning gathering at the foot of the Schaumberg, Saarland's highest viewpoint.
- Oberthal leans hardest on tradition. The Quetschekerb in Steinberg-Deckenhardt, in the municipality of Oberthal, counts five days with a high mass, a pig-slaughter feast, football matches, a music club and a stage programme among the most traditional village fairs in the St. Wendel district.
In Sotzweiler, the Sunday morning gathering closes out the weekend. In Orscholz, the farmers market and Weisswurst breakfast bring the procession to an end.