On October 10 and 11, 2026, Thuringia hosts events and festivals from Weimar to the Eichsfeld: the Onion Market fills the city centre, Erfurt holds its Oktoberfest, and Heyerode runs its Kirmes.
About 250,000 visitors in three days. That is the crowd at the Weimar Onion Market, which fills the centre of the city of Goethe and Schiller from October 9 to 11. On October 10 and 11, 2026, Thuringia hosts events and festivals from Weimar to the Eichsfeld: the Onion Market fills the city centre, Erfurt holds its Oktoberfest, and Heyerode runs its Kirmes.
The Onion Market across Weimar's city centre
The Weimar Onion Market is Thuringia's biggest folk festival, and 2026 brings its 373rd edition. It first appears in a document in 1653, as the “Viehe- und Zippelmarckt”.
Onion farmers from the Goldene Aue around Heldrungen and Sömmerda arrive with their harvest. Some 60 Heldrungen families sell around 200 tonnes of onions at the market every year. The festival's emblem is the onion braid, elaborately plaited and decorated with straw flowers, sage, lavender and rosemary.
The fair covers around 20,000 square metres of the city centre.
Marktplatz, Theaterplatz, Schillerstraße, Frauenplan and Wielandplatz are all part of it. Several stages alternate folk music, brass bands, a big band and pop cover bands, while the historic centre holds stalls with crafts, Thuringian bratwurst and Weimar onion cake with bacon and caraway. The rides sit on the edge of town.
On Saturday morning, October 10, 2026, the “Stadtlauf zum Zwiebelmarkt” sets off: around 2,000 runners on an 11-kilometre course through the centre. On Sunday the new Weimar Onion Market Queen is crowned, ambassador of the city and the market farmers for a year, and shops open from noon to 6 pm.
Kirmes tents, Domplatz and castle concerts
In the Eichsfeld, the Heyerode Große Kirmes starts on October 10, 2026 and runs to October 12. The Heyerode Kirmesgesellschaft e.V. organises it, with a festival tent and dance evenings with live music, and on Kirmes Sunday a parade and Frühshoppen. At the sports ground in Könitz, a district of Unterwellenborn in the Saale valley, the Kirmes Könitz brings together a festival tent and rides, with beer on tap. Entry to the festival grounds is free at both.
On Erfurt's Domplatz, the Erfurt Oktoberfest lines up around 50 showmen's stalls and rides along 600 metres between the Mariendom and the Severikirche, from noon on weekends and until Sunday, October 11. Festival beer brewed to the Munich purity law, roast chicken and pork knuckle are on the menu. The ACHAVA Festival Thuringia, founded in 2015, ends the same Sunday. Concerts, exhibitions, discussions and readings spread across Erfurt's Old, Small and New Synagogues, of which the Old Synagogue has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2023.
After 172 days, the Thuringian State Garden Show closes on October 11 in Leinefelde-Worbis, the fifth of its kind and the first in the Eichsfeld. Under the motto “Reconciliation between city and landscape” it offers more than 1,500 events, all included in the ticket price.
On October 10, the Südthüringer Kammerorchester plays in the historic rooms of Wilhelmsburg Castle, a Renaissance palace in Schmalkalden, closing the main series of the concerts at the Wilhelmsburg Castle museum. In Römhild, eight ceramic artists from across Europe work until October 31 at Glücksburg Castle during the 13th International Ceramics Symposium, under the motto “Metamorphosis”.
Around the ponds between Plothen and Dreba, inns serve themed menus of fish and game all October, the Fish and Game Weeks. Benedictine monks laid out a system of carp ponds there some 900 years ago.
In Weimar, the city centre is closed to cars during the festival, with park-and-ride sites at the Schwanseebad, the Festplatz and the Asbachtal.