On October 3 and 4, 2026, Thuringia hosts a full slate of events and festivals: the restored east wing of Weimar's City Palace reopens after eight years, while Gera celebrates its Höhlerfest and Artern its onion market.
One wing stayed closed for eight years. Weimar's City Palace reopens its east wing for the first time in eight years. After the long restoration, the UNESCO World Heritage site becomes accessible again this weekend, while Gera celebrates its Höhlerfest and Artern its onion market.
The east wing of Weimar's City Palace
The entire east wing of Weimar's City Palace has been closed since 2018 for extensive restoration work. From 2 to 4 October 2026, it reopens its doors for the first time in eight years, at the centre of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar's theme year "Opening 2026".
The palace on Burgplatz belongs to the "Classical Weimar" UNESCO World Heritage site. A new visitor centre opens in the historic passage at the Grünes Haus, the oldest part of the building. A modern events hall is meant for conferences, theatre, concerts and civic gatherings, while a co-lab space in the palace courtyard becomes an open platform for cultural participation.
Visitors who register can join guided tours through the poets' rooms and the west wing's palace chapel. Concerts and special exhibitions run throughout the weekend. The east wing makes the Klassik Stiftung's Goethe and Schiller world fully accessible again. Tickets and registration for the guided tours run through the foundation's website.
Weimar already counts Classical Weimar, the Bauhaus sites and the Buchenwald memorial among its World Heritage credentials.
The rest of the weekend
In Gera, the Höhlerfest runs from October 2 to 4 around the city's historic underground beer cellars, the Höhler, and in 2026 coincides with the 789th anniversary of Gera's town charter, with a beer-barrel tapping on Friday and a historical parade on Sunday. In Erfurt, the Oktoberfest on Domplatz turns roughly 600 metres between the cathedral and the Severikirche into a Bavarian-Thuringian fairground with about 50 stalls and rides until October 11, festival beer brewed to the Munich purity law, and gingerbread hearts. In Artern, the mayor has opened the onion market with the traditional onion crown since 1972, this year from October 3 to 5, with onion braids, garlic garlands and the town's own salt products on the stalls.
At the Ekhof Theatre in Gotha's Friedenstein Palace, the world's oldest surviving baroque theatre with a working wooden stage machinery dating from the 17th century, the Ekhof Festival, in its 28th edition, closes on October 3 after weeks of Gluck's opera "Orpheus" and Molière's "The School for Wives". Near Leinefelde-Worbis, the Thuringian garden show, the fifth of its kind and the first in the Eichsfeld district, continues until October 11, with more than 1,500 events included in the entry ticket. In Tautenburg, the Long Night of the Stars opens the dome of Germany's largest optical telescope to the public on October 3, with hourly talks on black holes and exoplanets, free of charge.
On German Unity Day, October 3, 2026, the volunteer fire brigade of the roughly 350-strong Werra valley village of Bischofroda hosts its own village Oktoberfest with sausages and brass bands. In the Eichsfeld region, a traditionally Catholic area, the Burschenkirmes of Großbartloff opens on October 4, organised by a society founded in 1926 and revived in 2001, with a marquee, dancing and music for a village of barely 600 people. Around the ponds between Plothen and Dreba, inns keep serving carp, pike and game dishes through the Fish and Game Weeks until the end of October, a tradition of fish farming going back more than 900 years to local Benedictine monks.
Entry to Gera's Höhlerfest stays free, as it has every year.