Berkach Sports Festival

Berkach in Grabfeld

Berkach is a district of the municipality of Grabfeld in the Schmalkalden-Meiningen district, on the Bavarian border southwest of Meiningen. The Grabfeld region — a gently rolling cultural landscape in the Rhön mountains — was historically part of the Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen and is still little developed for tourism today. The small villages maintain their old traditions — sports festivals, kirmes (fair), village festivals — as points of identification for community life.

SV Berkach as Organizer

The Berkach sports club organizes the festival with great voluntary effort. The players set up the festival grounds, serve drinks, and grill sausages and steaks. It is a club festival in the old style — the entire village community gets involved, from the youth sports teams to the senior teams, from the parents to the women's football department.

Three Days of Football and Festivities

The festival spans three days on the last weekend of June. During the day, football tournaments take place: Friday evening opening match of the first team against a guest club, Saturday large team tournaments (youth, juniors, women, veterans, amateur teams from the surrounding villages), Sunday family tournaments and cup matches. In the evening, the sports ground becomes the festival grounds: a festival tent with dancing, live music or DJ, food stalls, and a cocktail bar run by the club's youth.

Meeting Point for the Grabfeld Region

The Berkach Sports Festival is part of a series of village sports festivals in Grabfeld that take place throughout the summer (Sülzdorf, Wölfershausen, Mendhausen, Berkach). A tour of these festivals — known as the "Grabfeld Sports Festival Tour" — is a social ritual for locals: they meet, exchange village news, play football, and celebrate. Anyone wanting to get to know rural southern Thuringia will find authentic club life here.

A Region for Hiking

For those who want to combine the sports festival with a hiking trip: Grabfeld is located in the transitional area between the Werra Valley and the Rhön. Hiking trails such as the "Three Castles Path" or tours around the Salzige Lache (a protected salt spring) make the area a quiet hiking paradise that can compete with the major tourist areas of the Thuringian Forest and Rhön, without experiencing their crowds.