Bonn Carnival Festival

200 Years of Bonn Carnival — The Anniversary Year 2026

2026 is no ordinary year for Bonn's Carnival: it marks the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Bönnische Carnevals-Gesellschaft on February 5, 1826 — the predecessor organization of today's Festausschuss Bonner Karneval. The session motto "200 Years of Bonn Carnival – yesterday, today, and tomorrow" shapes all important events of the session, and a central format is the Bonn Carnival Festival on Saturday, February 7, 2026, on Münsterplatz.

Bonn Stadtsoldaten-Corps von 1872 as Organizer

The organizer is the Bonner Stadtsoldaten-Corps von 1872 e.V. (Endenicher Str. 10b, 53115 Bonn) — itself a traditional Bonn carnival club with over 150 years of club history. The Stadtsoldaten-Corps has been hosting the Carnival Festival on Münsterplatz for years and finances the festival tent construction through sponsors. Admission is free, and food and drinks are offered at reasonable prices.

Program: Dance Groups, Carnival Clubs, Stage

The festival presents a diverse program: performances by dance groups, carnival clubs, and music groups from Bonn and the surrounding area. The festival is traditionally hosted by a literary director (in previous years: Dirk Vögeli). The program usually starts at 11:45 AM — inspired by the carnival hour of 11:11.

Accompanying Anniversary Formats 2026

The Bonn Carnival Festival is not the only major format for the anniversary celebration in 2026. On the same weekend, eleven music corps from Bonn and the surrounding cities will perform a public concert at the market — a spectacular homage to Bonn's music corps tradition. In parallel, a traveling exhibition "Loss mer fiere. 200 jecke Johr en Bonn" (Let's Celebrate. 200 Crazy Years in Bonn) with around 30 selected objects on carnival history will run at five locations in Bonn until October 2026.

Bonn as a Carnival City

Bonn, alongside Cologne, Düsseldorf, and Mainz, is one of the four Rhenish carnival strongholds. With nearly 340,000 inhabitants and its dual role as the former federal capital and home of Beethoven, Heinrich Böll, and the University of Bonn, the city has its own carnival identity — bourgeois-educated bourgeois, slightly more elegant than Cologne, with a classic session tradition. The Carnival Festival on Münsterplatz is one of the central public formats of this tradition.

Münsterplatz — Historical Center

Münsterplatz is the central square of Bonn's old town, dominated by the Bonn Minster (12th–13th century) and the Beethoven Monument. The festival tent fills the square with carnival spirit from February 7, 2026, turning Bonn's political city center into the stage for Bonn's Carnival.