Kunstfest Weimar

Weimar — City of Classics and Festival Metropolis

Weimar (approx. 65,000 inhabitants, independent city) is the cultural capital of Thuringia. Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Wieland, Liszt, Nietzsche — the list of Weimar residents extends into the pantheon of European cultural history. UNESCO World Heritage "Classical Weimar," birthplace of the first German democracy (1919), and founding site of the Bauhaus (also 1919). Today, Weimar is one of Germany's most vibrant art metropolises — with the Bauhaus University, the Franz Liszt University of Music, the Klassik Stiftung museums, and the German National Theater as cultural pillars.

A New Directorship Begins

The Kunstfest Weimar 2026 is a premiere edition: for the first time, curators Katharina Germo and Juliane Hahn are responsible as the new artistic directors. The dual leadership succeeds the previous one and, with their first program design, shapes the festival's profile for the coming years. A festival program in transition — with the aim of reconnecting international avant-garde and regional participation. Citizens are involved in the opening concert through the specially assembled citizens' choir — a clear sign of the participatory program approach.

"Messiah" as the Opening

The Kunstfest 2026 opens on August 21 with Georg Friedrich Handel's oratorio "Messiah" — one of the most monumental choral works in Western music history. The performance combines the Staatskapelle Weimar with a citizens' choir specially formed for the festival, plus professional soloists. The opening with a baroque oratorio involving citizen participation is programmatic: high culture tradition is combined with democratic participation — a statement on the role of the arts in society.

Theater, Dance, Performance, Music, Literature

For over 2.5 weeks, the program offers performances in all performing and many visual arts. Theater with international guest performances and in-house productions by the DNT; dance and performance with contemporary choreographers; music from early to new music, from solo recitals to large symphony concerts; visual arts in exhibitions and interventions in the urban space; literature with readings and writing workshops; discourse with lectures and panels on cultural policy issues. The venues range from the German National Theater on Theaterplatz to city squares and open-air stages to the Park an der Ilm — the park co-designed by Goethe, which becomes a venue for festival events.

Weimar, Thuringia, Central Germany

In the state of Thuringia and throughout Central Germany, the Kunstfest Weimar is the most important interdisciplinary festival. Comparable formats exist in neighboring Saxony-Anhalt (Festspiele Sachsen-Anhalt) and Saxony (Festival Tanzwoche Dresden, Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften Leipzig), but the Weimar festival, with its UNESCO World Heritage backdrop and broad mix of disciplines, holds a special position. International artists travel to Weimar for the festival, and audiences come from all over Germany and abroad. Those planning a weekend or a week in Weimar can combine festival events with the UNESCO World Heritage site Classical Weimar, the Bauhaus Museum, the nearby Belvedere Palace, and the Buchenwald Concentration Camp — a city of stark contrasts that the Kunstfest regularly addresses in its program.