Stuttgart Children's Festival 2026

A Festival for All Stuttgart Children

The Stuttgart Children's Festival will take place in 2026 on Sunday, June 28, 2026, from 12 PM to 6 PM in the heart of Stuttgart's city center — between Marktplatz, Schillerplatz, and Kirchstraße. The festival is a colorful mix of free hands-on activities, intercultural stage program, raffle, play, and craft events. It is aimed at children aged approximately 4 to 12 years and their families — and is explicitly designed as a non-commercial, inclusive, intercultural, and sustainable event.

Five Strong Organizers

Behind the Children's Festival are five Stuttgart institutions committed to the city's community: the German-Turkish Forum Stuttgart e.V. (DTF), the Stuttgart City Youth Welfare Office, the Stuttgart Youth Center Association, the Stuttgart City Youth Council, and the Sports District Youth. Their common approach: to make the diversity of Stuttgart's children's culture visible and to create a space where children from diverse families — linguistically, culturally, socially — can play together.

Three Squares, Three Themed Worlds

The festival is spatially divided into three areas:

• Marktplatz — Main stage with a varied program (dance, music, theater), the Mobifant play bus, craft activities, and the big raffle.
• Schillerplatz — Activity area for the children's gymnastics world, climbing tower, painting and craft activities, football throwing station, other sports hands-on stations.
• Kirchstraße — Mobile library bus from the Stuttgart City Library, further craft and creative activities, giant xylophone for making music.

Intercultural Stage Program

On the Marktplatz stage, children's dance groups, young music ensembles, theater groups, and interactive acts will perform. The program reflects the cultural diversity of Stuttgart's schools and youth clubs: German-Turkish folklore groups, international dance groups, multilingual children's music, hip-hop kids, street dance — all for low-threshold interaction among families from Stuttgart-Mitte, Bad Cannstatt, Feuerbach, and other city districts.

2026 with a Science Focus

A special feature of the 2026 edition: collaboration with the Stuttgart Science Festival. Researchers and scientists will provide hands-on experiments, microscopes, robotics stations, and natural phenomena. Children can conduct small experiments themselves, build their own circuits, and examine butterfly wings under a microscope. The Science Festival brings the university research of Stuttgart (University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart Media University, Fraunhofer Institutes) to families in a playful way.

Patron Lord Mayor

The patron of the Children's Festival is Lord Mayor Dr. Frank Nopper. The official opening on the main stage traditionally coincides with the cutting of a giant children's birthday cake — symbolizing the city as a common place of celebration for all Stuttgart children.