Is closure of the Wies back on the cards?

Oktoberfest reaches its halfway point as Italian weekend looms. Could the festival grounds be closed again, as they were in 2025?

The traditionally particularly busy “Italian weekend” is just around the corner and on 26 and 27 September will mark the halfway point of this year’s Oktoberfest. After the extreme overcrowding last year, organisers are looking with particular attention at visitor flows in 2026.

On the middle Wiesn Saturday in 2025, the festival grounds reached their capacity limits, so that access to the Theresienwiese had to be temporarily closed due to overcrowding.

In parts of Wirtsbudenstraße there was such a crush at the time that nobody could move forwards or backwards – visitors spoke in videos of “nightmare” scenes on the verge of a mass panic.

The upcoming weekend is traditionally referred to as the “Italian weekend”, as tens of thousands of guests from the neighbouring country flock to Munich at this time. According to the Oktoberfest press office, the term has developed historically over decades, without a specific historical trigger or an exact start year.

The mass influx is fuelled above all by the short journey from northern Italy over the Brenner Pass by car, coach or motorhome. Regional public holidays and long weekends in the Italian September calendar also offer the ideal opportunity for a short break. The Italian flair on the festival grounds is unmistakable: Munich daily newspapers often print their front pages in two languages on these days, and Italian Carabinieri as well as fire crews from Bolzano support Munich police directly on site with patrols and communication.

To prevent critical overcrowding like last year in good time, the city is increasingly relying on a network of surveillance cameras and AI-based crowd-tracking software.

Incidentally, those who made it to the Wiesn stayed longer. An analysis of mobile phone data showed that visitors remained on the festival grounds an average of 15 minutes longer than in 2025. The absolute peak period in the first week was between 17:00 and 18:00 each day.

Source: www.euronews.com