Overview
- The 191st Oktoberfest opens on Sept. 19 with the traditional morning parade and Oberbürgermeister Dominik Krause tapping the first keg at 12:00 to formally start the festival.
- Organizers expect more than 6.5 million visitors over the run to Oct. 4, prompting final table bookings and intensified crowd-management planning after last year’s temporary entry closures.
- Only beer from Munich’s six traditional breweries will be served and prices for a Maß range from €14.80 to €15.90, roughly 2.5% higher than last year, which has stirred local concern about costs.
- The Bayerisches Oberstes Landesgericht provisionally judged Alexander Egger’s request for an EU-wide tender of the large festzelte inadmissible, leaving the city’s existing allocation process in place while the administrative dispute continues.
- New offerings this year include first-time rides on the fairground, on-site filming for a Netflix romantic-comedy that sought thousands of extras, and the customary Wiesnbier blind tasting that highlighted clear differences in color, taste and alcohol strength among the six festbiere.