Baden-Württemberg's state capital traditionally hosts lots of festivals. Each year the Stuttgart Spring Festival rings in the festival season, which ends with the Stuttgart Christmas Market.
84th Stuttgart Spring Festival
Traditional roundabouts, the very latest fairground rides and sociable festival marquees fill the Cannstatter Wasen fairground each spring. Europe's biggest and most attractive Spring Festival will be held from 20th April to 12th May 2024 and is a real highlight, especially for families. Three weeks long, around 230 showmen, festival hosts and market traders provide the best of entertainment.
48th Stuttgart Wine Festival
From 28th August to 8th September 2024, exquisite wines from Württemberg will be served in the attractively decorated wine arbours. Trollinger, Spätburgunder (Pinot noir) or Riesling – it's a hard choice. There are around 30 hosts on the Marketplace and Schiller Square. To accompany the regional wines, they also serve Swabian specialities such as “Maultaschen” (filled pasta), “Käsepätzle” (cheesy noodles) and “Schupfnudeln” (potato noodles) with sauerkraut, to name but a few. Up-and-coming vintners from the Stuttgart region are also represented in this 48th year of the Wine Festival – a great opportunity for guests to sample what the creative, young wine scene has to offer.
177th Stuttgart Beer Festival
For 17 days (27th September to 13th October 2024) people will once again gather to celebrate around the 26-m-high Fruit Column – the traditional symbol of the Cannstatt Beer Festival –, which was originally founded in 1818 as a harvest thanksgiving festival. With its many fairground rides it is now one of the world's biggest public festivals. The white-water flume, the Ferris wheel and the colourful market stalls delight millions of visitors. In the huge marquees of the Stuttgart breweries, each of which seats up to 5,000 guests, as well as in the beer tents of the regional brewers and the beer gardens, the beer flows more or less unceasingly, and there's no shortage of food, either. Each year the festival opens with a grand procession with magnificently decorated brewery drays drawn by four or six horses, and with groups from all over the region dressed in traditional costumes.
Stuttgart Christmas Market
Every year in Advent (27th November to 23rd December 2024) Stuttgart is transformed into a glittering Christmas city. Stuttgart’s Christmas Market with around 300 beautifully decorated stalls is not only one of the oldest, but also one of the largest and loveliest of its kind in the whole of Europe. Its sparkling illuminations, the festive concerts of seasonal music in the Renaissance courtyard of the Old Palace and lots of regional specialities make for an incomparable yuletide atmosphere which enchants around 3.5 million visitors from Germany and abroad each year. With the "Stuttgart Highlights" on Palace Square and the "Wintertraum" – the traditional ice rink –, the whole of the city centre is set aglow during the weeks of Advent.
