Festivals & Open Air in Hamburg 2025

Festivals, street festivals and open airs in Hamburg

Hamburg is a festival city. Not in the sense of "there are a few stands and a stage here", but in the sense of: This city has festivals all year round that have real character, show real attitude and deliver real experiences. If you scour Hamburg's calendar of events for festivals, you'll quickly realize that there's so much choice that you don't really need another city to get your fill of culture. Let's start with summer, because it simply works particularly well in Hamburg: MS Dockville in Wilhelmsburg is one of the most remarkable festivals in the country because it brings together music, visual arts, installations and urban creative culture on a former industrial site on the Elbe, creating an atmosphere that feels like a real sense of community . Also in summer and also world-class: the International Summer Festival at Kampnagel, which gives international performance artists, dancers and theater makers a stage every year and switches between genres so naturally that as a spectator you can hardly keep up, but are always carried away. The Reeperbahn Festival in September is one of the largest club culture festivals in Europe and has long been known far beyond Hamburg: Over several days, the entire Reeperbahn is transformed into a festival zone where not only up-and-coming artists perform, but also international acts and industry giants come together. If you love literature, the Harbour Front Literature Festival in autumn is the right place for you: since 2009, the festival has been taking place in unusual locations around the port of Hamburg with international authors, readings and literary encounters, with port cranes and overseas containers forming the backdrop. That alone is a pretty good argument for a fall trip to Hamburg. For film enthusiasts, there is the Filmfest Hamburg, which brings current international productions to the city's cinemas every October and sees the cinema experience as an event, not just a service. The altonale, on the other hand, is the major cultural festival of the Altona district and brings art, theater, film, literature and street art to the streets and squares of the district every summer, free of charge and with a low threshold and a real district feeling. What all these festivals have in common is that they would not be the same anywhere else. They need Hamburg, its waterfront locations, its industrial and cultural history, its idiosyncratic audience. Take a look at our calendar of events, plan your next festival visit and be surprised by a city that really takes celebrating culture seriously.