Gäubodenvolksfest

The Gäubodenvolksfest is the summer fair of Straubing, in Lower Bavaria, and it is named after the farming plain around the town, the Gäuboden. The organiser, a company owned by the town, describes the “Bierstadt”, the beer town of seven tents, as the heart of the festival alongside the rides. The 2027 festival runs from Friday 13 to Monday 23 August.

Gäubodenvolksfest: seven tents, five breweries

Every tent pours beer from a local brewery, so the drink changes with the tent.

The town calls it Bavaria’s second-largest Volksfest, and its visitors come from around the world, in its own words. Beside the Festplatz, the Ostbayernschau, a fair for eastern Bavaria, opens at the same time, and both are free to enter.

The procession and the town

The festival opens with the Auszug zum Festplatz, the procession to the festival ground, with paid grandstand seats on the Ludwigsplatz, according to the town.

A royal permit of 1812

In 1812 King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria granted the people of Straubing, “most graciously”, permission to hold an agricultural festival for the Unterdonaukreis, the Lower Danube district. Over two centuries the farm fair became the town’s “fifth season”, opened each year by the procession on the first Friday of August.

• The name: Gäu means flat land. The Gäuboden is the plain south of the Danube, made fertile by its loess soil.
• The motto: “A Trumm vom Paradies”, the festival as described in Bavarian dialect by the local poet Max Peinkofer.
• The historic area: 8,000 square metres of the ground given over to old rides and rarities, free to enter.

The Ostbayernschau next door

A classic consumer fair: about 650 exhibitors from 24 product groups, in 16 halls spread over 60,000 square metres.