If you're a beer lover or consider yourself a beer connoisseur, you've likely dreamed of a grand festival where beer flows in abundance and people come together to celebrate this ancient drink. This celebration takes place annually in Munich, Germany, and it's none other than Oktoberfest! This grand beer festival is set to return for its 190th edition in 2025, taking place from September 20 to October 5. And with its 190-year-old legacy, the fest has some pretty mind boggling records under its belt. What are those, if you may ask? Well, team unsobered’s just about to uncover those for you!
To begin with, Oktoberfest is the largest public festival in the world! With more than 6 million visitors each year, the festival is hosted in Germany’s Munich. The city of Munich itself has a rich history of beer brewing, with its local beers and distilling practices being famous in Germany as well as internationally. The Oktoberfest celebrates Bavarian traditions with a side of delicious bites, countless fun rides and attractions, and of course, classic Munich beer!
Experience several highlights of this festival, such as the Grand entry of the Oktoberfest landlords, the ceremonial opening of the beer tapping, as well as a traditional costume parade on the first Sunday of Oktoberfest 2025, i.e. October 5, 2025. In addition to that, there will be a total of 17 large as well as 21 small tents and plenty of attractions for beer enthusiasts and the general public alike!
Location: Theresienwiese in Munich
Date: September 20 to October 5, 2025
Visitors: 6.7 million at the Oktoberfest 2024
Although Oktoberfest has a literal ‘October’ in its name, the festival isn’t really an all-October festival. The festival, in 2025, will be organized starting in September. In its inaugural run, the festival took place in the first week of October. However, since then, the festival dates have been moved earlier as September has a milder weather than the often sultry October.
The grand beer festival isn’t officially begun until the Mayor of Munich declares it open! This is an important ritual of Oktoberfest without which no edition of Oktoberfest has ever begun. What happens is that the mayor says “O’ zapft is!”. Translating to “it’s trapped”, it probably refers to the beer. The Mayor then opens the first keg of beer at midday and this is considered to be the official inauguration of Oktoberfest. Isn’t this ritual truly fascinating?
Oktoberfest stands out for holding the record for having the strongest beer in the world, which is available for all beer enthusiasts for just 30 Euros! Of course, there are much milder and delicious beers available at Oktoberfest, and there’s plenty of beer to choose from. However, this super-strong beer, named Schorschbock, has an alcohol by volume of 57% and is a major point of attraction at Oktoberfest.
While almost all editions of Oktoberfest have garnered massive attendance over the years, the 2023 edition broke all previous records. It saw record-breaking attendance with about 7.2 million visitors visiting the festival in its roughly 18-day celebration. For comparison, the festival had seen 6.3 million visitors in 2019 and 5.7 million visitors in 2022. The ‘Old Oktoberfest’, a traditional (and separate) festival at the south end of Theresienwiese, also saw record-breaking visits. It welcomed 4,80,000, significantly more than the 2022 number of 2,30,000.
If there’s one drink that is unanimously loved (and consumed) at Oktoberfest, it is undoubtedly beer! And the Germans love their beer so much that they consume about 1.8 million gallons of beer at each Oktoberfest! Can you imagine the sheer volume of beer consumed by millions of visitors attending this grand public festival in Munich? And of course, the festival doesn’t allow any kind of beer – only beer made locally in Munich is permitted. There is a complete ban on consuming and selling any kind of foreign beer!
As strange as it may sound, Hollywood icon Paris Hilton has been banned from ever attending Oktoberfest. What led to this ban was that Paris Hilton, in 2006, promoted a canned wine brand. And no, that’s not what led to the ban – the real reason lied in the clothes she chose to dress up in. Hilton was dressed in the traditional dirndl – a culturally significant dress in Germany and often wore at Oktoberfest – in a rather short and scanty way. Locals became so offended by this disrespect of their traditional attire that they decided to ban her entirely from attending Oktoberfest since 2006. If the stars align, you may find hundreds of Hollywood celebrities at Oktoberfest except one: Paris Hilton!
Oktoberfest has a long history of its visitors trying to sneak in glass mugs as souvenirs from this beloved festival. While the mugs were first made of stone and then of metal, today, most mugs are made of glass. And these glass mugs are particularly popular among visitors, so much so that one year, the authorities confiscated nearly 1,30,000 beer mugs from visitors who were trying to sneak them out as souvenirs. Luckily, you can grab these beer mugs from official merchandise vendors at many stalls during Oktoberfest.
Which one of these Oktoberfest 2025 records and facts managed to leave you stunned? From having the largest-ever Oktoberfest edition in 2023 to having the strongest beer in the world, this beloved celebration in Munich is a time for the people of Germany to unite and celebrate life at its jolliest – of course, accompanied by a side of fresh, frothy, creamy beer. If you ever get a chance to attend Oktoberfest, we’d highly recommend that you book your trip in advance, stay tuned with local updates, and of course, try out the different kinds of beer available here. But, try not to sneak out a beer mug – it might just get confiscated!
