September is Oktoberfest
The Wiesn opens tomorrow at noon and runs until 4 October. It began 216 years ago, in 1810, but this is only its 191st edition: Oktoberfest has been officially cancelled 26 times. At midday the Lord Mayor of Munich taps the first keg in the Schottenhamel tent and shouts “O’zapft is!”, as Munich’s mayors have done since 1950.
When most people picture Oktoberfest they think of lederhosen and dirndls, oompah bands, litre steins, bratwurst, schnitzel and sauerkraut. They also assume it happens in October and that the beer is Märzen.
The name has travelled to Brazil, to Ontario, to Ohio, and to a Methodist mission hall on Peter Street in Manchester. Munich changed its own over about forty years, from the amber Märzen to the pale Festbier that fills nearly every tent today.
Munich changed the beer, and kept the name
The festival beer used to be dark, closer to a Munich dunkel than to anything poured in the tents now. The turn came in 1872. As the American Homebrewers Association has the story, a hot summer ran one of the approved breweries out of dark lager, and it brought in a stronger Vienna-style beer, about 8%, at a slightly higher price, and the substitute was a hit. The Schottenhamel tent’s own history names the man as Michael Schottenhamel and the beer as one the Franziskaner-Leist brewery had brewed that March in the Viennese manner. Franziskaner calls it the Ur-Märzen, and Brewery History credits Josef Sedlmayr with it. Märzen for the month it was made in: brewed in March, before summer brewing stopped, and lagered through the warm months to be drunk in autumn. Bock-strength festival lagers held on until the First World War, and between the wars the beer wandered anywhere from 4% to 9%, settling into the reddish-brown colour the world now calls Märzen.
Augustiner brought out a paler Wiesn-Edelstoff in 1953. The other breweries followed over the next few decades, pouring a golden Wiesenbier alongside their amber Märzen, and Brewery History dates the point at which it had displaced Märzen entirely to about 1990. That pale, dry Festbier is what the tents pour today, and it is built to be drunk by the litre for sixteen days. It is an excellent beer and a genuine piece of engineering.
One tent still pours the older beer. oktoberfest.de says Hacker-Pschorr still serves the original amber-coloured Wiesnmärzen from the wooden barrel at Poschner’s, alongside the pale beer.
America kept the beer Munich mostly stopped pouring
The American Oktoberfest is a Märzen: amber to deep copper, malt-forward, bread crust and caramel and toffee, typically 5–6%. It is sweeter and more caramelised than the German article, and often carries more hop bitterness than German brewers would bother with.
Jack's Abby's Copper Legend is built on imported Pilsner, Vienna and Munich malts and decoction-mashed, a slower traditional method. Shiner's Oktoberfest runs Munich and caramel malts against Hallertau Tradition and Hersbrucker hops. Both are brewing what Munich itself has largely stopped pouring.
Firestone Walker’s Festbier
Firestone Walker called its Oaktoberfest an oak-aged fest bier, made with Vienna and Pilsner malts and lagered in French oak. This year the beer is simply Oktoberfest, 6%, brewed with Mahrs Bräu of Bamberg on Bamberger Pilsen malt and, in their words, “inspired by the modern Festbiers poured in the tents of Munich”.
Sierra Nevada’s is a different case. Theirs is 6% this year, brewed with Hoppebräu, and they have brewed a German-collaboration Festbier for several years, changing the partner.
Britain chose both
Some British venues import Munich’s beers. Others brew their own.
Albert’s Schloss opens its Oktoberfest tomorrow, the same day as the Wiesn, and runs to 25 October across Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Soho. It says it pours the Munich Oktoberfest breweries across tap and tank, though its own 2026 line-up names five of the six, without Augustiner, and the claim carries a footnote about availability. These are Wiesn beers rather than beers in the Wiesn style, which means Manchester is drinking the pale modern Festbier.
Head of Steam run theirs with German beer, two-pint steins, pretzels and live music. Both chains open on the same Saturday as Munich.
Then there is the other half, brewing its own. Polly’s in north Wales went out last autumn at 5.7% with a can called Festbier – Märzen. This year’s is announced and not yet poured. Verdant, in Cornwall, have brewed a Dunkel, a smoked Märzen and a Festbier, and are throwing their own Oktoberfest on Saturday. Indie Rabble, in Windsor, open on the same Saturday as Munich with German and British festbiers on tap and the debut of their own 2026 Fest Märzen beside them.
RedWillow’s Lager & Sausage festival opens on Park Green in Macclesfield on Saturday at noon, the same hour as the Wiesn, with an oompah band.
Fyne Ales, at Cairndow in Argyll, call theirs a Bavarian Fest Bier: 5.5%, amber to chestnut, with a little cherrywood-smoked malt in it, unfiltered and naturally settled, and it goes out in cask as well as can. It is brewed by Yvonne Wernlein, a third-generation German brewer, as a tribute to the cask beers of Franconia.
Munich’s Festbier is built to be cold, bright and briskly carbonated, drunk fast by the litre. Pull a festival lager soft and settled at cellar temperature and you have changed the beer before anyone has argued about the recipe. Yesterday, during Cask Ale Week, we made the case for the handpump as the thing Britain kept.
The festival travelled further than the beer
Blumenau in Santa Catarina has run its own since 1984. Kitchener–Waterloo in Ontario bills itself as Canada’s Greatest Bavarian Festival. Oktoberfest Zinzinnati in Cincinnati, first held in 1976, is on this very weekend. Blumenau says it draws more than half a million visitors an edition, and Cincinnati reported a record 808,300 last year.
Each is billed as the biggest in its own corner: Blumenau as the largest German festival in the Americas, Kitchener-Waterloo as Canada’s Greatest Bavarian Festival, Cincinnati as America’s Largest Oktoberfest.
Oktoberfest isn’t really in October
It began as a wedding. On 12 October 1810, Crown Prince Ludwig married Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen and Munich was invited to the party on the fields outside the city gates. They are still named the Theresienwiese after the bride, which is why Germans call the whole thing the Wiesn. The festivities closed with a horse race on the meadow, on 17 October. The agricultural show, the part that makes it look like a harvest festival, was bolted on the following year.
It was held in October until 1871. From 1872 it has started in September, because October was already cooler and the days significantly shorter. It opens on the first Saturday after 15 September and keeps the name by finishing on the first Sunday in October, the 4th this year, so twelve of the 191st Oktoberfest’s sixteen days fall in September.
Märzen was brewed in March and drunk in autumn. The genuinely harvest-fresh beer in this story is green hop, where Kent’s criteria require the hops to reach the brew within twelve hours of picking. Its season runs only a few weeks.
Ein Prosit
In the Munich tents, two or three times an hour, the band stops whatever it is playing and starts Ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit. A few thousand people put down their conversations, pick up a litre of beer and sing a toast to Gemütlichkeit, a word with no exact English equivalent, roughly cosiness and good company. Then comes the count, Oans, zwoa, drei, g'suffa!, which is one, two, three, drink.
That is Munich’s clock, and the clock did not travel. The song did. They sing Ein Prosit in Blumenau, in Kitchener, in Cincinnati, and in that Manchester mission hall at teatime. Some rooms sing it often, some when the mood takes them, none of them translating it. What exports is the interval at which strangers agree to become a crowd, and that works in any colour of lager you like.
Companion pieces: Everything Traditional About Oktoberfest Is Younger Than the Tent, on how the giant tent arrived in 1898 through five strawmen and a lawsuit, and how six brewery halls replaced the stalls in 1907. And UK Oktoberfest Events 2026, for where Britain is pouring. If you are going to Munich itself, oktoberfest.de keeps a Wiesn barometer showing which hours the tents are full.