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CULTURE

Eight unmissable events in Austria in May 2023

This month, Austria's events calendar is bursting with food and drink festivals – a sure sign that spring has arrived. Here are the events you don’t want to miss in May.

Published: 3 May 2023 16:31 CEST
Retirees in Germany
Retirement in Germany is typically possible if applicants for the appropriate residence permit can demonstrate a basic level - A1 German. (Photo by AMA GENUSS REGION / www.schwarz-koenig.at)

Gauder Fest (May 4th – 7th), Zillertal, Tyrol

This spring festival takes place every year on the first weekend in May and is a celebration of alpine traditions. The highlight is the festival parade which is a display of costumes, floats, horses and folk music.

In typical Tyrolean style, the festival opens with a beer tapping session led by the province’s governor. This special Gauder beer is rumoured to be over 10% in alcohol and is only brewed for this event.

The entry price ranges from €12 to €17, although it is free to enter the food stall area. Full details can be found here.

FOR MEMBERS: Everything that changes in Austria in May 2023

Vienna Gin Festival (May 12th – 13th), Vienna

This year marks the fourth year that the Gin Festival has been held in Austria’s capital city. Visitors can expect two days of gin tasting, food vendors, master classes, musical performances and merchandise stalls.

A day ticket costs €23.50 per person and includes three free tastings. Or you can make it a group day out with a Friendship Ticket for €117.50 for six people (including three tastings per person). 

The location is the Semperdepot at the Academy of Fine Arts. Visit viennaginfestival.at to find out more.

Genussfestival (May 12th – 14th), Vienna

Genuss translates to “enjoyment”, so it’s no surprise that this festival is all about enjoying life and indulging in good food and drink. Dubbed the largest culinary event in Austria, there are more than 100 stands showcasing Austrian cuisine – and plenty of opportunities to sample the food.

The festival takes place at Wiener Stadtpark from 11 am to 9 pm on Friday, from 10 am to 9 pm on Saturday, and 10 am to 5 pm on Sunday. Admission is free. 

You can find out more details about the vendors here.

READ ALSO: REVEALED: The best and worst Austrian foods (as voted for by you)

Wiener Festwochen (May 12th – June 21st), Vienna

Considered one of the most important art and cultural events in Europe, the Wiener Festwochen is also Vienna’s largest international art festival. The programme features theatre productions, opera, concerts, dance performances and multimedia installations.

The opening concert takes place on Friday, May 12th at the Rathausplatz, but if you can’t be there, it will be broadcast live on ORF 2. The event starts at 9 pm and entry is free. You can find the full programme here.

European Street Food Festival (May 13th – 14th), Innsbruck, Tyrol (and other provinces)

If you’re into sampling street food from around the world, then this is the event for you. Entry is free and visitors can try dishes like Maori steak from New Zealand or Asian cuisine from Thailand and India. It will take place at the Messehalle on Ing.-Etzel-Straße.

And for those not in Tyrol, you can catch the event on another date as it tours Austria. The festival will hit Vienna on May 20th and 21st, and Salzburg on 19th and 20th August, as well as many other towns in between.

Full tour dates can be found here.

Stream Festival (May 18th – 20th), Linz, Upper Austria

This open-air event has a focus on digital music, including future and current issues in music creation. Expect live DJ shows, talks and film screenings at nine different locations in the city.

Admission is free and the lineup features both Austrian and international acts. Find out more at stream-festival.at.

READ NEXT: Discover Austria: 7 must-see destinations for a spring break

Spring Festival (May 21st), Graz, Styria

In celebration of new works by Artists in Residence, the 2023 spring festival will take place at the Austrian Sculpture Park on Sunday, May 21st. This year’s artist Barbara Kapusta will present her sculptural work alongside a new adaptation of earlier works.

The event starts at 2 pm and allows the public to view the new sculptures for the first time. Full details can be found here.

VieVinium (May 25th – 27th), Vienna

This three-day international wine festival by the Austrian Wine Marketing Board (AWMB) will take place at the Hofburg Palace in central Vienna. Around 500 exhibitors (producers, importers, distributors) are expected at the trade event, which is considered the “most important presentation of Austrian wine in its own land”. 

From 9 am to 1 pm, the VieVinium is open to trade visitors and press only, but it is open to the public from 1 pm to 6 pm every day. Find out more here.

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VIENNA

Vienna Festival director Milo Rau hits back at anti-Semitism accusations

One of the latest events in Europe to be hit with accusations of anti-Semitism, the Vienna Festival kicks off Friday, with its new director, Milo Rau, urging that places of culture be kept free of the "antagonism" of the Israel-Hamas war while still tackling difficult issues.

Published: 17 May 2024 14:48 CEST
Vienna Festival director Milo Rau hits back at anti-Semitism accusations

As the conflict in Gaza sharply polarises opinion, “we must be inflexible” in defending the free exchange of ideas and opinions, the acclaimed Swiss director told AFP in an interview this week.

“I’m not going to take a step aside… If we let the antagonism of the war and of our society seep into our cultural and academic institutions, we will have completely lost,” said the 47-year-old, who will inaugurate the Wiener Festwochen, a festival of theatre, concerts, opera, film and lectures that runs until June 23rd in the Austrian capital and that has taken on a more political turn under his tenure.

The Swiss director has made his name as a provocateur, whether travelling to Moscow to stage a re-enactment of the trial of Russian protest punk band Pussy Riot, using children to play out the story of notorious Belgian paedophile Marc Dutroux, or trying to recruit Islamic State jihadists as actors.

Completely ridiculous 

The Vienna Festival has angered Austria’s conservative-led government — which is close to Israel — by inviting Greek former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and French Nobel Prize winner for literature Annie Ernaux, both considered too critical of Israel.

A speech ahead of the festival on Judenplatz (Jews’ Square) by Israeli-German philosopher Omri Boehm — who has called for replacing Israel with a bi-national state for Arabs and Jews —  also made noise.

“Who will be left to invite?  Every day, there are around ten articles accusing us of being anti-Semitic, saying that our flag looks like the Palestinian flag, completely ridiculous things,” Rau said, as he worked from a giant bed which has been especially designed by art students and installed at the festival office.

Hamas’ bloody October 7th assault on southern Israel and the devastating Israeli response have stoked existing rancour over the Middle East conflict between two diametrically opposed camps in Europe.

In this climate, “listening to the other side is already treachery,” lamented the artistic director.

“Wars begin in this impossibility of listening, and I find it sad that we Europeans are repeating war at our level,” he said.

As head of also the NTGent theatre in the Belgian city of Ghent, he adds his time currently “is divided between a pro-Palestinian country and a pro-Israeli country,” or between “colonial guilt” in Belgium and “genocide guilt” in Austria, Adolf Hitler’s birthplace.

Institutional revolution

The “Free Republic of Vienna” will be proclaimed on Friday as this year’s Vienna Festival celebrates. according to Rau, “a second modernism, democratic, open to the world” in the city of the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and artist and symbolist master Gustav Klimt.

Some 50,000 people are expected to attend the opening ceremony on the square in front of Vienna’s majestic neo-Gothic town hall.

With Rau describing it as an “institutional revolution” and unlike any other festival in Europe, the republic has its own anthem, its own flag and a council made up of Viennese citizens, as well as honorary members, including Varoufakis and Ernaux, who will participate virtually in the debates.

The republic will also have show trials — with real lawyers, judges and politicians participating — on three weekends.

Though there won’t be any verdicts, Rau himself will be in the dock to embody “the elitist art system”, followed by the republic of Austria and finally by the anti-immigrant far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), which leads polls in the Alpine EU member ahead of September national elections.

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