Most visitors assume Oktoberfest has always been about beer tents — sixteen days of Maß steins, brass bands and Bavarian tents seating thousands. It hasn't. Munich's biggest annual festival began in 1810 as a one-off royal wedding celebration, and the beer, the tents, and even the fairground rides all came later, layered on top of an event that was originally built around a horse race.
October 12, 1810: A Royal Wedding
Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria — later King Ludwig I — married Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen on October 12, 1810. Munich marked the occasion the way European capitals marked royal weddings at the time: days of public feasting, music, and horse racing, with beer and food handed out to citizens gathered at Max-Joseph-Platz, the grand square opposite the royal Residenz palace.
The Field That Gave the Festival Its Name
On October 17, tens of thousands of people gathered in open fields just outside Munich's city gates. Sixteen pairs of children in traditional Bavarian folk costume opened the day's programme, reading poems and presenting fruit and flowers, and the grounds were officially christened Theresienwiese — 'Therese's Meadow' — in the new princess's honor. That name has survived, largely unchanged, for well over two centuries: it's the same Theresienwiese that hosts Oktoberfest today, still often shortened by Münchners to simply 'die Wiesn.'
The Horse Race That Started It All
The centerpiece of that first celebration wasn't beer — it was a horse race, modeled on a medieval Munich tradition called the Scharlachrennen that had once been run at the Karlstor city gate. Major Andreas Michael Dall'Armi of the National Guard is generally credited with proposing the idea (although a coachman named Franz Baumgartner later claimed the credit himself). Sendlinger Hill — the area now known as Theresienhöhe — served as a natural grandstand for roughly 40,000 spectators, as thirty horses ran a course stretching 3,400 meters.
From One-Off Party to Annual Tradition
The celebration was popular enough that Munich repeated it the following year, and an agricultural show was added soon after to promote Bavarian farming — arguably the real seed of the modern festival's identity as a broad folk celebration rather than a one-time wedding party. Over the 19th and 20th centuries, beer tents run by Munich's major breweries gradually became the festival's central draw, eventually eclipsing both the horse race and the agricultural show that had originally anchored it. Today's Oktoberfest — sixteen days, several million visitors, and named tents each seating thousands of guests under a single brewery's flag — is a direct, unbroken descendant of that 1810 wedding celebration, even though almost none of its original elements survive in their original form.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Oktoberfest still connected to a royal family?
Only historically — there's no ongoing royal involvement, but the festival grounds still carry Princess Therese's name over 200 years later.
Does the original horse race still happen?
No — the horse race was discontinued long ago as the festival's identity shifted toward the beer-tent culture that now defines it.
Why is it called Oktoberfest if it mostly happens in September?
The festival's start date was moved earlier in the calendar decades ago for better weather, but the name — tied to the original October 1810 dates — stuck regardless.
Travel Guides Finder Editorial Team
Editorial Team
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