About the festival › Winterfest - Festival im Volksgarten Salzburg

WINTERFEST

Festival for Contemporary Circus in Salzburg, Austria

The Winterfest is the biggest festival for contemporary circus art in the German-speaking area. Since 2001 it takes place at Salzburg Volksgarten during Advent season.

For over 100 years, Volksgarten was a place of fun and encounter. It was the vision of Winterfest founder Georg Daxner to revitalize this place with Winterfest. Since then, every year internationally renowned circus companies are invited to present their latest productions there.

The philosophy behind Winterfest is simple: To give people in the hectic time around Christmas some peace and leisure for an evening among friends. To let them listen to magical stories together, marvel at breathtaking acrobatics and laugh at bizarre circus.

Every year Winterfest brings an extraordinary world to the Salzburg Volksgarten. A world full of captivating acrobatics, quiet poetry and bizarre humor.

Georg Daxner, founder of Winterfest

20 years ago, a snowed-up car was the only thing to be seen in Salzburg’s Volksgarten. A lonely cyclist there gave Georg Daxner the idea to revive this place with art and pleasure. Winterfest is the vision made real of an extraordinary man who never gave up dreaming.

He had his first encounter with Cirque Nouveau at the Danube Festival in Krems with Que-Cir-Que. He was so moved that he simply had to take contemporary circus to Salzburg – at his own financial risk, with all the consequences that entailed. Since then, the festival has become an integral part of Salzburg’s cultural scene.

On October 11, 2014, he had a fatal accident during a mountain tour on Salzburg’s Untersberg. Georg Daxner took on many roles in his life, but one constant in his work always represented the following principle: To make art possible – combined with the courage to fail.

“Art is only legitimate if it touches in the long term, if it makes happy, sad or dismayed. For art is what remains.”

It is our „green vision“ to organize Winterfest according to the principles of environmental compatibility and sustainability. With our activities we want to contribute to a world where people deal responsibly with our ecosystem and our natural and human resources. We intend to undertake measures that contribute to the protection of our environment and climate.

Since 2017, we heat the tents of the Winterfest by district heating, supported by the Land Salzburg and the Salzburg AG and in accordance with the climate and energy strategy Salzburg 2050. Therefore, we are able to reduce local air pollutant emissions and several tons of CO2.

In our planning phase, we already integrate multiple measures to preserve the environment and shape the Winterfest as a green event.

Our measures: