75 Years: Walk in the Footsteps of the Vienna Festival with ivie
A special city walk awaits you here: every year in May and June, the Vienna Festival presents an exceptionally wide-ranging program of events spread over five weeks. In its 75-year history, the Vienna Festival has shaped the city like no other cultural event.
From High Culture to Pop Culture
Theater and opera are just as much a part of the program as concerts. Visual art, performance, discussion series, and exhibitions are also integral to the Vienna Festival. From high culture to pop culture, it’s all here, and the Vienna Festival spans the entire city. Over the decades, events have been held at around 1,000 venues in Vienna. It is a festival for everyone, one that has provided not only magnificent artistic moments but also sparked debates and controversies.
Shaping the City on Many Levels
This has had a profound impact in many parts of the city. People still talk today about legendary events like Christoph Schlingensief’s “Bitte liebt Österreich!” in front of the State Opera or productions like Frank Castorf’s “Dämonen.” As a founding member of the Museumsquartier, the Vienna Festival also served as a driving force for urban development and has shaped public spaces with its art installations. The Festival has also been hugely important to Vienna’s youth culture, as shown by the occupation of the Arena in 1976.
This city walk takes you to significant places in the 75-year history of the Vienna Festival and tells of legendary performances, productions, and scandals. You’ll find anecdotes and stories, such as those about the city’s famous flags, which are displayed at Vienna’s sights – an initiative launched by the Vienna Festival in 1956. Today, the Vienna Tourist Board is responsible for these flags and signs.
Discover 12 Locations
The 75 Years of the Vienna Festival Walk takes you, for instance, to the MAK - Museum of Applied Arts, where “It’s Not My Problem Anymore,” a comprehensive exhibition of Christoph Schlingensief’s work, is currently on display. It also leads to the House of the Sea, the facade of which featured a major work by the U.S. conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner for nearly three decades. One of the stops is the Künstlerhaus: in 1985, the first blockbuster exhibition in Vienna, “Dream and Reality,” took place here as part of the Vienna Festival.
Also on the route are the MusikTheater an der Wien, where a full-blown theater scandal unfolded in 1980, and the Burgtheater, a venue for major theatrical productions. Vienna’s Rathausplatz is also a must. Each year, the opening of the Vienna Festival is held here, drawing around 40,000 visitors. Since 2019, Vienna’s Judenplatz has also been an important venue: this is where the “Rede an Europa” takes place, a format designed to promote political discourse. The following places and institutions are part of the Walk. Each location highlights a special festival year.
- MAK - Museum of Applied Arts - 2026
- Wiener Konzerthaus - 1953
- Künstlerhaus - 1985
- Vienna State Opera
- MusikTheater an der Wien - 1980
- House of the Sea - 1991
- Museumsquartier - 2001
- Burgtheater - 1999
- Rathausplatz - 1953
- Judenplatz - 2019
- Arena - 1976
- Jugendstiltheater - 2024
Go straight to the “75 Years of the Vienna Festival Walk”
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