• Home
  • Things to see
  • Things to do
  • Where to stay
  • Getting around
  • Common questions
  • Schönbrunn

Steiermark Frühling festival

Print this article
Steiermark Frühling and RathausApples, beer, wine and pumpkins. Perhaps the four things most associated with the Austrian province of Styria (German: Steiermark).

And once a year around mid-April, lorry loads of apples, beer, wine and pumpkin products travel up the southern motorway to Vienna for the 4-day Styrian Spring (Steiermark Frühling) festival on the Rathausplatz.

It’s a celebration of the province, its culture and (particularly) its culinary delights: the 2016 festival, for example, featured a 30 metre apple strudel.

The festival itself is a little piece of Styria transplanted into the capital, with booths and wooden cabins, turf, mulch and floral displays adding rural charm to the city centre.

Many people here are in traditional dress, from senior citizens with imperious moustaches to youngsters sporting Lederhosen and sunglasses – not just booth staff, but visitors, too. It’s not a display for the Viennese and tourists, but the continuation of an authentic tradition. You can get some idea of the festival feeling from this 2016 promo video:

And this slideshow:

Styrian Spring festival

Numerous booths cover the main tourism regions in the province, from the city of Graz through to the extensive Alpine areas, and there are demonstrations of traditional crafts, like basket weaving.

As you wander around, two things strike you:

1. Styrians are a happy folk. All smiles and laughter, and full of regional pride. But not the “we’re better than you, so leave your money here and get out” type of pride. More of the “come and share in our luck” variety.

2. They do like their wine and beer.

There are indeed an awful lot of booths, tents and cabins selling Styrian wine and schnapps. A very distinctive regional wine, for example, is the Schilcher rosé made from the local Blauer Wildbacher grape.

They like their food, too.

You can buy pumpkin seed snacks in a multitude of flavours, as well as pumpkin seed oil (a distinctive dark green dressing that goes well on salads). Sausages and small dumplings with melted cheese, dark bread garnished with air-dried ham, local cheeses and horse radish, fried meat and potatoes, sweet rolls (Buchtel) and funnel cakes, giant pretzels, and more.

There are plenty of seats and benches to sit around to enjoy all the above. Or you can flop onto some straw and enjoy the spring sun: the surrounding Rathauspark is normally in fine form, too, with fresh green carpeting the trees and displays of tulips on the ground.

Among the chatter and laughter you will also hear music, and not just on the main stage. Often a booth or cabin has its own traditional folk group from the mountains, perhaps with a portly gentleman in leather trousers swinging his accordion with gusto, pausing only for another sup of Styrian beer and a satisfied smile at the assembled audience.

It’s a great atmosphere and perhaps a good place to eat as you wander the more traditional city sights.

Styrian Spring visitor info

There is no entrance fee and the official website has dates and the daily programme. You can get there easily enough, given the central, convenient location. Chances are you’ll run into it by accident on your sightseeing tour.

Subway: U2 line to Rathaus.

Trams: Lines 1, D or 71 to Rathausplatz / Burgtheater or line 2 to Stadiongasse / Parlament.

Address: Rathausplatz, 1010 Vienna

First published: April 18, 2016
Last modified: April 18, 2016
Written by: Mark Brownlow

Things to do:

  • Sightseeing
  • Events by month
    • Vienna at Easter
    • Vienna at Christmas
  • Cinemas and theatres
    • Burgtheater
    • English cinemas
  • Opera in Vienna
    • Opera tickets
    • What to wear
  • Pokemon hotspots
  • …more things to do

New! Now on Facebook…

Visiting Vienna

Discover Vienna:

  • Sightseeing in Vienna
    • At Christmas
    • At Easter
    • Vienna Pass
    • Vienna City Card
    • Save time/money
    • Museums
    • Schönbrunn
    • The Hofburg
    • Belvedere
    • Around the Ring
  • Travel and weather
    • Public transport
    • Using your car
  • Where to stay
  • Visitor questions
  • Entertainment
    • Events
  • Local food and drink
  • Famous Vienna people
  • Vienna in books, song and film
  • Eating out
  • Shopping
Visiting Vienna is an independent tourist and visitor information guide written by a local resident

Privacy policy | About, Contact and Impressum

Disclaimer: Check locally for up-to-date information on the topics/places/events covered here before you travel or book

*I accept no payments from websites to talk about them in an article. However, some like to give me a small "finder’s fee" if a visitor follows my links and then buys something at their website. Such text links are marked with a *. I try not to let this affect my objectivity (I link to vastly more attractions and services that pay no finder's fee).

All text and photos copyright Mark Brownlow 2005-2018 unless otherwise indicated