The Silvesterpfad

Vienna doesn’t leave celebrating New Year’s Eve to chance. Each (normal!) year, the city organises the Silvesterpfad (New Year’s Eve Trail), with food, drink, and entertainment around the city centre.

• Coordinated festivities across Vienna with a focus on music, dance, food, and fireworks
• Usually opens from 2pm on Dec 31 to 2am the next day
• Cancelled in 2020 & 2021
• Details unconfirmed for 2022 (at the time of writing)
• Open-access, open-air event with multiple locations: no ticket required
• See also:
  • Find hotels for a New Year visit
  • New Year’s Eve in Vienna

What is the Silvesterpfad?

The New Year’s Eve trail is exactly as it sounds…a series of festive sites across Vienna, each fitted out with a temporary stage, and all geared up to entertain passers-by.

At the last Silvesterpfad in 2019, revellers enjoyed twelve locations in total. Two were essentially standalone events away from the centre, though, so more for locals than visitors.

This left 10 open-air sites dotted around the central district, all within walking distance of each other, and all open to everyone…with no entrance fee or ticketing system.

Quite what will happen at New Year’s Eve in December 2022 had yet to be announced at the time of writing: keep your fingers crossed for a return to some kind of normality if conditions allow.

The Silvesterpfad’s popularity means I get to use the word “throng” on this website, because hundreds of thousands of Viennese and tourists from the country and abroad throng the streets from early afternoon to late at night.

Around 800,000 did so in 2019 and around 0 in both 2020 (the city was in lockdown over New Year’s Eve) and 2021 (the Silvesterpfad was cancelled due to the inevitable logistical difficulties of meeting COVID safety regulations with such a large event).

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Each site on the Silvesterpfad has a different musical focus, so you pick the location to match your tastes. And the choice is wide: pop, funk, R&B, ballroom, disco, etc. Everyone from soul DJs to string ensembles perform for your entertainment.

Silvesterpfad highlights

It’s still a little early for confirmation of any coming 2022/2023 festivities, but here some traditional highlights, which might make a reappearance if the event goes ahead as usual:

The Graben

Only one city can probably teach you to waltz outside while still making you feel like you’re in a ballroom.

The giant Christmas chandelier lights along the main pedestrianised street at the very heart of the city stay up through New Year. Beneath them, free waltz courses from Vienna’s ballroom dancing schools should give you some of the skills you’ll need to pass yourself off as a local.

The Austrian mint is typically out and about along The Graben, so you might buy, for example, a freshly-minted copper or silver New Year coin.

Rathausplatz

Revellers often congregate at midnight on the square in front of city hall for the official fireworks display and a mass waltz. So you can put those ballroom lessons to immediate use.

It only takes a little practice to dance the waltz, but a lot of skill to dance one adequately in the middle of a crowd of tipsy Viennese. One of the great scientific mysteries of our time is how people manage to do so without causing significant pileups.

On January 1st, the square has previously shown a live broadcast of the traditional New Year’s Concert from the Musikverein, with a repeat at 2pm. The square also hosted a party-oriented New Year market pre-COVID.

Teinfaltstraße

Go to “Lucky street” along Teinfaltstraße to have your fortune told, pick up your horoscope, or otherwise convince yourself it’s going to be a good year.

(I’m not sure how well that worked out at the end of 2019, given the events of 2020 and 2021.)

Vienna State Opera House

This location always showcases a selection of the very best festive rap songs.

(Perhaps not.)

As you might imagine, arias dominate here. A giant screen typically displays highlights from the Staatsoper’s opera productions, including a traditional live broadcast of Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus.

What about food and drink?

If you don’t want to nip into a bar or restaurant to keep your energy levels up for all that walking and waltzing, dozens of catering stands dot the Silvesterpfad. And don’t forget the New Year markets.

Expect sparkling wine and punch to figure prominently. And sausages (hopefully).

When I went, a marvelous stand sold mini Sachertorte cakes outside Demel on Kohlmarkt. And the cakes sold like, um, hot cakes.

Visitor tips

This is what I learned from my time on the Silvesterpfad:

• Plan your afternoon and evening schedule using the full programme and other details provided at the official website, which should also has general information on public transport, behavioural guidelines, and similar.

• Don’t be shocked at how much you are actually charged for drinks etc. when you buy them from stands: you may have to add the cost of a returnable deposit on glasses, plates etc. to the advertised prices.

• Along the route, some bakeries and snack bars may also open until 2am, should you wish a cheap(er) source for food and drink.

• I went until about 7pm (don’t mock me) and experienced no rowdiness or idiots letting off crackers. An absence of vehicles helped with the positive atmosphere; much of the Silvesterpfad area stays cordoned off from traffic.

• The trail was already busy, though, even at that early time. If you’re not good in crowds, stay away, and it all gets louder as the evening progresses.

• With all the revellers, it takes quite a while to get places. To move faster, just nip down a side street and walk along a parallel road to your end destination. Once you get off the marked Silvesterpfad streets, the crowds thin rapidly.

Happy New Year!