MarketEvery year

Weimarer Zwiebelmarkt

Name: Weimarer Zwiebelmarkt
Start: 2026-10-09
End: 2026-10-11

Weimar Onion Market

Thuringia's oldest and largest folk festival, held on the second weekend of October since 1653.

The second weekend in October, every year373rd edition in 2026

9–11Oct

In 25 days

9–11 October 2026

The Marktplatz in Weimar during the Zwiebelmarkt under a grey October sky: white market umbrellas, stalls with onion plaits, crowds, Renaissance gables at left and the houses of the north side behind — The Marktplatz on Zwiebelmarkt weekend: stalls, umbrellas and a full square.(Weimar Web)

Onion plaits (Zwiebelzöpfe) laid out on a green cloth: brown and red onions with garlic and dried flowers in orange, yellow and purple — Zwiebelzöpfe — plaited onions with garlic and dried flowers, the market's signature piece.(Weimar Web)

Onion plaits with dried flowers on a burlap-covered stall table, handwritten price tags of 10 and 12 euros — Plaits on a stall table, priced by hand.(Weimar Web)

A Thüringer Rostbratwurst stand at the Zwiebelmarkt: sausages on the grill, a queue, an oversized bratwurst in a roll on the stand's roof, town houses behind — Thüringer Rostbratwurst from the grill, a fixture of the market.(Weimar Web)

A small pink wooden cart on the cobbles filled with autumn vegetables: cabbages, kohlrabi, broccoli, carrots, leeks, gourds and a string of onions, tall green stems behind — A decorated vegetable cart outside a stall — the market's harvest theme in one picture.(Weimar Web)

Under a white market tent: hanging wreaths and decorations of straw, cones and dried flowers, hedgehog figures of hay and wood slices on the table, visitors browsing — Wreaths, straw figures and dried flowers: the craft stalls run alongside the onions.(Weimar Web)

A stall with wicker hearts, straw wreaths and dried-flower bouquets in front of a pink-and-white baroque house, visitors in masks in the foreground — Wicker and straw at one of the craft stalls.(Weimar Web)

A straw figure with sunflower eyes hanging under a red-and-white striped awning, wicker hearts at left, onion plaits and a basket of white garlic on the table — A straw figure over the onion plaits; garlic sold by the bulb below.(Weimar Web)

A green-and-white striped stall with straw wreaths and dried flowers in front of the Kunsthalle Harry Graf Kessler, whose windows carry the signs 'Kunst der verschollenen Generation' and 'Deutsche Kunst 20. Jhd.' — Zwiebelmarkt stalls on the Goetheplatz, in front of the Kunsthalle Harry Graf Kessler.(Weimar Web)

About Weimarer Zwiebelmarkt

For three days in October the old town is given over entirely to what the city calls the largest and oldest market and town festival in Thuringia — in 2026, for the 373rd time.

It began as a livestock and onion market

The Viehe- und Zippelmarkt it grew out of is the reason for the name and for the thing everyone photographs: growers come in from the surrounding villages with braided ropes of onions, and the braiding itself carries a certain competitive pride. A festival that has run this long stops being a theme and becomes a habit the town has.

Three squares at once

Stalls fill the Marktplatz, the Theaterplatz and the Herderplatz simultaneously, with stages and music across the weekend, a children's market, and an Onion Market Queen crowned each year. It is not a curated cultural programme and does not pretend to be one — which, in a town this careful about its own significance, is most of the appeal.

The Saturday city run

Around two thousand runners take an eleven-kilometre route through the streets and out into the Park an der Ilm. Whether you intend to run it or simply want to cross the centre of town that morning, plan around the field.

Whether this is your weekend

If you came to Weimar for the quiet version — the classical houses, the park, the reading room — this is the weekend to avoid, and to book around. If you want to see the place with its guard down, doing something for its own sake rather than for its inheritance, there is no other weekend that will do.