Opera and drama through August in the town Mozart came from, staged in courtyards, a rock riding school, and an open square
The Salzburger Festspiele was established in 1920 by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Richard Strauss, Max Reinhardt, Alfred Roller, and Franz Schalk. It runs for five weeks from late July to the end of August in Salzburg — Mozart’s birthplace, and a town of around 150,000 that becomes the centre of the European musical summer for five weeks.
It is a festival of music and drama in equal measure, which distinguishes it from almost every comparable event. Mozart’s operas are the foundation, but the programme carries new productions, orchestral concerts, recitals, and a full theatre season alongside them.
Hofmannsthal’s morality play Jedermann — Everyman — has been performed in the Domplatz, the square in front of the cathedral, since the festival’s first year. It is staged outdoors against the cathedral façade, it is the festival’s signature, and a new casting of the title role is an Austrian news event.
The other venues are as unusual. The Felsenreitschule is a former archbishops’ riding school cut into the rock of the Mönchsberg, with arcades carved into the cliff behind the stage. The first festival hall was built there in 1925. The Haus für Mozart and the Großes Festspielhaus sit alongside it, and the Residenzhof and other courtyards carry smaller performances.
The programme is published the winter before and applications open then, with allocation by ballot for the productions that matter — the new opera stagings and the premiere of Jedermann. What remains goes on general sale and clears quickly.
For a specific production on a specific evening, this is a nine- or ten-month arrangement rather than a booking. It is also a festival where the good seats and the accommodation need solving together, because Salzburg’s hotel supply is small relative to what August does to it.
Salzburg is compact enough to walk end to end in half an hour, which means the festival is not spread out — the venues, the restaurants, and the hotels sit within a few streets of each other, and the logistics of an evening are trivial once you are there.
The Salzkammergut lakes begin twenty minutes east, the Berchtesgaden Alps rise immediately south across the German border, and Vienna is two and a half hours by rail. A fortnight built as concerts in the evenings and lakes in the daytime is the version most of our members take.
Tell us which productions you want and we will arrange the seats and the town around them
Salzburg pays for the best available, and it has done since Strauss was one of the founders. The Vienna Philharmonic is the festival orchestra, conductors take Salzburg engagements over larger fees elsewhere, and a new production here is reviewed everywhere. For singers it is the summer that determines the following season.
The consequence for an audience is a concentration that no other five weeks in the calendar matches — four or five opera productions running in rotation, a concert series alongside them, and the drama programme in parallel. On any given evening in August there are three things worth attending and a choice has to be made.
It is also a festival with an uncomfortable history that it now addresses openly: the 1930s and the war years, and the founders’ own fates. Reinhardt and Hofmannsthal were Jewish; Reinhardt left Austria and died in New York. The festival’s own archive does not avoid this, and anyone reading about its origins will find it.
For anyone building a European summer of music, Salzburg sits alongside Bayreuth in Bavaria and Verbier in the Valais — three festivals across five weeks, each with a completely different character.
For five weeks from late July to the end of August each year
1920, by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Richard Strauss, Max Reinhardt, Alfred Roller, and Franz Schalk
Hofmannsthal’s morality play, performed outdoors in the cathedral square since the festival’s first year. It is the festival’s signature production
A former archbishops’ riding school cut into the rock of the Mönchsberg, now one of the festival’s principal venues
By application in the winter, with ballots for the major productions, then general sale for what remains
No. It is a festival of music and drama in equal measure, which is unusual at this level
The Salzburg Festival 2027 is expected to keep its usual late-July to end-of-August run, with exact dates confirmed the preceding autumn.
Yes, Salzburger Festspiele is how the event is known locally, and the name under which most official tickets and programmes are listed.
Applications open in winter with ballots for the major productions, and remaining Salzburg Festival tickets go on general sale in the spring.
The Salzburg Festival programme balances opera premieres, orchestral concerts and spoken theatre, with Jedermann staged every year as its centrepiece.
