The Festspielhaus

December 6, 2026, 2 p.m. CET

The Sunday that decides the summer

One Sunday in December decides who sits in the Festspielhaus next summer. Richard Wagner built the house for his own operas on a green hill above Bayreuth, in northern Bavaria, under a mile up from the main station, and opened it on August 13, 1876. It plays one month a year, to about 58,000 people; in 2027 that month runs from July 25 to August 24. The festival says plainly that requests from around the world exceed the tickets it has.

Written orders for 2027 opened on August 28, 2026, eleven months ahead, and closed on October 12. The festival sent out its refusals by e-mail on November 11. The next chance is the online instant sale, on Sunday, December 6, at 2 p.m. Central European Time: 8 a.m. in New York.

You need a ticket-shop account and a verified e-mail before that hour; register once, never twice. Once you are inside the shop, you have thirty minutes to choose and pay. You may buy four tickets per performance, sixteen in all, and two at most in the gallery and a few other categories. Payment is immediate, by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay or PayPal, and there are no returns. Each ticket carries the name of the person who will use it, and resale above face value is banned. Last season, a second online sale followed in April, from seats that went unpaid. Do not count on it. If plans change, the name on a ticket can be changed with the box office up to 24 hours before the curtain.

Before the sale

Choose your seat in the 3D tour

The hall has 1,937 seats, and the festival’s 3D tour lets you sit in each price category before you buy. Use it. Prices follow the night: S for the openings and most nights of the new Lohengrin, A for most of the rest, B for most of Tannhäuser and Die Meistersinger. The center stalls run €352 to €459. At the top of the gallery, a seat with a restricted view costs €22 to €29, and a listening seat, with no view of the stage at all, costs €11 to €15. Add €6 a ticket.

There is no dress code. The festival’s own words: no regulations, but the festive character of the evening decides what guests wear. Its other warning is worth taking: the temperature rises from the stalls to the gallery. Dress for the floor you booked.

July 24 and 28, 2027, 8 p.m.

The free nights on the hill

If December goes badly, come anyway. Twice in the opening week, on Saturday, July 24, and Wednesday, July 28, the Festival Orchestra plays on the hill in front of the house, at 8 p.m. No tickets. Parking is free those days. Bring folding chairs and a picnic; the festival welcomes both.

July 25 and 26, 2027

Two new productions, two nights running

The season opens on Sunday, July 25, with a new Lohengrin: Tarmo Peltokoski conducts, Ilaria Lanzino directs, Michael Spyres sings the swan knight. On Monday, July 26, comes a new Parsifal, conducted by Christian Thielemann and directed by Ersan Mondtag, with sets and costumes by the painters Neo Rauch and Rosa Loy. Piotr Beczała sings Parsifal that night and on three more. The festival notes that it has never before opened two new productions in one season.

Parsifal had its world premiere in this house, on July 26, 1882. If you can choose one night, choose that date.

The two revivals fill the other nights. Tannhäuser is Tobias Kratzer’s staging, with Klaus Florian Vogt in the title role. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is conducted by Simone Young, with Michael Volle as Hans Sachs.

Getting up the hill: Bayreuth is on the A9 between Munich and Berlin, and regional trains run every half hour from Nuremberg, the high-speed hub; the Franken-Sachsen-Express, between Nuremberg and Dresden, stops every two hours. During the festival the approach roads close to traffic; the car parks charge €10 a day, and the taxi rank is on Tristanstraße. On performance days the box office opens from 10 to noon, and again two hours before the start.

Inside the house

The orchestra you will not see

Wagner wanted nothing between you and the stage. There are no side boxes. The hall opens out like a fan, and it goes dark during the performance, a rule he was the first to impose. The orchestra, up to 110 musicians, sits in a sunken pit under the edge of the stage, in tiers, the loudest instruments at the bottom and the quietest at the top. What reaches you, the festival says, is not the sound from the pit but almost only its reflection.

At Bayreuth you never see the orchestra. You hear it bounce off the stage.

The seats are wood. You may not bring your own cushion; borrow one at the cloakroom. Your bag sits on your lap, no larger than about 11 by 8 by 8 inches, or stays at the cloakroom.

The intervals

One hour, twice

Each interval lasts an hour, and the hill is set up for it. The caterer’s list, last updated for 2025, runs to Sekt bars, a beer garden on the left side of the house, a seafood bar named for the Flying Dutchman, a buffet restaurant that serves you across both intervals, and Restaurant 1813, with table service on a shaded terrace. Book your table ahead through the caterer, wahnfood, on festspiel-gourmet.de.

After a long Wagner night, some kitchens in town have closed. Order ahead, or eat on the hill.

August 24, 2027, and after

The last night, and the rest of the year

The season closes with the eighth Lohengrin, on Tuesday, August 24. The rest of the year the house is dark to opera, but from April 2027 it opens on Saturdays at 1 p.m. for a guided tour in English, €10, through the entrance on the west side. On a free day during the festival, go down into town to Haus Wahnfried, Wagner’s home and now the Richard Wagner Museum. Then see the Margravial Opera House, a UNESCO World Heritage site, reopened in April 2018.

The house on the hill owes its building to a loan from King Ludwig II, in 1874, and its plan to the architect Otto Brückwald. For another Bavarian house built around music, read Schloss Elmau, in the Alps.