Salzburg Festival

On Jedermann evenings in the summer festival, the audience sits on the Domplatz, in front of Salzburg Cathedral, to watch Hofmannsthal's Jedermann, a morality play about a wealthy man's death. It has been staged on the square since the festival began. This is what the festival was founded for, in 1920, by Max Reinhardt, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss, with the idea that "the whole city is a stage".

Today the festival is a very large operation. The 2026 festival, the 106th, ran for 45 days, from 17 July to 30 August, with 172 performances in 19 venues, plus a youth programme, and welcomed more than 261,300 guests from 84 countries, with more than 99 percent of the seats filled. There were nine opera productions, 84 concert performances and a drama programme with world premieres and 15 performances of Jedermann.

The 2027 summer festival runs from 16 July to 29 August. A shorter Whitsun festival is held first, from 14 to 17 May 2027. The main halls are the Grosses Festspielhaus and the Felsenreitschule, on Hofstallgasse, and Jedermann moves into the Festspielhaus when weather requires (in 2026, eight of its 15 performances were on the square and seven in the Festspielhaus).

How to go. Tickets are the first problem, and the festival's website has the schedule and sales information, with a ticket hotline. If you do not have a ticket, there are free things to do: the Festival Opening Celebration, a free public event, and the Siemens Fest>Spiel>Nächte on Kapitelplatz, where selected productions are shown on a big open-air screen. Walking through the old town during the festival also gives a sense of the atmosphere. The city is crowded and prices are high in July and August, so book early.