About Wacken Festival
Wacken tickets for the Wacken Open Air Festival 2026.
In 2026, Wacken will once again be one of the biggest heavy metal festivals in the world! Four days of pure metal madness - the W:O:A 2025 proved this once again. Around 85,000 people attended the festival in Itzehoe. And the crowds are just as gigantic this year. Confirmed so far Airbourne, Def Leppard, In Flames, Powerwolf und Savatage As usual, the entire line-up will be announced shortly before the festival starts.
The scheduled date for the 34th W:O:A 2026:
July 29 to August 01, 2026
Normally, Wacken resembles a village like any other in the northern German province of Schleswig-Holstein. But thanks to two residents, once a year the small village is thrown into a state of emergency. Every year in the first week of August, tens of thousands of hard rock and heavy metal enthusiasts flock to Wacken to attend one of the biggest festivals in the scene - the W:O:A (Wacken Open Air).
Just over 30 years ago, Thomas Jensen and Holger Hübner decided to organize an open-air festival based on their own musical preferences. The Wacken Festival had just 800 visitors at its first event in 1990, but over the years the small open-air festival attracted more and more hard rock and heavy metal fans. After initially only German bands were represented on the line-up, in 1992 Wacken was able to attract the British heavy metal veterans Saxon alongside international bands from Sweden, the USA, Ireland and Belgium. In 1996, the confirmation of the Böhsen Onkelz not only brought the festival its biggest crowd to date, but also an enormous boost in popularity. Just one year later, the number of visitors to the W:O:A broke through the 10,000 mark, doubling the following year. As the number of visitors increased, so did the number of stages, the number of bands performing and the size of the grounds, which now cover 240 hectares.
The Wacken Festival is now one of the most famous festivals for hard rock and heavy metal. Legends such as Motörhead, Slayer, Ozzy Osbourne, Deep Purple and Iron Maiden have already performed in Wacken. In recent years, the open-air festival has attracted between 75,000 and 80,000 visitors. Tickets always sell out at breakneck speed, so that at peak times the festival is sold out within a few weeks, sometimes within a few hours.
In 2026, Wacken will once again be one of the biggest heavy metal festivals in the world! Four days of pure metal madness - the W:O:A 2025 proved this once again. Around 85,000 people attended the festival in Itzehoe. And the crowds are just as gigantic this year. Confirmed so far Airbourne, Def Leppard, In Flames, Powerwolf und Savatage As usual, the entire line-up will be announced shortly before the festival starts.
The scheduled date for the 34th W:O:A 2026:
July 29 to August 01, 2026
Normally, Wacken resembles a village like any other in the northern German province of Schleswig-Holstein. But thanks to two residents, once a year the small village is thrown into a state of emergency. Every year in the first week of August, tens of thousands of hard rock and heavy metal enthusiasts flock to Wacken to attend one of the biggest festivals in the scene - the W:O:A (Wacken Open Air).
Just over 30 years ago, Thomas Jensen and Holger Hübner decided to organize an open-air festival based on their own musical preferences. The Wacken Festival had just 800 visitors at its first event in 1990, but over the years the small open-air festival attracted more and more hard rock and heavy metal fans. After initially only German bands were represented on the line-up, in 1992 Wacken was able to attract the British heavy metal veterans Saxon alongside international bands from Sweden, the USA, Ireland and Belgium. In 1996, the confirmation of the Böhsen Onkelz not only brought the festival its biggest crowd to date, but also an enormous boost in popularity. Just one year later, the number of visitors to the W:O:A broke through the 10,000 mark, doubling the following year. As the number of visitors increased, so did the number of stages, the number of bands performing and the size of the grounds, which now cover 240 hectares.
The Wacken Festival is now one of the most famous festivals for hard rock and heavy metal. Legends such as Motörhead, Slayer, Ozzy Osbourne, Deep Purple and Iron Maiden have already performed in Wacken. In recent years, the open-air festival has attracted between 75,000 and 80,000 visitors. Tickets always sell out at breakneck speed, so that at peak times the festival is sold out within a few weeks, sometimes within a few hours.