Wiener Festwochen

The Wiener Festwochen (Vienna Festival) is an international cultural festival that takes place every year for five or six weeks in May and June. When it started in the 1950s, the Wiener Festwochen laid several important foundations for creating a new image for Vienna, both nationally and internationally. After Vienna and Austria had been isolated by Austro-fascism and Nazism, it was necessary to reconnect with the world, to integrate the city and the country into the international discourse of art and culture, to promote life, openness, and the idea of a future. Throughout its subsequent history, the Wiener Festwochen have always taken on cultural and socio-political challenges. The Wiener Festwochen today are positioned as a multidisciplinary art festival in the city. Among Vienna’s cultural offerings, the point is to present and allow things not yet seen and not yet heard, and to work as a content engine linking genres, thoughts, and ideas. The task of the Wiener Festwochen will therefore be to create frameworks for new alliances, rather than to build new borders and fences of art.