112,000 visitors at Vienna’s Republic of Love
After 38 intense festival days featuring radical political art, great classics adaptations, heated debate and wild parties, the Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) 2025 was coming to a close on 22 June.
112,000 people came to the Republic of Love, over a hundred events were sold out and as of today the festival achieved an uptake of 93 percent. The Republic of Love reached 730.000 via streams, social media and TV transmissions.
From Elfriede Jelinek to Laurie Anderson and Carolina Bianchi to Kurdwin Ayub, everyone came to Vienna and the Republic of Love. Torn-down posters, debates about the RAF and Gaza, congresses about Rammstein and Otto Muehl caused a stir. In the last week of the festival, The Pelicot Trial generated strong resonance in the international press with over a hundred reports around the globe. AFP and El Pais were fascinated by the over seven-hour “oratorio”, the New York Times saw a night full of "insight and despair” and Die Welt even called it the “most shocking thing theater can show”.
‘Vienna has five seasons – the normal ones plus the Vienna Festival’, wrote the German daily newspaper taz, while the Swiss RTS even considers the festival ‘the holy grail of contemporary theatre and the spot for every polemic.‘ The Austrian news magazin Profil confirmed that artistic director ‘Milo Rau is an activist of emotions.‘
Artists from 22 countries rendered the Vienna Festival a global, diverse community. Eleven productions celebrated their world premiere at the Vienna Festival, which itself produced or co-produced 19 plays. Nine female composers and their works participated in the Academy Second Modernism for a global, diverse music culture. ‘The Vienna Festival has completed the generational shift that everyone has been hoping for’ found Kronen Zeitung. Unique forms such as the 24-hour-performance The Second Woman, the community project Island Love, the all-night reading The Pelicot Trial and the Congresses of Vienna ‘also hit home with those who have little connection to theatre.‘ (Falter)
245 journalists visited the Vienna Festival. A total of 2103 media articles appeared in 26 countries until today.
The Council of the Republic accompanied the festival. Several of the demands made in the Vienna Declaration of 2024 have already been put in practice and new task forces are continuing to drive structural change throughout the year.
In this young, democratic, diverse guise, the Vienna Festival will celebrate its 75-year anniversary edition from 15 May to 21 June 2026.
