Oktoberfest by the Numbers: Visitors, Beer, Chickens and Lost Items

Numbers are the one part of Oktoberfest that nobody has to translate. A Maß is a liter of beer whichever language you drink it in, and the scale of this festival is easiest to grasp in the totals Munich itself publishes once the tents come down. What follows is the city’s own tally for 2025, the most recent festival with a finished count, and it belongs alongside my complete guide to Oktoberfest in Munich as the reference page for what this event actually adds up to.

Visitors, three years running

Source: muenchen.de¹.

The trend across those three years runs downward, though every one of them is still a scale most festivals never approach. Oktoberfest’s own history page separately puts the festival’s typical annual draw at around six million, which the 2025 figure sits right in line with². The 2023 record owes something to its own calendar quirk: an 18-day run, two days longer than 2025’s, which alone accounts for part of the gap between the two years even before any change in daily crowd size.

How much beer, exactly

Munich’s 2025 count put beer served at roughly 6.5 million one-liter Maß, working out to 67,127 hectoliters, down from about 7 million Maß the year before¹. Neither year came close to the all-time record: 2011 poured 79,225 hectoliters, more than 2025’s total by a wide margin¹. The one number moving in the opposite direction is non-alcoholic beer, which more than doubled from 2,400 hectoliters in 2024 to 5,638 hectoliters in 2025, a shift worth noting if you assumed everyone at the Wiesn is drinking the real thing¹.

What got eaten

The festival is as much a food event as a beer one, and 2025’s kitchen tally is the clearest evidence of that.

Source: muenchen.de¹.

Every one of those numbers only makes sense once you remember the festival runs sixteen days straight, from opening Saturday to the first Sunday in October or the extension that follows it. Roughly 22,000 chickens a day is still a working kitchen’s worth of birds, repeated for over two weeks without a break.

How international the crowd is

Oktoberfest is not only a Munich event, or even only a Bavarian one. On average, about 21 percent of the 2025 crowd came from outside Germany, and that share climbed to roughly 30 percent on the festival’s middle Saturday, its single busiest day¹. If you have ever stood in a beer tent and heard four languages at the next table over, that Saturday figure is most of the explanation.

Lost, found and confiscated

Not everything that comes onto the Theresienwiese leaves with its owner. Munich’s Lost and Found office logged 5,656 items handed in during the 2025 festival, and security confiscated 116,000 beer mugs from visitors trying to walk out with a souvenir, up from 98,000 the year before¹. That second number says something about the Maßkrug’s gravitational pull that the first one does not.

What it costs to run

A Maß cost between €14.80 and €15.90 in 2026, depending on the tent, which gives you the retail price behind all that beer above. Multiply 2025’s 6.5 million Maß by even the low end of that range and beer alone accounts for well over 90 million euros changing hands across sixteen days, before a single Hendl or pretzel is counted. On the supply side, the 2026 festival approved 478 businesses out of 954 applications to operate on the grounds, with around 120,000 guest seats across the tents and roughly 13,000 people working the festival to keep it running¹.

Resi says The number that gets me every time is the ox count, not the beer. Six and a half million people drinking a liter each is a lot of beer, sure, but 130 whole oxen roasted over sixteen days is the kind of logistics operation that makes the beer tents look like the easy part.

The Oide Wiesn's own count

The historical Oide Wiesn section runs its own smaller numbers alongside the main festival’s. It drew 373,083 paying visitors in 2025, down from 447,356 in 2024, a fraction of the six-and-a-half million the main grounds pulled in over the same days¹. My Oide Wiesn page covers what that quieter corner of the festival actually looks like and what it costs to get in.

Why there is no 2026 total yet

This page uses 2025’s numbers on purpose. Oktoberfest 2026 runs through October 4, and Munich does not publish its final attendance, beer and food totals until after the festival closes and the count is complete; treat any 2026 total you see quoted before then as a guess, not a fact. Once the city’s own final report for 2026 is out, this page gets updated to match, and my Oktoberfest dates page tracks when the festival itself starts and ends each year.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many people go to Oktoberfest each year?

Around 6.5 million attended the 2025 festival, Munich’s most recent complete count, close to the roughly six million the city cites as a typical annual figure.

How much beer is served at Oktoberfest?

About 6.5 million one-liter Maß, or 67,127 hectoliters, in 2025, down from roughly 7 million Maß the year before.

What is the record for beer served at Oktoberfest?

2011, at 79,225 hectoliters, the highest total on record.

How many chickens are eaten at Oktoberfest?

351,461 roast chickens in 2025, alongside 427,401 Bratwürste and 130 whole oxen.

What happens to lost items at Oktoberfest?

They go to the festival’s Lost and Found office, which took in 5,656 items in 2025.

Do people try to take the beer mugs home?

Often enough that security confiscated 116,000 of them in 2025, up from 98,000 in 2024.

How much does a beer cost at Oktoberfest?

Between €14.80 and €15.90 for a one-liter Maß in 2026, depending on the tent.

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