About the Young Artists Festival Bayreuth

The Festival of Young Artists Bayreuth is organized and performed by young talent from all over the world, and is seen and loved by an international audience. The close collaboration of young artists and cultural managers is an important part of the festival experience, since mutual trust and empathy are cornerstones of cultural exchange. Alumni of the Bayreuth Festival can find their way anywhere.

In a tradition maintained since its founding in 1950, the Festival offers a unique social and artistic space every summer in the festival city of Bayreuth, a meeting place for young people from all over the world, a place to learn to navigate intercultural differences, a place to experiment in music, theatre, film, literature and art. Art, and music in particular, create a platform on which young international participants engage in dialogue, explore and expand the limits of their abilities, and experience and shape key moments of creativity and passion.

We at the Festival of Young Artists Bayreuth are committed to:

• education and art,
• quality,
• the courage to experiment and to innovate,
• our friends and supporters,
• our partners.

We are committed to responsibility and sustainability, as they pertain to the young people who are entrusted in us!

And this is our mission:

• We live for the ideals of culture and art, for the ideals of freedom and peace.
• We live for the education of young people and for their aspirations.
• We commit ourselves to quality and creativity, establishing fascinating connections between our tradition and artful innovation.

We are at home in Bayreuth and around the globe! We build bridges and bring people together. We strive for an open and free society that is oriented towards sustainability.

The Young Artists Festival Bayreuth was founded in 1950 under the patronage of Jean Sibelius. In the post-war period, especially in light of the separation within Europe caused by the Iron Curtain, the “Jugend-Festspieltreffen Bayreuth e. V.”, as the Festival was called at the time of the its founding, emerged as a place of peaceful encounter between East and West, a protected space for artistic development.

The challenges faced by the Festival at its beginning, and at all times since, are more relevant today than ever before. Immanuel Kant once said: “Peace is the masterpiece of reason, peace must be created, it does not come by itself.” It is in this spirit that the Festival sets out to fulfil its cultural mission by searching for signs of reason and peace in times of crisis.

After more than seven decades, here is the result: over 30,000 participants, young artists, researchers and managers from more than 80 nations. They take part in workshops for symphony orchestra and chamber music, choir and voice, sound engineering and photography. There are also workshops like “Orient meets Occident”, “The Opera Studio” and “Artists in Residence”. With approximately 400 participants from nearly 40 nations, each summer the Festival organizes more than 100 events, open air performances and specials, symposia and art exhibitions, lectures and flash mobs in town and in the surrounding region. This is Richard Wagner's “Here the art counts!” impressively documented.