Halloween in Germany: Holidays, Dance Bans and Süßes oder Saures

Halloween in Germany: Holidays, Dance Bans and Süßes oder Saures

Halloween in Germany (Halloween in Deutschland) is a 1990s import with no legal status, and it lands on a crowded date. 31 October is also Reformationstag (Reformation Day), a public holiday in 9 of the 16 states, and 1 November is Allerheiligen (All Saints' Day), a holiday in 5 others where the night after a party is legally "quiet". Children knock with "Süßes oder Saures!" ("sweet or sour!"); adults go to horror shows and parties.

If you are greeting someone in Germany from abroad, two SubhSandesh platform figures apply: 48.3% of shared pages are opened on a phone, and 38.5% of creators password-protect a page before sending it. Neither is Halloween data, because none exists yet. Below: how Halloween arrived, what each state allows on 31 October and 1 November in 2026 and 2027, four customs, and original German lines with English glosses.

Is Halloween celebrated in Germany?

Yes, by a minority, mostly children and young adults. Halloween in Germany means trick-or-treating, pumpkin carving and costume parties on the evening of 31 October, borrowed from American practice; nobody gets the day off for it.

In a 2013 report, Der Spiegel cited a YouGov poll finding that a fifth of Germans celebrated Halloween, and the toy trade expected €200 million in related sales that year. We found no newer national survey, so treat both as 2013 snapshots.

A resident of Luchsweg in Berlin-Dahlem, a street with many American residents, said more than a thousand children had come trick-or-treating the previous year. Neighbours complained about the "Saures" part: eggs on windows and fireworks through letterboxes.

How did Halloween come to Germany?

The most repeated origin story starts in 1991. Dieter Tschorn, a public-relations consultant for the German toy and novelty retailers' association, told Spiegel he introduced Halloween that year after carnival was cancelled because of the Gulf War: "The industry was forced to find a way of making up the losses."

Two corrections apply. Tschorn says "the state" cancelled carnival, but the Rosenmontag (Rose Monday) parades were called off by the carnival committees; Cologne's cancelled on 21 January 1991 while indoor sessions went ahead. And "father of Halloween in Germany" is his own title, not a historian's finding.

The older strand is American: Tschorn credited US troops who rented Burg Frankenstein near Darmstadt, where a Halloween show had run since 1977. Our reading is that US military communities seeded the custom and retailers scaled it after 1991. By autumn 1999 the LVR institute for regional studies in Bonn had begun a long-term "Halloween im Rheinland" research project (Alois Döring, Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, 2001).

What else falls on 31 October and 1 November in Germany?

Reformationstag marks Martin Luther's 95 theses of 1517. It has been a public holiday since 1990 in Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, and since 2018 in Bremen, Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein.

The northern four followed a one-off: for the 500th anniversary, 31 October 2017 was a day off across all of Germany. Economists at Helmut Schmidt University, in the ifo Schnelldienst of 22 March 2018, describe how that day prompted the four northern states to debate a permanent extra holiday. Holiday law is set by each state, they note, hence the patchwork.

Allerheiligen, 1 November, is a public holiday in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland. Families visit graves. Berlin and Hesse have neither day off, and the weekdays shape the rest:

• 2026: 31 October is a Saturday, so shops in the 9 Reformationstag states are shut; buy sweets by Friday 30 October. 1 November is a Sunday.
• 2027: 31 October is a Sunday and 1 November a Monday, giving the 5 Allerheiligen states a long weekend.

Can you throw a Halloween party in Germany?

Yes, but in the Allerheiligen states the clock matters, because 1 November is a stiller Feiertag (quiet holiday) and Halloween night runs straight into it. Each state writes its own rules, and none matches the blanket "dance ban" of headlines.

Bavaria's holiday act, Article 3, lists Allerheiligen as a quiet day protected from 02:00 to 24:00. Public entertainment is allowed only if it keeps the day's "serious character"; the outright ban on music in bars applies only on Good Friday.

Baden-Württemberg's holiday act, section 10, bans public dancing on Allerheiligen from 03:00 to 24:00 when it falls Monday to Friday, and from 05:00 when it falls on a weekend. So a public Halloween disco can run until 05:00 in 2026, a Sunday, but only until 03:00 in 2027, a Monday.

In North Rhine-Westphalia, the city of Düsseldorf's summary of state law bans markets, sport and entertainment in bars, dancing included, from 05:00 to 18:00 on 1 November. These rules cover public events, and we did not check Rhineland-Palatinate or Saarland. The table below compares the state groups on Halloween night itself.

The takeaway: in the three states checked, limits start in the small hours of 1 November. We did not check whether any Reformationstag state restricts 31 October itself.

Four German customs around Halloween

Two are older than Halloween in Germany and two arrived with it. Each entry gives what it is, then when and where.

1. Süßes oder Saures (trick-or-treating)

What: children in scary costumes ring doorbells for sweets, a custom also called "um die Häuser ziehen" (going round the houses). "Saures" (sour) stands in for the trick.

When: Saturday 31 October 2026 and Sunday 31 October 2027, after dark. Where: mainly suburbs and city districts with American or international residents.

2. Rübengeister (beet ghosts)

What: faces carved into hollowed fodder beets and lit from inside. Sabine Zinn-Thomas of the Landesstelle für Alltagskultur (state office for everyday culture) told evangelisch.de in October 2026 that they involve no costumes and are first recorded in writing in the 19th century.

When: no fixed date, any time in the autumn harvest. Where: probably wherever fodder beets were grown, with revivals such as Diedorf near Augsburg, where about 150 children carve each year. Whether they descend from the Irish and Scottish turnip lantern cannot be traced, the same report says.

3. Martinssingen and lantern walks

What: on Martinstag (St Martin's Day), children walk with paper lanterns and sing at doors for sweets. A German neighbour quoted by Spiegel complained that Halloween children "don't even sing a song like for St. Martin's Day".

When: Wednesday 11 November 2026 and Thursday 11 November 2027. Where: nationwide, usually organised by parishes, schools and kindergartens.

4. Frankenstein Halloween, now at Burg Königstein

What: a horror walk with actors in a castle ruin, billed as Germany's oldest Halloween show. It ran at Burg Frankenstein near Darmstadt from 1977 to 2023, then moved because that castle is under renovation.

When: 16 October to 1 November 2026. Where: Burg Königstein in the Taunus, not Darmstadt, whatever older guides say.

Six original German Halloween lines, with English glosses

Written for this page. Use them at the door, in a card or as a voice note.

• „Lieber Süßes in die Tüte als Saures an die Tür." Better sweets in the bag than something sour at the door.
• „Wir kommen nicht zum Singen, wir kommen nur zum Gruseln." We haven't come to sing, only to spook.
• „Rübe, Kürbis, Kerzenlicht: ohne Bonbon gehen wir nicht!" Beet, pumpkin, candlelight: no sweet, no goodbye!
• „Fröhliches Halloween! Von allen Gespenstern bist du mein liebstes." Happy Halloween! Of all the ghosts, you're my favourite.
• „Gruselige Grüße aus der Ferne: Heute wäre ich gern dein Kürbisnachbar." Spooky greetings from afar: tonight I'd love to be your pumpkin neighbour.
• „Halloween oder Reformationstag? Wir machen beides: Kerzen an und Thesen an die Tür." Halloween or Reformation Day? We do both: candles lit and theses on the door.

Sending a Halloween greeting to someone in Germany

A friend in Leipzig gets 31 October off; a friend in Munich gets 1 November instead. Either way a link reaches them on a phone: 48.3% of shared SubhSandesh pages are opened on one, and a shared page averages 11.1 views, platform-wide rather than Halloween figures.

For a short one, the Halloween card where they carve a jack-o'-lantern and earn a Boo License takes about 5 minutes and holds up to six photos. Its kids tone keeps the ghosts round and blushing, with no gore.

For something longer, the cinematic premium Halloween page that plays your voice takes about 10 minutes. Record one of the German lines above as a voice note of up to 60 seconds, add up to 12 photos, and set the unlock time for the evening of 31 October; their single reply of up to 280 characters is emailed to you.

If the person is a partner abroad and Halloween is only the excuse, the miss-you page with a reunion countdown says that more plainly. Its city picker has carried pairs such as Berlin-London; as a picker, that shows only that the pair exists.

When a Halloween page is the wrong choice in Germany

On 1 November many families visit graves, so skip the spooky link to anyone recently bereaved. A churchgoing Protestant relative may prefer a Reformationstag greeting, and a small child may care more about the lantern walk on 11 November.

The interface is English only, so a German grandparent sees English buttons around your German letter. These pages greet one person; they are not party invitations.

Sources

• Der Spiegel, "Holiday Backlash: Germans Cringe at Rise of Halloween", 31 October 2013.
• Hansen and Meyer, "Wie viel kosten uns die arbeitsfreien Feiertage?", ifo Schnelldienst 71(6), 22 March 2018.
• Bavarian Feiertagsgesetz, Article 3, in force since 1 August 2013.
• Baden-Württemberg Feiertagsgesetz, section 10.
• evangelisch.de (epd), "Der Brauch der Rübengeister kehrt zurück", 10 October 2026.
• Frankenstein Halloween, official event page, 2026.
• Checked, unlinked: WDR Stichtag on 1991 (2016); City of Düsseldorf, NRW holiday rules; Döring, Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 97, 2001.