Festival of the regions 2025: Experience art and culture in Braunau!

Festival of the regions 2025: Experience art and culture in Braunau!

The Festival of Regions 2025 in Braunau am Inn recently exceeded all expectations. From June 13th to 22nd, this festival, established in Upper Austria, took place and attracted great attention with around 20,000 visitors and artists. The aim of the event was to link the local conditions with artistic and social issues and to promote a critical dialogue. "Very different than usual," summed up a Braunauer, and that was exactly the intention: to make differences and similarities in rural areas visible.

In the heart of the city, the festival center with cozy beer benches and a friendly vegan vegetarian lunch kitchen was the central point of contact. Here was the opportunity to discover the diverse initiatives and offers with a cup of coffee, which were marked by striking yellow signs. The creative work of Lydia Waldhör, which embroidered initials on pieces of fabrics with a lot of skill, particularly caught eye to put together a kilt for the city - an impressive sign of the community.

art and reality of life in dialogue

One of the highlights of the festival was the collaboration of the Bussi group with Lebenshilfe Braunau. Together they worked on innovative architectural projects from materials from a mined city. This type of participation clearly shows how art and reality can interlock. At workshops, festivals and even schnitzel hunts with school classes, the public space was used as a stage for creative development. "We want to see Braunau with different eyes," said an organizer, and that was impressively implemented.

The focus was particularly strong on participation and cooperation, which gave the festival the character of a “festival of encounter”. Sports places, train stations, parks and even empty shops were quickly transformed into hands -on locations. These temporary objects and sculptures made of old wood and bulky waste gave the city a new, artistic touch and attracted numerous interested parties.

A look into the future

A central concern of the festival was to promote the preoccupation with social issues such as queer life and women's rights. The festival would like to see the future as an opportunity to develop new solutions and to initiate the dialogue about it. This is all the more important because the current debate about identity and social rights focus. An impressive example of this approach are the performances by Mieze Medusa, Lydia Haider and Marlene Hauser, who dealt with a "litigation of the will" and thus stimulated to think.

Overall, the regions' festival is not only a creative event, but also sees itself as a catalyst for cultural and educational processes in the region. As in the past editions, the festival has again left “small cultural plants” this year, which can continue to grow in the future. The aim is not only to address the past and memory, but also to take a look at the future identities of the region.

The positive mood even continued on June 7, when the first pride took place in the Innviertel. This shows that people in the region are willing to accept changes and to stand up for a fairer society.

The festival has repeatedly opened new perspectives in its more than 30 years of history and enriched the cultural landscape in Upper Austria. It remains exciting what impulses it will leave for the coming years - in the sense of art, society and communal coexistence.

More details and information are available on the website of the festival fdr.at and at the Furrow .