Wave-Gotik-Treffen 2026
I went to Wave-Gotik-Treffen 2026 this year. This was my forth WGT, but the first one I had been to in fifteen years. It seemed both larger and smaller than my previous years. Several people I knew were going this year, and I heard it might be the last time for one of them. So I made an effort and decided I was going. Just like the first time, heading off to a week in a foreign country can seem intimidating and costly, but I just had to tell myself I was going and do it. Booking a room actually seemed easier that previous years and I managed to get a spot right in the city center as well as air flight in and out of the local airport rather than going to Berlin and then getting the train to Leipzig. Getting tickets was an experience. Previously, others had dealt with them for a group of us, so this was the first time I had to buy my own ticket. Information on the WGT site was pretty straight forward as was email communication from WGT itself. Still to buy the ticket I had to do some bank transfer thing that Americans don’t do and my bank did not explain. It all got done but there was some bank charge. I was short but the WGT email said I had a ticket in Leipzig and could pay the difference and pick it up there. Still, preparation went fairly smoothly compared to previous times.
My luck continued after arriving in Germany. The ten hour flight and transfer to the Leipzig airport went fine as did the cab ride to my hotel. The hotel room was both larger and cheaper than the hotel I had when I was in London, but that is not saying much. It did have a kitchenette so I could prepare food rather than eat out all the time. I managed to get some food shopping done and crash at my usual bedtime, only to be awoken by texts from friends discussing how they were all heading to the Vodka bar in the middle of the night. I decided to get my sleep as tomorrow, I’d have to get my ticket and wrist band.
The next morning with a quick check of the emails from WGT that I had printed out and Sad Goth’s WGT page, I did a walk by where the ticketing would happen. It was supposed to start around 5 but the line would start much earlier. As it was, I could see the line start before two and decided to go ahead and jump in. First, I had to get my ticket. I owed money and it wouldn’t have been mailed to me anyway. So a nice man in a WGT vest pointed me to the correct line while I was asking people in the wrong line. I was in line by 2 and it had already started moving. In an hour I had my ticket without any issue owing to the fact that I had printed out all of my correspondence with WGT. I showed them my ID, they checked and asked me to pay the fee I owed, which I did and they handed me my ticket. It seemed when that was done, things went quickly, but it wasn’t, that was when people would hold up the line for a long time. Now that I had my ticket, I needed to get a wristband. WGT has really nice designed cloth wrist bands that give you access to the shows and to the Leipzig public transit. We headed to the other lines nearby for our wristbands. After an hour we finally made it to the front and got our wristbands.
Next was going to a get together in the Ratskeller der Stadt Leipzig. It seems Germany has the tradition of putting bars in the basements of their City Halls. That is where Sad Goth held his annual WGT Meetup. I went, had some dunkel bier and delicious food with some friends.After that, many people went off to Felsenkeller for the EBM Warm-up Party, another preparty. I decided to head to the local club, Dark Flower, have some mead and call it a night as the jet lag was still catching up to me.
The bands at WGT are all over the place. There is the main Agra Hall which is huge. It is also usually hot and crowded despite being the size of three or four football fields. I usually end up there on the first day as that is where the ‘opening ceremonies’ are and they usually have a really good line up for the first night. Then there are something like ten other venues across the city. Bands play at all of them starting at various times of the day and going till about midnight, when they turn into after parties with DJs. At my first WGT in 2001, I was with a group and we all had certain bands we had to see. We spent most of each day running around going from one venue to another. The local light rail makes it easy, but it still took time. I think I saw seven bands that year. The next time I went, I decided to go two bands early to each band I wanted to see and I made 11 bands that festival. This year, I decided to just pick my ‘must see’ band for each day, then go to that venue and see all the bands from beginning to end. I caught 17 bands this year, and that was without even staying till the end each night.
I’d say one of the main differences to me with how WGT is now as opposed to ten or twenty years ago, is how many other things there are to do. When I first started going, there might be a few bands playing at local venues the day before the actual start of the festival. Then the picnics started and were events dealing with thousands of people in the local parks. Then there is Gothic PoGo which started even before the picnics and has now taken over the use of Werk II, a classic WGT venue, annually for its own, separate festival. This year, across the street from my hotel in Augustusplatz, was Dark Affair, another mini festival. There was a stage with bands scheduled every day, plus food trucks, and then there was two large tents of vendors. Unlike what seems to be normal in the US, only the vendor tents required payment (with their own wrist band) while seeing the bands was free. Still there were plenty of people paying for entrance. It held similar stalls as the other vendor markets, possibly even the same merchants given the uniqueness and similarity in product. What stood out was that Dark Affair market had all the BDSM and festish vendors. Need a custom made flogger adjusted to your personal taste of stiffness and pain, metal Gorian slave collars and shackles, or sex toys, you would have to go to Dark Affair.
Speaking of shopping, let’s talk about that. Although this is not a guide for a first time trip to WGT about what they would need to know, as that could be its own article, my actions this trip will touch on topics. There is a very large vendor hall in Agra Messepark. It seemed smaller than previous years, which now can count in decades in the past. There used to be many booths with band merch, but now there were just a few labels with their own stuff, one large stall selling CDs and another which I was told was GothiCat selling their own merch as well as classic bands buttons, patches, and t-shirts. There were also many booths selling original art, standard schwatze scene tchotchkes, custom leather belts and bracelets, as well as large clothing stores full of stuff. There are also other WGT merchant areas spread around. The Pagan Village, where the mediaeval music stage was always has a good selection of suitable merchants and this year was larger than usual. I shopped for some fantasy LARP gear and found a good stall with original silver jewelry. There are more merchants on the outside top level of Moritzbastei. Then there are non-WGT associated merchants. I’ve already mentioned Dark Affair. There was also another “Dark Market” at a stop on the WGT tram between the Huaptbahnhof and Agra Messapark that I did not manage to make it to. Gothic PoGo also had their own merchants from what I hear. Leipzig also has its own Gothic Second Hand store not too far from No Borders Shop which carries a wide selection of antifaschistische aktion clothing. Then to wrap things up, there was probably not a day that I didn’t return to the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof, the main train station which never closes, to buy something, be it electrical adapters, an ice tray, gifts, or food. Since my room this year had a kitchenette and I was eating in it rather than eating out every day, I managed to witness something I had only heard stories of from friends during past Treffens. Of the last two days of Treffen, one is a Sunday, and Monday is a holiday, which means nothing is open, except at the Hauptbahnhof. I went there to buy food and found a grocery store with locked doors and a crowd of about sixty people outside, while all check stands were still going inside as people continued to leave. It is one of the few grocery stores open and many people, especially travelers, are dependent on it for food. Then the doors opened, and everybody rushes in. The doors are open for about ten minutes as the store fills up and then they close again. The check-out lines grow until they reach the back wall of the store and then curve along the back wall. That makes it hard to shop those isles, but if you know what you want, you do the rest of your shopping and then get in the line that goes along the isle you need to shop still, as you’ll have another 30 minutes or so in that line. Sometimes as you get along in line, the doors open up, the store fills up again, they close the doors, and those people get in line behind you: individual travelers with two days of food, families with more, groups of young men with cases of beer, all waiting to get checked out. It was both very orderly, and complete madness all the entire time.
Wave-Gothic-Treffen
https://www.wave-gotik-treffen.de/
Gothicat
Gothic-Second-Hand
https://www.facebook.com/GothicSecondHand?fref=ts
No Borders