Night of Stadtgarten - Jubiläumsfestival

We’re celebrating 40 Years of Stadtgarten Cologne! The concert hall opened on September 4, 1986. On September 4, 2026, to mark this occasion, we invite you to the Night of Stadtgarten: A festival featuring around 20 concerts on the large outdoor stage and on all stages throughout the venue, celebrating the past and the next 40 years of Stadtgarten—and, in particular, the future of creative music.
The concert program features performances by national and international artists whom we’ve invited to bring their dream projects to the stage. The result is a special anniversary festival with some exclusive lineups, whose musical range reflects the diversity of today’s music scene—and thus of the Stadtgarten. The same goes for the afterparty, where Cologne Sessions and other DJ collectives will keep you dancing until the early morning hours.

Admission is free!

The concert program:
Die Patin - Saxophon Mafia Mash Up (DE, AR, FR)
Earth Tones (DE)
Federation of the Groove (DE)
Fun Horns (DE)
Landfermann – Klein – Burgwinkel & special guest(DE)
Lucia Cadotsch & Jozef Dumoulin (CH, BE)
Manos Tsangaris & Hayden Chisholm (DE, NZ)
Marta Warelis & Angelika Niescier (NL, DE)
Molass (DE)
Nils Petter Molvaer (NO)
Neue Grafik (FR, UK)
Rebekka Salomea & friends (DE, KR)
re:calamari (DE, PL)
Selendis Johnson & NYC meets CGN (US, DE)
Stian Westerhus & Arve Hendriksen (NO)
Tamara Lukasheva & Matthias Schriefl (UA, DE)
The Resonators feat. Jelena Kuljić (DE, RS)
and more

Followed by Late-Night Party (all areas) featuring DJ Money & MK Braun (Cologne Sessions), Tobias Thomas (Total Confusion), DJ AssTits, Slaymira & Juno.J (Hyperlove), Tom-Tom Discotec special, and others.

About the anniversary graphic: On September 4, 1986, the Kölner Jazz Haus initiative opened the then-newly built concert hall in the Stadtgarten, creating a venue that quickly became a major hub for creative and improvised music in Europe. Our anniversary graphic reimagines this history as a “hidden object” image, bringing together musicians, contributors, concert moments, and encounters from the past and present, and inviting viewers to explore. All photo credits can be found here on the website under the “Press” menu item.

Further information

Venue:

Stadtgarten

The first concert in the newly built Stadtgarten concert hall in the mid-1980s launched a program unlike anything Germany had seen: an independent, artistically driven concert series devoted to contemporary improvised music. It was guided neither by attendance figures nor by public subsidies, yet it guaranteed musicians minimum fees and was run on professional terms. The conditions mattered just as much: an acoustically optimized, street-level concert space offering a strong setting for audiences and performers alike. Operations were financed through the adjoining hospitality business, the Stadtgarten restaurant and beer garden, a model that drew attention well beyond Germany.

Today the Stadtgarten Köln ranks among Europe's internationally recognized venues for contemporary and improvised music. The American magazine Down Beat features it regularly in its listings; it has received Germany's federal APPLAUS venue program award several times, including "Venue of the Year" in 2016, followed by the German Jazz Prize in the same category in 2022. More than 400 events across the full spectrum of contemporary music now take place there each year. Its international standing rests above all on the high proportion of demanding, experimental programming.

A programming mission of this kind depends on reliable public support. The venue's 30th anniversary in September 2016 opened that prospect: through a partnership between the City of Cologne and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, programming work is being substantially strengthened, and from 2017 onward the Stadtgarten Köln is being developed step by step into a "European Center for Jazz and Contemporary Music" – with the goal of becoming one of Europe's leading music centers.

more info

More dates at Stadtgarten: