Oktoberfest was first canceled because of a cholera epidemic in 1854.
The cancellation came during the festival’s early nineteenth-century development, when Munich and other European cities faced recurring cholera outbreaks. Public-health fears made a large gathering unsafe, so the celebration was called off. This was the first cholera-related interruption in Oktoberfest’s history.
The year 1854 is sometimes confused with 1853 because the epidemic began before the festival cancellation. A second cholera epidemic caused another cancellation in 1873. Other nineteenth-century interruptions had different causes: the Austro-Prussian War canceled the festival in 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War led to a cancellation in 1870.
Oktoberfest has been canceled many times since its founding in 1810, most recently in 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Those later cancellations can obscure the fact that disease-related interruptions were already part of the festival’s early history.