Kunstfest Weimar is an arts festival that takes place annually in late summer in the cultural city of Weimar. Founded in 1990 as one of the first joint German-German cultural initiatives, the festival presents a consistently cross-disciplinary program with numerous premieres and projects developed especially for Weimar. The Kunstfest Weimar takes place in Weimar and decentrally throughout Thuringia. It is the largest festival for the contemporary arts in eastern Germany. It takes place annually in the second half of August and first half of September around Goethe's birthday on Aug. 28. The festival offers a regular program of about 40 to 50 projects, about 150 events divided into the following sections: theater, musical theater, dance, performance and installation, visual arts, film, concerts, literature and discourse. The reference to the history of classicism and modernism in Weimar, as well as the confrontation with the heritage of Buchenwald at the gates of the city, is part of the core of the festival program every year.
From 1990 to 1992, the art festival was dedicated to the work of famous Weimar personalities such as Goethe, Schiller, Bach and Liszt, with the proceeds going to the restoration of Weimar's cultural monuments. For the first two years, Kari Kahl-Wolfsjäger was the artistic director, handing over to Johannes Gross in 1992. From 1993 to 2001, the Kunstfest was organized by the Klassik Stiftung Weimar.