A Saturday at the gate of the 65th Wurstfest costs $30, or $25 if you buy online. The following Tuesday costs nothing. The festival is the same on both days, with the same five stages along the Comal in Landa Park and the same nonprofit booths frying the same potato pancakes. Admission is free Monday through Thursday, and children 12 and under get in free every day, according to the Wurstfest Association's 65th-anniversary announcement through Visit NB.
Wurstfest is a regional draw now, and the weekend is built for visitors with shuttles, tour buses and hotel pickups. The weeknights are a version of the festival that stays close to home, and this year's changes give people who live nearby more reasons to walk over on a Tuesday.
The Price of a Saturday Versus a Tuesday
The 2026 festival runs November 6 to 15, starting and ending a day earlier than last year's run of November 7 to 16. Ticket prices haven't changed from 2025. Here is the schedule as printed in Community Impact's 2026 guide, with hours from the festival's announcement:
| Day | Date | Admission, online / gate | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Friday | Nov. 6 | $15 / $20 | Opens 4 p.m. |
| Saturday | Nov. 7 | $25 / $30 | 11 a.m. to midnight |
| Sunday | Nov. 8 | $15 / $20 | 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. |
| Monday to Wednesday | Nov. 9–11 | Free | 5 to 10 p.m. |
| Thursday | Nov. 12 | Free | 5 to 11 p.m. |
| Friday | Nov. 13 | $15 / $20 | 5 to 11 p.m. |
| Saturday | Nov. 14 | $25 / $30 | 11 a.m. to midnight |
| Sunday | Nov. 15 | $15 / $20, free after 3 p.m. | 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. |
That's four free evenings in a row, plus a free final Sunday afternoon. The sources don't mention a separate rate for New Braunfels residents, so the free weeknights work as the local discount. Admission and bar purchases are cashless again this year. Tap-to-pay, credit and debit are accepted, and festival president Marc Allen told Community Impact that the other small-business vendors take both cash and cards.
The Biggest Change Sits by the Mill Pond
Last year's changes were mostly about the grounds. The Herald-Zeitung's 2025 recap reported a permanent Wasserplatz pavilion, restroom upgrades and the end of drink tickets. The 2026 headline is smaller and more local. It's a Weingarten with an expanded German wine list, set beside the mill pond in a historic part of the grounds the festival calls the Hydroplant. Community Impact puts it near Gate One and says it will pour premium American wines alongside the German ones.
The cheese comes from down the road. Otto's Cheese Shop will serve pairings at the Weingarten. Otto's opened at 344 Landa St. in May 2021. It reopened on May 17, 2025, in a larger space at 2345 Loop 337, Suite 100, with plans for sit-down service and cheese-and-wine education events, Community Impact reported.
The location has its own history. A Herald-Zeitung history of how Wurstfest found its home traces the festival grounds to the Landa Mill tract. That land held water-powered mills and later the Landa family's flour milling, electric power, cottonseed oil and ice operations. The same account separates it from the Comal Power Plant across the Landa Park entrance road. That plant was built for hydroelectric power in 1926, converted to lignite coal in 1927 and closed in 1973. The Weingarten is on the mill side.
The sausage-making demonstrations at the Weingarten run only on Saturdays and Sundays, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The announcement describes Wurstmachen as an art "passed down through generations of local families." If you want to see it, that's the case for paying for one weekend afternoon. The free Sunday after 3 p.m. on November 15 comes an hour after the last demonstration ends.
The Other New Arrivals
The rest of this year's additions are spread across the grounds. Allen told Community Impact the festival is adding three beers on tap: Modelo, Paulaner Pils and Weihenstephan. Rocky Mountain Crepes is a new food vendor, Fun Biz concessions are expanding, and a new trailer in the carnival section will sell nachos and street tacos.
The lineup has more than 40 bands playing over 250 sets on five stages. Headliners include Grammy winner Jimmy Sturr and His Orchestra, Grammy-nominated accordionist Alex Meixner, Munchholzhauser Blaskapella from Braunfels, Germany, and Die Schlauberger from New York. Meixner opens the festival before the 5:30 p.m. "biting of the sausage" in the Wursthalle on November 6.
The free stretch also has the festival's biggest weeknight event. The Veterans Day Salute is Wednesday, November 11, at 7 p.m. in the Wursthalle, during a week with no admission charge. The Association says the Salute and Student Day for local high schools will both get "added flare and significance" for the 65th anniversary. The paid days keep the contests, including a waltz contest on November 8, the USSA Texas Steinholding State Championship finals at 2 p.m. on November 15, and a polka contest that afternoon.
Where the Money Goes on a Free Night
Free admission doesn't mean free money for the festival. It means nearly everything you spend goes to the booths. Allen told Community Impact that 26 local nonprofits benefit from food, drink and goods sales, and that most of them raise their annual budget at Wurstfest. The Association's own release says "over 25." Either way, it's more than two dozen local organizations that count on ten days in November.
"At its heart, Wurstfest is a service organization," Allen said in a release quoted by Community Impact. "We consistently look for intentional ways to support the people of New Braunfels and Comal County."
The support started before the gates open. For this year's Big Give on September 23 and 24, the Association pledged $130,000 in matching funds for 24 area nonprofits, a pledge that included four $30,000 match hours, the Herald-Zeitung reported.
The festival's vendor roster shows which groups are behind the food. These are longtime booths. Check the 2026 grounds to confirm each one is back.
- New Braunfels Rotary Club fries Kartoffelpuffers, the potato pancakes, to fund local scholarships and youth programs.
- Downtown Rotary serves the Wurst-N-Tashen, the Reuben-N-Tashen and a Wurst Dog.
- New Braunfels Conservation Society sells pretzels, and Long Creek High School Dance Boosters runs a sausage boil and "fluffy soda."
- Canyon High School Music Boosters makes funnel cakes for its program.
- New Braunfels Lions Club lists sausage-on-a-stick as its Wurstfest fundraiser.
- Sophienburg Museum's Sophie's Shop and Carl's Stein Haus sell German steins, hats, handicrafts and the official Opa mug.
- New Braunfels High School Band Boosters sells the official Wurstfest hat pin. The Herald-Zeitung's vendor feature reported that Wurstfest provides most of the group's annual funding.
A Tuesday plate of potato pancakes followed by a stop at the Sophienburg's stein shop sends your money to the same groups a Saturday visit does, and the evening costs $30 less per adult at the gate.
Getting There When the Festival Is in Your Park
The festival's parking page still shows a 2024 map, so use the City of New Braunfels' 2026 traffic notice instead. The city will close the westbound lane of Landa Street between Zink Street and Landa Park Drive to cars during festival hours. The lane stays open to pedestrians. The closure windows are:
- Friday, Nov. 6: 2 p.m. to 1 a.m.
- Saturday, Nov. 7: 9 a.m. to 2 a.m.
- Sunday, Nov. 8: 9 a.m. to midnight
- Monday to Friday, Nov. 9–13: 3 p.m. to midnight
- Saturday, Nov. 14: 9 a.m. to 2 a.m.
- Sunday, Nov. 15: 9 a.m. to midnight
On the free weeknights, the closure starts at 3 p.m., two hours before the gates open at 5. That matters if Landa Street is part of your evening commute. Parking at the Comal County Fairgrounds, 701 E. Common Street, is free, according to the city. The shuttle from there to the gate costs $10 for riders 13 and older. Uber and Lyft pickups use Mill Race Run in Landa Park, at the Landa Park Pavilion, which you reach through Gate 2. Charter buses, party buses and limousines are routed along Loop 337 and Common, Union, W. Torrey, Elizabeth Avenue and Hinman Island. The $25 round-trip hotel shuttles run only on Fridays and Saturdays, which is one more reason the weekend crowd and the weeknight crowd are different.
For more on how the town divides its weekends outside festival season, see our look at the two poles pulling on New Braunfels weekends and our New Braunfels neighborhood page.
If Wurstfest is one of the reasons you love living near Landa Park, or one of the reasons you're thinking about it, Sage Space Real Estate is glad to talk through which New Braunfels streets are a short walk from the festival gates and which ones sit outside the November traffic. Schedule a neighborhood consultation, and we'll start with the map.
