Frohes Festival 2025

Literature meets politics - Experience authors live, listen to readings & enjoy performances!

The Happy Festival 2025

It remains more important than ever to be political, to seek dialogue and to listen to one another. But who actually determines how social dialogue is conducted? Who has the power to speak - and who decides who is heard?

Together with attentive authors, activists and journalists, we celebrate literature, people and different perspectives.

On December 12th & 13th, 2025, at the "Frohen Festival" we will explore the many facets of power: in language and aesthetics, in digital algorithms and literary forms, in political structures and personal biographies. Von feministcounter-projects to patriarchal narrative patterns to resistant writing from crisis areas - from escapism as a subversive actto the power of algorithms in social Media.

The Happy Festival invites you to challenge power structures: How can young, diverse voices take back political spaces? How can we afford a future if financial justice becomes the exception? And how do you write resistance without allowing yourself to be pinned down?

What you can expect: panel talks, live podcasts, music acts, screenings, workshops, readings, performances and of course a book table!

The Frohe Festival is an event organized by Holtzbrinck Berlin. In cooperation with the ZEIT publishing group, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.

Further details about the festival can be found at frohes-festival.de

Good news for all Happy Festival ticket buyers!

The Happy Festival is not just one Place for literature and politics, but also for exciting conversations and encounters. Numerous ZEIT editors will be on site to accompany the festival and talk to you and the guests.

In line with this, all ticket buyers will receive a free 6-week U30 subscription to ZEIT as a special extra. This gives you full access to all digital content from ZEIT and Z+, all podcasts, recipes and games as well as ZEIT Campus digital and delivered to your home as a magazine 4x a year.

You can cancel the subscription at any time after the test phase or simply keep it running if you like it.

You will receive more information about the offer after you have purchased your ticket.