Why Ulm at Christmas?
The Ulm Christmas market is one big square under one enormous spire.
That spire belongs to Ulm Minster, and at 161.53 metres it’s the tallest church spire in Germany (and it was the tallest in the world from 1890 until Barcelona’s Sagrada Família finally overtook it in October 2025).
You can see it from almost anywhere in Ulm, a Danube city between Stuttgart and Munich.
Below it, from November into January, the Münsterplatz fills with stalls, more than 130 of them round the Minster’s west front before Christmas and a smaller winter market after it.
Having the whole market on one square is what I like most about it. You don’t need a tram or a map, you queue for your sausage under 161 metres of Gothic stone, and you can see the lot in a morning without it costing you much.
Last year a Glühwein cost about €4.50 (€4 to €5 depending on the stall), plus a €3 mug deposit, in line with most stalls in Stuttgart. On Marienplatz in Munich you pay €5 to €7.50, plus a €5 deposit.
Ulm Christmas Market 2026–2027 Dates and Hours
The Ulm Christmas market, the Ulmer Weihnachtsmarkt, runs from Thursday 19 November to Tuesday 22 December 2026, and entry is free.
It’s open 10:00 to 20:30 every day, but there are two gaps in the run to plan round.
The first comes four days in. Thursday 19 to Saturday 21 November are billed as a pre-opening. Then the square is closed on Sunday 22 November for Totensonntag, the Sunday Germans keep for remembering their dead. The official opening follows on Monday 23 November (last year it was at 18:00).
The second is Christmas itself. The main market finishes on the 22nd, so there’s nothing on the Münsterplatz from 23 to 25 December.
On Boxing Day the square comes back with the smaller Ulmer Wintermarkt, which runs until 10 January 2027 on the south side of the Münsterplatz. It’s open 11:00 to 20:30. Some holidays get different hours that haven’t been published yet, so check before you plan around Boxing Day or New Year.
| Date | What’s on |
|---|---|
| Thu 19 Nov | Pre-opening, 10:00–20:30 |
| Sun 22 Nov | Closed for Totensonntag |
| Mon 23 Nov | Official opening (18:00 last year) |
| Fri 27 Nov | Neu-Ulm’s medieval market opens across the Danube |
| Sun 20 Dec | Last day of the Neu-Ulm medieval market |
| Tue 22 Dec | Last day of the main market, 10:00–20:30 |
| Wed 23 to Fri 25 Dec | Nothing open on the Münsterplatz |
| Sat 26 Dec | Wintermarkt opens on the south side of the square |
| Thu 31 Dec | Wintermarkt open, hours may differ (not yet published), Minster open 10:00–12:00 |
| Sun 10 Jan | Last day of the Wintermarkt |
| From Mon 11 Jan | Closed until next season |
How to Beat the Crowds on the Münsterplatz
If you can choose, go on a weekday and be there for 10:00, when the stalls open. The lanes stay easy until lunchtime, and the square only really fills from about 15:00.
The city expected more than a million visitors last season, all squeezing onto one square. Munich’s crowds have 14 markets to split between.
So our Elbow room score gives Ulm a 4 out of 10, level with Stuttgart and Esslingen, against Munich’s 6. On a weekday morning you’d barely notice it, but on a Saturday is a crush, and there’s no dressing that up.
The lanes between the stalls are so narrow that the crowd carries you along. There’s almost nowhere to sit, and getting a buggy through is hard work.
If a Saturday is all you’ve got, do the market first thing and give the afternoon to Kloster Wiblingen, on bus 4 from Ehinger Tor.
Its library hall is one of the finest rococo rooms you’ll ever stand in.
In winter it only opens at weekends, from 12:00 to 16:00, which makes it the perfect escape from a packed Saturday. Entry with the museum is €6.
Walking the Münsterplatz
I’d start at the Minster’s main portal, where the music comes from, and get the shopping done before lunch, while you can still stand at a counter long enough to look.
The stalls worth stopping at are the craft ones, with Erzgebirge wood carving, Herrnhut stars, handmade ceramics and Ulm cutting boards, plus the new craft and design stalls added for 2026.
Round the edges the quality drops. A fair run of stalls sells socks, pans and vegetable slicers you could find in any department store back home, so I’d walk straight past the sock and pan stalls.
Further in is the big tree, with more than 18,000 lights, and right beside it the living nativity, with real sheep and donkeys in the pen.
If you’ve got small children with you, this is where they’ll plant their feet and refuse to move on.
The animals are only the start for them. The Bähnle, a little train, chugs through a fairy-tale forest and a tunnel, and it’s been back since 2025 after a year off.
Add the carousels, a children’s Ferris wheel, candle-dipping and storytelling in a yurt, and it’s a properly good market for small children. Just come on a weekday, when you can get near the rides.
What to Eat and Drink in Ulm
The best food at the Ulm Christmas market comes from the Swabian stalls and one sausage stand. That sausage is the first thing I’d queue for.
It’s the spicy Feuerwurst, the queue is long, but it’s worth every minute!!
After that, the Swabian stalls do most of the work, with duck, fried mushrooms and a fire-and-rum drink for the cold thrown in.
- Rote Wurst is the Swabian red sausage, grilled and served in a roll, and the one to get if spice isn’t your thing.
- Kässpätzle are Swabia’s soft egg noodles with melted cheese. The Landkäserei Herzog stall makes them, and since a cheese dairy runs it, the cheese is the point.
- The Swabian “Döner” turned up in 2024 as Spätzle stuffed into a pretzel roll where the kebab meat should be. If it’s back, I’m having one.
- Duck and fried mushrooms come from two specialist stalls, Zur Ente and Burgpilz, and Burgpilz also does a mushroom goulash.
- Chimney cake from Melindas Kaminkuchen is the sweet thing to queue for, a spiral of dough baked on a spit and rolled in sugar.
- Glühwein comes in red, white and orange, and the orange gets my vote over the standard red.
- Feuerzangenbowle has its own stall, with a soup kitchen and Flammkuchen alongside. A rum-soaked sugar cone burning over your mulled wine is hard to walk past on a December night.
- Beer comes from Gold Ochsen, the Ulm brewery that’s been going since 1597, and if you spot mulled cherry beer on the square, it’s the odd one worth a try.
- Roasted almonds cost €3.50 in 2024.
- Der Veganer is the one fully vegan stall, though vegan waffles and sausages have turned up elsewhere on the square.
The generic stuff is where Ulm lets you down.
The crêpes, waffles and meatballs cost plenty and taste of very little, so save your money for the Swabian stalls and skip anything you could get at a funfair.
Climb the Minster Before 16:00
After lunch, the Minster itself is right there, and the nave is free and open until 18:00 while the market’s on.
It’s a quiet, enormous room, and after an hour in the lanes that’s exactly what you want (there’s scaffolding inside at the moment, so you won’t get a clean view down the whole nave).
The tower is the bigger reason to go in, even with the 143-metre top gallery shut until the Minster’s 650th-anniversary summer in 2027.
This winter it’s €9 to the 102-metre gallery. Tickets come from a card-only machine by the tower or the Minster shop.
It’s a long spiral up with no lift, and the first platform’s view is badly blocked by scaffolding. Keep going. From 102 metres you look straight down onto the stall roofs and the crowd threading between them, with the old town spread out round the square. That’s the view of Ulm you’ll remember.
Go up around 15:00, just as the square starts to fill. The tower closes at 16:00 in winter and the sun sets around 16:25 in mid-December, so you get the low light over the roofs. On an icy day the gallery doesn’t open at all.
After Dark in Ulm and Neu-Ulm
Once you’re down from the tower, try to be in the Fischerviertel as it gets dark. It’s the old fishermen’s and tanners’ quarter on the river Blau, five minutes south of the square.
The half-timbered houses sit right on the water, and the Schiefes Haus, which Guinness listed as the most crooked hotel in the world, leans out over the Blau.
From there it’s five minutes back up to the square for one drink under the spire, because this is the Ulm Christmas market at its best.
It’ll be busy round the Glühwein stalls by now. That’s fine, because you’re not here to shop.
The portal glows above the stalls, and on a foggy night the top of the spire disappears into the mist. That’s a sight I’d happily stand in a crowd for.
What spoils it is the clock. The stalls close at 20:30 every night, which is early for a market this size, and some stalls stop serving bang on 20:30.
So cross the Danube to Neu-Ulm, about 15 minutes on foot and, as it happens, in another state, Bavaria.
Its medieval Christmas market fills the Rathausplatz from 27 November to 20 December 2026. It stays open until 21:30, or 22:00 from Thursday to Saturday.
Neu-Ulm swaps the spire for fire baskets, costumed traders and storytelling in a Kyrgyz yurt.
You stand round the fire with a mead or a hot berry wine, eating a Drachenwurst or a wood-fired Dennete flatbread, while Ulm’s stalls are already dark. Fire, mead and nobody shutting the hatch at 20:30.
Esslingen runs its medieval market on the same idea, fire and torches instead of fairy lights. That one’s a day trip. This is a nightcap fifteen minutes from the Minster.
Cold, Cash and Other Things That Catch People Out
Pack for colder nights than in Stuttgart or Munich, and bring coins.
- The cold bites harder in Ulm. December nights average −0.3 °C here, against 1.2 °C in Stuttgart and Esslingen, and it feels colder still by the river, so it’s a hat-and-gloves town after dark.
- Snow is a long shot, lying on 12% of market days, half Munich’s 24% on our snow odds table.
- Coins save you twice. Some stalls are cash only, and the market toilets cost €1 a go with no change given. The nearest public ones are in the Stadthaus, the white Richard Meier building on the square.
- Dogs aren’t allowed on the market at all, and the sign at the entrance is only in German.
Day Trips from Ulm
Ulm is on the ICE line from Stuttgart to Munich, so instead of squeezing it into a day trip from either, I’d spend a night in Ulm on the way.
With a second night there’s time for a half-day out as well.
My half-day pick is Blaubeuren, 11 to 17 minutes by train, for two things, the Blautopf and the URMU. The Blautopf is a spring so blue it’s named after the colour, and although the area round it is a building site until 2028, scaffold bridges have kept it open to visitors since January 2025.
The URMU is Blaubeuren’s museum of prehistory and Ice Age art. It’s home to the Venus of Hohle Fels, a mammoth-ivory figure just 6 centimetres tall and up to 40,000 years old, the oldest known image of a human body. Something that small and that old is worth the train fare on its own.
Entry is €9 for adults and free for anyone under 21. The museum is closed on Mondays and over the holidays, from 24 to 26 December and again on 31 December and 1 January.
If You’re in Ulm Over Christmas
Stuttgart’s main market packs up on 23 December, Esslingen’s on the 22nd, and Munich’s and Nuremberg’s on Christmas Eve. None of them comes back after Christmas. Ulm’s goes quiet for three days and reopens on Boxing Day.
From then until 10 January it’s one of the few places in this part of Germany where you can still drink Glühwein on a market square.
Honestly, the Wintermarkt isn’t a reason to fly in. It’s about eleven stalls, enough for a Glühwein and a browse and not much more.
The carousel and the little train stay on, though. If you’re spending Christmas with family nearby and the kids need an afternoon out, it does the job.
Is the Ulm Christmas Market Worth It?
Yes, for a day and a night. Our Index has Ulm at 7.2, with an 8 for atmosphere and a 6 for food. That’s fair, Germany’s tallest spire over a market that’s good rather than great.
It suits you if you’re coming for the spire, the Swabian food or a day out with small children. It suits you less if crowds wear you down and you can only come on a Saturday.
Whichever day you pick, I’d be there when the stalls open, up the tower around 15:00 and, until 20 December, over the river in Neu-Ulm after 20:30.
