The world's most famous beer festival started as a wedding party with a horse race, and most of it now happens in September.

Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria, later King Ludwig I, married Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen on October 12, 1810. The official Munich site says the festivities lasted five days. They ended on October 17 with a horse race on a meadow outside the city gates.

The race was organized by Munich's civic militia. The meadow was named for the bride, at the militia's suggestion, and has been the Theresienwiese, "Therese's meadow," ever since. Munich residents shortened it to the "Wiesn," a name the Historical Lexicon of Bavaria finds in use by the 1890s at the latest.

The festival survived because someone asked for a sequel. A few days after the race, Andreas von Dall'Armi, a member of the National Guard, asked the royal household to repeat the festival. King Max I Joseph approved the request in 1811. From 1811 to 1818 the Agricultural Association in Bavaria ran the event and added a cattle market. That became the Zentral-Landwirtschaftsfest, an agricultural show now held every four years.

The name is a plain description: Oktober, "October," and Fest, "festival." Etymonline traces German Fest through Middle High German vëst to Latin festum, "festival or holiday." American English borrowed -fest as a suffix by 1889.

The October part has slipped. In the 1890s the festival was moved earlier several times to catch better September weather. Since 1905 the main Sunday has been the last Sunday in September. The festival now ends on the first Sunday in October, so it keeps only a few October days.

Beer took over gradually. In 1895 the big breweries began putting up temporary beer halls. In 1898 Georg Lang put up the first large beer tent on the meadow. By 1907 six brewery halls had replaced the small stalls. After the First World War only nine large Munich breweries were licensed to supply it. The Historical Lexicon of Bavaria says that was when the festival firmly took on its image as a beer festival.

It has not always run. The first cancellation came in 1813, during the Napoleonic wars. Cholera epidemics stopped it in 1854 and 1873. Later breaks came with the world wars, from 1914 to 1918 and 1939 to 1945, and with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021.