Foreign nationals have made up nearly four in five suspects in sexual offences at this year’s Oktoberfest in Munich, according to police figures.
Munich police recorded 82 sexual offences at the festival, which ran from September 19 to October 4, including five suspected rapes. Officers identified 65 suspects, all of them men.
Of those, 51 did not hold German citizenship, a share of 78.5 per cent, the conservative weekly Junge Freiheit reported on November 11, citing the police data. German nationals accounted for 14 suspects.
Italians formed the largest single group with 19 suspects, ahead of the Germans. Serbia accounted for four and Afghanistan for three, while India, Romania, Turkey and Switzerland had two each.
The remaining 17 suspects came from other countries not named in the breakdown. Munich police do not record migration background or dual nationality, the paper noted, so naturalised citizens appear in the figures as Germans.
At least 21 of the foreign suspects were citizens of EU member states. Several Italians arrested during the festival had no fixed address in Germany, according to police reports at the time.
The middle weekend of the festival traditionally draws large numbers of visitors from Italy. The 2026 edition attracted a record 7.4 million people, according to the city.
The number of sexual offences rose by 10.8 per cent on 2025, when 74 were logged. At the close of the festival police had given a provisional figure of 80, of which 52 involved sexual harassment.
A police spokesman attributed the overall rise in recorded crime to the larger crowds. Munich mayor Dominik Krause of the Greens described his first Oktoberfest in office as peaceful and relaxed, and as one of the finest in its history.
The figures fed into a recurring argument in Germany’s debate on migration and crime. Critics of immigration who cite national crime data are often told that Oktoberfest proves sexual violence is not a migrant-specific problem, Junge Freiheit wrote.
Foreign nationals made up 14.9 per cent of Germany’s population in 2025 but 38.5 per cent of suspects in rape, sexual coercion and particularly serious sexual assault, according to Police Criminal Statistics figures cited by the paper.
The number of foreign nationals suspected of sexual offences in Germany rose by 148.2 per cent between 2000 and 2025, according to a German Government reply to a parliamentary question published in August.
