27 August 2026
Christmas markets for first-timers: what to expect
What a Christmas market actually is, what happens there, and the handful of things worth knowing before your first one.
If you have never been to a Christmas market, the pictures do not quite prepare you. They are not shopping centres with tinsel on. At their best they are a town square handed over for a month to wooden huts, woodsmoke, and several thousand people standing about in the cold drinking something hot. The shopping is almost secondary.
What is actually there
A traditional market is built around three things: stalls selling handmade goods, stalls selling food and drink, and somewhere to stand while you consume the second category. The gift stalls lean towards wood, glass, wool, candles and ceramics. The food stalls lean towards sausage, cheese, potato in some fried form, and sugar. There is usually a tree, often a carousel, and increasingly an ice rink.
Scale varies enormously. Nuremberg Christkindlesmarkt runs 168 stalls in a single square. Durham Christmas Festival lasts three days. Both are Christmas markets; they are not remotely the same experience.
Go on a weekday, and go in the dark
This is the single most useful thing anyone can tell you. Weekend afternoons at a well-known market are shoulder-to-shoulder, and you will spend the visit queuing rather than looking. A Tuesday evening at the same market is a different event entirely.
Go after dark, too. Markets are lit for it, and a square full of wooden huts at four in the afternoon in November looks like a car boot sale. The same square at six looks like the photographs.
Take cash, but not only cash
Card acceptance has improved a great deal, and in the UK you can generally get through a whole market without cash. In Germany and Austria it is still worth having notes: plenty of stalls are cash-only, and the queue moves faster.
You will be given a mug, and you have paid for it
Order a mulled wine almost anywhere in Germany, Austria or increasingly the UK and you will pay more than the menu price. The difference is a deposit on the mug, refunded when you hand it back. Keep the mug if you want it — that is the deal, and collecting them is half the point for some people. We have written about how the deposit system works separately.
Dress for standing still
People dress for the walk to the market and then spend three hours barely moving. Standing still outdoors in December is much colder than walking, and it is the thing that ends visits early. Proper coat, hat, and something on your feet with a thick sole — cobbles pull the heat out of thin shoes remarkably fast.
Do not try to do four in a day
Cities with multiple markets tempt you into a route march. Two is plenty. The pleasure of these things is standing about, and you cannot do that if you are on a schedule.
Check the dates before you book anything
Markets shift by a week or more year to year, and closing dates vary far more than opening ones. Plenty close on 23 or 24 December, some run to early January, and a few — like Durham — last a single weekend. Every listing on this site shows the date we last checked and links to the official source. Check it before you book a train.