Pumpkin festival in Germany: the Kürbisausstellung in Ludwigsburg and its giant pumpkins
Euromagazine · 3 October 2026
Germany · Reizen
In the palace park of Ludwigsburg near Stuttgart, pumpkin figures from Super Mario to a teddy bear are on show until 1 November 2026. Sunday 4 October brings the German pumpkin-weighing championship, and a week later the European one.
Every autumn, the palace park of Ludwigsburg, north of Stuttgart, turns into a garden full of pumpkins. This year the Kürbisausstellung, the pumpkin exhibition, runs from Saturday 22 August to Sunday 1 November 2026. It is a festival where the pumpkin does not just end up on your plate, but also serves as a building block. Two highlights follow in quick succession: the German pumpkin-weighing championship on Sunday 4 October and the European championship on Sunday 11 October, reports the Blühende Barock, the park that organises the exhibition.
It is a good example of what a pumpkin festival in Europe can be: not a harvest festival on a village square, but a large, designed visual experience.
"Let’s play": pumpkins as toys
The theme for 2026 is "LET’S PLAY": games, fun and excitement. Board games, card games, toys and digital games all feature, the park reports. The figures were built by the artist Pit Ruge from Cleebronn and his team. They are mainly made of wood and decorated with countless pumpkins. Among other things, visitors can see Super Mario, Barbie, a Lego figure and a large teddy bear. According to the park, thousands of pumpkins are turned every year into artful and sometimes gigantic sculptures.
New this year is a pumpkin marble run: two were ready at the opening, with more to follow during the exhibition. There is also an exhibition of pumpkin varieties. On Sunday 18 October there is a festival where giant pumpkins are carved into sculptures, and on 24, 25 and 31 October there is a Halloween carving event. On the last weekend of September there was "Deutschlands größte Kürbissuppe". Afterwards, some of the pumpkin figures will stay until early December, as part of the light trail Leuchtende Traumpfade.
The programme also revolves around the pumpkin: there is a carving area where visitors can work on pumpkins themselves, and there are pumpkin fairy tales for children. If you get hungry, you can have pumpkin soup, pumpkin Maultaschen (filled pasta parcels) and pumpkin Secco, a light sparkling wine, the park reports.
How the pumpkin came to Ludwigsburg
The exhibition is originally Swiss. According to Jucker Farm, a farm in Seegräben, the first pumpkin exhibition was held there in 1997. Three years later, the brothers Martin and Beat Jucker brought the exhibition to the Blühende Barock in Ludwigsburg. It has been held there every year since, by its own account as the largest pumpkin exhibition in the world.
The German branch came about through an internship. Farmer Jens Eisenmann from the Stuttgart area did an internship with the Jucker brothers in 1998, in the middle of the pumpkin season. He took the idea home with him and to this day supplies about eighty per cent of the pumpkins, according to Jucker Farm. The other twenty per cent come from other growers in the Stuttgart region.
Europe’s heaviest pumpkin in 2022
The German and European pumpkin-weighing championships have been a fixture for years. The European title in 2022 was won by Stefano Cutrupi from Radda in Chianti in Italy, with a pumpkin of 1,100.5 kilograms, reports the regional news site Ludwigsburg24. In second place was Iwan Horde from Leerdam in the Netherlands, with 891.5 kilograms. The championship was organised with the European Giant Vegetable Growers Association, the European association of giant vegetable growers.
So it is not only German growers who have their giants weighed in Ludwigsburg: the top three in 2022 consisted of an Italian, a Dutchman and the German duo David and Jakob Frommelt. Cutrupi was the defending champion in 2022. A year earlier he had set a new world record with a pumpkin of 1,226 kilograms, writes Ludwigsburg24. In 2026 the German championship comes a week before the European one, on 4 October.
A different way of looking
In Ludwigsburg, the pumpkin is building material, toy and vegetable all at once. That makes this festival different from an ordinary harvest festival: the same fruit is material for the artist who turns it into a Super Mario, and soup for the visitor.