Welcome to
the Salzburg Festival Archive

Following the repositioning of the festival archive, a dedicated archive festival will be held in the summer of 2026 as part of the Salzburg Festival, focusing on the archiving of artistic (performative) actions and presenting new formats for a living archive. A guided tour lasting approximately two hours will explore the two projects of the S+T+ARTS Ec(h)o Residencies Programme, the Festival Memory Office and the new installation of the VR experience FAUST 2023.

18, 20–22, 24–29 August 2026, 10:00 a.m.–5:30 p.m. · UMAK – Mozarteum University at the Kurgarten

In collaboration with Ars Electronica and the Institute for Open Arts at the Mozarteum University

The first batches of the archive’s diverse holdings are now available online. Extensive work has been underway since summer 2024 as part of the ‘Digital Cultural Heritage’ digitisation project funded by the BMKÖS. This includes the digitisation of all programme booklets, posters and costume sketches since 1920. In addition, 3D scans of the costumes and props in the collection are being made for four selected productions.

The digitisation is supported by acm (austrian capital management).

In October 2025, media artists Iz Paehr and Merve Sahin were once again guests at the Salzburg Festival Archives. As part of the S+T+ARTS Ec(h)o Residencies Programme, they are developing projects that relate to the history of the festival and deal in very different ways with historical objects and circumstances and their accessibility with the help of the latest technologies. Their work will be exhibited in the summer of 2026.

At the end of September 2025, the last block of interviews for Swiss artist Mats Staub’s Festival Memory Office was filmed. The oral history project gave festival visitors a chance to have their say. A total of 45 participants aged between 18 and 87 spoke about their most beautiful, touching, but also irritating festival experiences. After extensive post-production, the project will be presented to the public in the summer of 2026.

One of three important estates newly incorporated into the Archive’s holdings is that of Gusti Adler. She was not only the closest collaborator of the director and Festival co-founder Max Reinhardt for 20 years, later becoming his biographer too, but also a close childhood friend of Helene Thimig, the incomparable actress, director and wife of Max Reinhardt.

Max Reinhardt’s prompt book for performances of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Jedermann was included in the national Austrian register of documentary heritage, “Memory of Austria”