Sponsors

Creativity and competitive edge are what drives both the Salzburg Festival and Audi. The collaboration began in 1994 with a guest appearance in Ingolstadt that caused an immediate sensation and remains an essential element of the partnership to this day. Since 1995 AUDI AG is a main sponsor of the Salzburg Festival to support the festival’s work in staging world-class artistic performances. Audi also provides the festival’s fleet of cars that take artists to rehearsals and performances. Additionally, about 2,500 guests use Audi’s shuttle service every year during the festival, which has already consisted of fully electric models since 2020.

“Audi Night” was launched in 2006 – a social calendar highlight during the festival that attracts customers from around the world to Salzburg, where a unique flair and a superb cultural experience await them.

Our creative drive and innovative ideas are what enable us to master the complex challenges of the future. Customers and employees alike therefore prize the creative exchange of ideas that Audi offers throughout the year with its commitment to the arts as part of Audi ArtExperience. The partnership with the Salzburg Festival is one of the extraordinary and enduring projects that make up this commitment. It also demonstrates that Audi is a reliable and competent partner to the arts – at a global and regional level.

Siemens and the Salzburg Festival unite a long tradition: Since 1995, Siemens has been supporting the Salzburg Festival as a Project Sponsor, and since 1999 as a Main Sponsor. Starting in 2002 the “Siemens Festival>Nights” take place every year at the same time as the festival. Every year, the free open-air events attract up to 70,000 visitors to Salzburg’s historic city centre.

The Salzburg Festival, with its outstanding reputation and Siemens, one of the world’s leading high-tech companies, have much in common. Both place particular emphasis on the combination of tradition and innovation, continuity and creativity.

With this sponsoring engagement, Siemens consciously takes on cultural and social responsibility without ever interfering with artistic decisions. Wolfgang Hesoun, CEO Siemens Austria: “As part of our sponsoring activities, we try to develop our own cultural initiatives, thus aiming for real support for the arts, not just ‘giving away money.’ We wish to develop our own cultural projects, with a focus on technology as a transfer medium, and on supporting art that is to be made accessible to a broad public, especially to young people.”

This has motivated Siemens to present the “Siemens Festival>Nights” in Salzburg’s historic town since 2002 and the “Siemens Children’s>Festival” since 2008. Every summer, Festival productions are shown free of charge as open-air broadcasts on a large-scale LED wall. Diverse culinary offerings as well as the incomparable ambiance of the Kapitelplatz, with its view of the castle Hohensalzburg, make the Siemens Festival>Nights a wonderful overall experience – record attendance numbers of 70,000 visitors per year underline the quality of the events and make them a fixed part of the Salzburg Festival summer.

The Kühne family established the non-profit Kühne Foundation based in Schindellegi, Switzerland, in 1976. As main shareholder of the Kühne + Nagel Group, the Foundation’s president, Prof. Dr. h.c. Klaus-Michael Kühne, takes on social responsibility personally: “It is my firm belief that entrepreneurial success always brings with it a commitment to society.” The global orientation of the Foundation is reflected in its diverse fields of operation.

Key priority of the Kühne Foundation is the support for training, further education as well as research and science in the area of logistics and supply chain management.-Supporting a wide range of programmes, including activities in the field of Humanitarian Logistics, reflects the Foundation’s conviction that logistics and logistics expertise significantly support the economic and social development of countries.

Another focal point is the Kühne Foundation’s funding of medical projects. At its Medicine Campus in Davos, Switzerland, the Kühne Foundations supports two large and relevant research programmes in the fields of allergology and cardiology. In addition, the Kühne Foundation owns and operates the Hochgebirgsklinik, a renowned rehabilitation hospital in Switzerland.

In the area of cultural funding, the Kühne Foundation primarily supports outstanding classical music projects in collaboration with renowned opera houses and concert halls. Salzburg Festival created with the Young Singers Project, a world-class platform for the promotion of young international singers in 2008. Since 2013, the Kühne Foundation has dedicated itself to this project, which is a model of its kind internationally, offering young singers the opportunity to work with Festival artists and gain international attention.

As of 2019, the Kühne Foundation has become a main sponsor of the Salzburg Festival and will continue to support the Young Singers Project.

The courage to take new paths and the responsibility for a sustainable approach to our planet drive both BWT and Salzburg Festival. As main sponsor, BWT – Europe’s market leader in water treatment, headquartered in Mondsee and employing over 5,000 people worldwide – is transforming the Salzburg Festival into a so-called Plastic “Bottle Free Zone”. Because the company has a clear mission: change the world, sip by sip. Using globally patented BWT technologies, local water is filtered and enriched with valuable minerals such as magnesium, zinc, and silica. Guests, artists, and employees of the Salzburg Festival are now able to enjoy healthy, local, mineralized water and at the same time reduce plastic waste and CO2 emissions by avoiding bottled water. In this way, everyone makes an active contribution to the protection of our planet.

For 30 years now, BWT has been continuously setting new standards in the development of sustainable technologies and products for private households, hotels, restaurants, commerce, industry, and municipalities with the aim of ensuring safety, hygiene and health in daily contact with our elixir of life, water.

“The Salzburg Festival is the benchmark in the cultural sector. In our company, we also pursue an ambitious goal: We want to make the world a better place, sip by sip, with our technologies and our commitments. Being able to drive this vision forward together with a partner like the Salzburg Festival is a great honor for us and strengthens us in our mission “For You and Planet Blue,” says Andreas Weißenbacher, founder of BWT.

Since Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf fulfilled his dream of creating an accurate and elegant wristwatch in the early part of the 20th century – a period when the pocket watch was the norm − the Swiss watchmaker has always encouraged individual excellence and the pursuit of perfection. In furthering this long-standing tradition, the company makes a significant contribution to the arts through its patronage of a wide range of programmes and activities.

Rolex’s commitment to the arts dates back to the 1970s when New Zealand soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa became the brand’s first arts Testimonee. Over the years, this partnership has grown to include many other leading artists, prestigious institutions and festivals.

Among these artists are Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, French tenor Benjamin Bernheim, Spanish tenor Plácido Domingo, Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel, Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez, German tenor Jonas Kaufmann and Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva.

Rolex also supports the foremost cultural institutions from around the world, such as the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, London’s Royal Opera House, the Metropolitan Opera (The Met) in New York, the Opéra national de Paris, the Teatro Colón (Colón Theatre) in Buenos Aires, the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Beijing and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

In 2012, the brand was delighted to incorporate the highly acclaimed Salzburg Festival into its cultural portfolio and became Exclusive Sponsor of the Whitsun Festival, directed by Cecilia Bartoli. These flourishing partnerships are based on a mutual commitment to excellence.

Rolex remains increasingly active in the arts with the aim of helping to perpetuate an artistic heritage and make a unique and lasting contribution to culture around the world.

Preserving Cultural Monuments, Awakening Enthusiasm for Art

UNIQA and art and culture have belonged together for many years. As the biggest art insurer in Central Europe, we are leading in preserving high-quality cultural monuments and experienced in supporting excellent cultural events. With great enthusiasm we accept the social responsibility of not only preserving our cultural heritage for future generations, but also providing cultural education. That is why we support the Salzburg Festival’s children’s and youth programme. As a partner, we encourage young artists to go their own way. With selected musical theatre productions, we wish to awaken a young audience’s enthusiasm for the arts, embedding the support for younger generations in the Festival’s long-range programming. Opera Camps, reduced-price youth tickets, student projects and age-appropriate introductory events inspire the enjoyment of music, keeping it alive for the future.

Those who invest in culture also invest in the community, because they are also investing in a force for economic growth – namely, the creative arts sector. Enabling and promoting culture is therefore not only a public and a political task, but also part of the Raiffeisen development mandate.
Great results require solid foundations: That’s why Raiffeisen supports the “jung und jede*r” youth programme, which provides everyone in all Salzburg regions – particularly young people – with a diverse programme. In order for children and young people to develop their own unique personalities, it is essential that they are exposed to art and culture early on in their lives. This is also important for ensuring that our cultural legacy has a future. To preserve this legacy, we must try to stimulate understanding and enthusiasm among those who will play a part in shaping its future: today’s children and young people. We are proud to support such a diverse programme of concerts, operas and plays for them. For us, this promotion of high-quality culture in the region is also an expression of our solidarity with our country.

The Würth Group is the global market leader in the development, production and sale of fastening and assembly materials. The Würth Group is operating worldwide and currently consists of more than 400 companies with 2,500 pick-up shops in over 80 countries. The fields of expertise cover fastening technology, screws, anchors, chemicals, power tools and systems.
The corporate culture is shaped by values such as openness, appreciation, respect, curiosity and responsibility, but also humility and modesty. The family-owned business acts on a long-term basis and considers not only economic but also environmental and social aspects when making decisions –being carbon neutral and operating in a circular way are focus issues.
The Würth Group and the Würth Foundation contribute to a vibrant cultural landscape and the people’s social welfare. Taking social responsibility is deeply enshrined in the corporate culture. For Reinhold Würth “art and culture are an enormous link between the social areas”.

V—A—C Foundation, established in 2009 produces new culture together with artists and audiences alike. It is a platform for open discussion aimed at redefining the contemporary landscape. Working also with local communities, V—A—C promotes its exhibitions, publishing, performative and learning programmes beyond all disciplinary boundaries and thus constantly resets the coordinates for dialogue within a new global geography. This methodology is applied in all V—A—C initiatives, taking place in its Venetian space, through international, cross-institutional partnerships and in its future home for arts and culture in Moscow, GES-2.

Carl Orff (1895 – 1982) decreed in his will that the Carl Orff Foundation be established. The task of the foundation is to preserve the artistic and pedagogical legacy of Carl Orff and to promote the dissemination of his work. Beyond the world-famous “Carmina Burana”, Carl Orff’s artistic output includes an additional 17 stageworks, which are among the most important music-dramas of the present day. As a music educator, Carl Orff stands for the unity of language, music and movement through the Orff Schulwerk. Today, his ideas live on in the more than 50 Orff Schulwerk Associations worldwide.
The Carl Orff Foundation provides continuing education and training for the international Orff Schulwerk Associations, awards scholarships to students, and promotes publications about Carl Orff’s life and work. The Foundation supports the work of the Orff Center Munich—the state institute for research and documentation. Actively exchanging ideas with music and theater creators, the publishing house Schott Music International, pedagogues and scholars is also a matter of importance for the foundation.

Kia Ora Foundation was founded in 1997, with a primary goal to enable post-graduate study in musical performance while its secondary purpose is to assist in education in applied sciences. In addition to the Scholarships, the Foundation funds special projects, which support activities involving New Zealand artists. Such projects range internationally regarding appearing in musical performance or in undertaking further study not specifically related to an academic institution.