Leipzig Festival of Lights 2026: A journey of light through the city centre and a sobering reminder about democracy

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It wasn’t, after all, a milestone anniversary of the 1989 Monday demonstrations. That’s why the event was on a slightly smaller scale, without the walk around the Ring, featuring light installations in Leipzig city centre. But the 2026 Festival of Light once again drew thousands to the city centre on Friday, 9 October. Along the specially designed ‘Path of Light’ through the city centre, six stations invited visitors to reflect on the Peaceful Revolution from 7.00 pm to 11.00 pm.

The illuminated trail combined light installations, performances and images from 1989. It ran from Nikolaikirchhof via Grimmaische Straße and Markt, Thomaskirchhof and Dittrichring to Matthäikirchhof and could be walked in either direction and in any order. Orange-coloured street lights helped visitors find their way.

The Lichtweg presented six projects: the open-air exhibition “Our Responsibility …” on Grimmaische Straße, the light installation “Faces of Light” at the Forum for Contemporary History (also on Grimmaische Straße), the dance performance “New Beginnings – Upheaval –? United in Diversity” on the market square, the “Kerzen-89” event and interviews with eyewitnesses at Thomaskirchhof, the immersive video installation “PERPETUUM” (Dittrichring) and the video installation “Der Aktenschrank” in the courtyard of Matthäikirchhof.

And there were dance performances too: the dance performance by the TARO TANZ company took place on the market square. There were four such main performances, each lasting around 30 minutes. The stage was also used for performances in between.

Once again, a central venue for remembrance was the candle platform in the shape of an 89, this time at St Thomas’s Church on the corner of Klostergasse. There, visitors were able to pause and strike up conversations with eyewitnesses. The site – the original starting point of the Monday demonstrations in 1989 – once again provided a space for personal memories and exchange.

Vicki Felthaus, Mayor and Councillor for Youth, Schools and Democracy, also emphasised at this Festival of Light that the Leipzig Festival of Light makes visible what began almost invisibly in the autumn of 1989: the quiet but unstoppable courage of civil society.

She made an impassioned appeal to those attending the Festival of Light: “9 October reminds us that change becomes possible when people courageously take responsibility. Today, our response to the challenges of our time is crucial: whether we listen rather than exclude, take a stand rather than remain silent, and strengthen solidarity rather than accept division.”

The Leipzig Festival of Light commemorates the Peaceful Revolution in the autumn of ’89 and the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig. 9 October 1989 marks the largest Monday demonstration to date against the SED regime, with over 100,000 participants.

The fact that it took place without violence is regarded as a pivotal moment in the Peaceful Revolution, paving the way for the fall of the Wall and German reunification. Every year, the city of Leipzig honours these events with the Leipzig Festival of Lights, the Prayer for Peace and the Speech on Democracy.

In 2009, following an amendment to the City of Leipzig’s main statutes, 9 October was designated as a municipal commemorative day – though not a public holiday – to mark the 1989 Peaceful Revolution.

Words of remembrance

At 5.00 pm, the Peace Prayer took place in St Nicholas’ Church, led by Pastor Joachim Jeska. And at 6.15 pm, also at St Nicholas’ Church, the ‘Speech on Democracy’ took place, this time delivered by the German-American political scientist Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, who reminded the audience in her speech just how threatened democracy has once again become: “And in light of this week’s events, it is all the more important to me to be able to reflect with you on how we can make our democracy resilient and fit for the future.

For having to witness how, at the very heart of a constitutional, parliamentary process, a president of the state parliament is elected who is backed by a programme that seeks to exploit core elements of our liberal constitutional order in order to discredit it, weaken it and – despite the often contradictory statements, we must also assume this – to undermine it from within – is, from the perspective of our shared history, not only painful, difficult to comprehend and to explain; it must also provide us with an equally urgent impetus to work in a more structured, direct and personal way to protect our democracy.”

In her speech, she also drew parallels with the history of the USA and its democracy – now 250 years old – which is likewise under threat: “This acceleration must serve as a warning to us here too. The turning point of the Saxony-Anhalt election, the provisional end of a mainstream party in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and the spread of radicalism in state and local elections must be enough to realise that, despite our different constitutional stability compared with the US, the strategies and tactics have a similar effect here; that the breeding ground on which the fears thrive – fears that make the weakening of liberal democracies possible in the first place – is very similar.”

And she described how the tactics of the enemies of democracy in the US and in Germany are similar: “The movements that fuel this disintegration coldly and calculatingly exploit our weaknesses; they manipulate our real and conjured-up fears, peddle simplistic solutions caught between the dialectic of technological progress and cultural regression, in an ethno-national form that has in fact never existed in the US, and whose horrific enforcement here cost the lives of 6 million of our fellow citizens.

This acceleration is driven by a constant barrage of information – images, news, new realities – which we have long since been unable to make sense of due to their sheer volume, but which are primarily intended to heighten our sense of loss of control and identity. These movements deliberately seek out the weak points in our norms – challenging them, denouncing them, putting them to the test in five questions – in order to then lay bare the real vulnerabilities. The areas where our institutions lack sufficient protection: the openness of our schools, our courts, our media – and yes, they also call into question the effectiveness of our constitutions.”

And she showed how a democracy is slowly eroded from within: “In the US, the changes crept in over 40 years; they were exacerbated by the state’s lack of involvement, because without a genuine social market economy, transformation processes are difficult to cushion. It began there with the repeal of the Media Fairness Act, which allowed media ownership to turn facts into opinions. This gave way to a process of globalisation – simultaneously desired and accelerated by both Republican and Democratic presidents – which led to factory closures and the relocation of economic activity, without people having any safe havens.”

She concluded her talk by encouraging her audience, emphasising that it is indeed possible to fight for democracy and its institutions. But this requires engagement and participation that all citizens can experience, along with the feeling of actually being taken seriously.