Munich

Fast trains zoom in and out of Munich.

Under the streets, a subway carries people around. Big highways lead to other cities. Airplanes take off from a big airport outside town.

Munich is a major hub for Germany's and Europe's high-speed trains, with rail links to all the main cities of Germany and Austria. Big highways called autobahns arrive from Stuttgart, Nuremberg and Salzburg.

Under the city runs a modern subway. Munich's airport, named after Franz Josef Strauss, opened in 1992 about 27 kilometers northeast of the city. At the end of 2025, about 49,700 electric cars were registered in Munich, a quarter more than a year before.

Munich is connected by rail to all the main cities of Germany and Austria and is a major hub of the German and European high-speed passenger network; autobahns from Stuttgart, Nürnberg and Salzburg converge on the city, which also has a modern subway. Franz Josef Strauss Airport, 27 km northeast, opened in 1992.

At the end of 2025, 903,633 motor vehicles were registered, including 759,228 cars, or 332 privately registered cars per 1,000 residents. Gasoline and diesel cars were falling in number, while the 49,661 electric cars had risen 26.2 percent in a year and hybrids 24 percent.

Munich has warm summers and frosty winters.

It rains or snows in every season. June and July are the wettest months.

Munich has warm summers, frosty winters and rain or snow in every season. In January, days average about 3 °C and nights about −4 °C. In July, days average about 23 °C and nights about 13 °C.

Summer is the wettest time of year: June and July each bring more than 120 millimeters of rain. On about 73 days a year the temperature falls below freezing, and on about 20 days it stays below freezing all day.

World Meteorological Organization normals for 1971–2000 give mean daily maxima and minima of 2.7 °C and −3.7 °C in January and 23.1 °C and 12.6 °C in July, with about 967 mm of precipitation a year, peaking in June (128 mm) and July (132 mm).

The city's statistics office reports a 1991–2020 mean annual temperature of 10.1 °C, up from 9.1 °C in 1961–1990, with 940 mm of precipitation, about 1,843 hours of sunshine, some 73 frost days and nearly 20 ice days a year; summer and hot days have become more frequent, and frost and ice days rarer.

Every autumn, Munich holds a giant festival called Oktoberfest.

Millions of visitors come. Families also love the science museum, where you can see real machines. There is music, theater and opera too.

Every autumn, Munich holds Oktoberfest: in 2026 an estimated 7.4 million visitors came during its 16 days. Munich is also a city of music, with an opera company and orchestras, and of museums. The Alte Pinakothek holds paintings by great artists such as Albrecht Dürer and Peter Paul Rubens.

Many people work in high-tech industries, making precision instruments, electrical appliances and aerospace products, or in banking, publishing and television. In the 2024/25 school year, 50,434 children went to Munich's 163 primary schools.

Distance from seaports and the Ruhr coalfields once held Munich back, but it shifted from heavy to light industry: precision instruments, optical and electrical appliances, aerospace and other high technology, food, cosmetics and clothing. It is a banking and finance center, a hub of book publishing and television, and a major tourist and convention city with some of Germany's largest breweries and the Oktoberfest, which drew an estimated 7.4 million visitors from September 19 to October 4, 2026.

The University of Munich moved here from Landshut in 1826; the Technical University followed in 1868, and the Max Planck Society has its headquarters here. Opera flourishes with the Bavarian State Opera and the Munich Philharmonic. The Alte Pinakothek holds the Wittelsbach collections of German, Dutch and Flemish painting, the Neue Pinakothek 19th- and 20th-century art, and the Deutsches Museum is a vast museum of science, engineering and technology.