The Altitude Comedy Festival Opens the Season in Mayrhofen

In the years since it was founded, Altitude festival has been making people laugh every season. This year will see the Altitude Festival arrive twice. Yes, the festival will be taking place from the 11th to the 17th of December; bringing all the skiing fun forward a few months and kicking off the season with style.

Set up by comedians Andrew Maxwell and Marcus Brigstocke in 2008, Altitude spent the first few years of its life in Meribel before being uprooted and moved to Mayrhofen. Since then it has been a popular annual attraction, with some of the biggest names in comedy showing up for the show.

Moving the festival to December is the biggest change the festival has undergone since it arrived in Mayrhofen, and it will see a range of new events joining the party. After all, as hordes of skiers and snowboarders have decided before, where better to spend Christmas and New Year than a traditional Austrian town?

The new additions to the festival in honour of its move from March/April to December include a Festival of Lights that will take over the centre of Mayrhofen, producing fire structures and light shows. The spectacle will be artistically reinventing a magical path between the centre of Mayrhofen and the Penken Lift.

An enchanted forest brings the Christmas spirit to all festival goers, with decorated stalls, local crafts, food and drink, and an open fire where you can listen to traditional Austrian music. Elsewhere in the festival, there is a faintly dangerous meeting of music, alcohol and ice skating in the Silent Disco. ‘OH MY GOD IT’S THE CHURCH’ is a party that parodies Deep South Pentecostal church sermons, and it’ll be bringing disco hits and gospel choirs to the mountains.

As always, the main event is the comedy, with both Maxwell and Brigstocke turning up once again this year. There are some big names still to be announced on the bill for this festival, but keep an eye out because there’s sure to be a few comedy giants flying over to do a show and hit the slopes.