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BREMEN — A large section of Bremen’s Bürgerpark is becoming an open-air science laboratory this week, with the Explore Science festival bringing free experiments, workshops, competitions and demonstrations to the city from 10 to 12 September 2026.
The three-day event is centred on the theme “Inventions and Discoveries”. It is designed for kindergartens, school groups, families and other visitors who want to explore science by doing rather than simply watching. The programme is based around mathematics, computer science, natural sciences and technology, commonly grouped in Germany under the acronym MINT.
Explore Science is being held near the Marcusbrunnen in the Bürgerpark. The organisers describe the Bremen edition as the eighth staged in the city. The festival is organised by the Klaus Tschira Foundation, with contributions from educational and research institutions, schools and local partners.
Science in a park setting
The setting is part of the event’s appeal. Instead of placing the programme behind the walls of a university or museum, Explore Science uses a familiar public park as a temporary meeting place for scientific discovery. Visitors can move between interactive stations, workshop tents and a stage programme at their own pace.
According to the festival’s published timetable, the event runs from 9am to 4pm on Thursday and Friday, and from 10am to 5pm on Saturday. The Bürgerpark’s own events calendar also lists the festival as a free programme for kindergartens, schools and families from Bremen and the surrounding area.
From paper bridges to solar mobility
The programme offers activities for a wide range of ages. Some stations introduce visitors to the practical side of invention: participants can investigate how a camera works, explore materials, build or test structures, and experiment with programming and colour effects.
Other activities connect scientific questions with everyday challenges. The published workshop list includes sessions on photovoltaic technology and electric mobility, water, plastics, wind power, fossils, radio and natural models. A workshop on a rover for the Martian moon Phobos gives older pupils an opportunity to approach planetary exploration through a hands-on format.
Several of the activities are organised with age recommendations, but the organisers state that all visitors are welcome to try the stations. The approach is deliberately exploratory: children and adults are encouraged to follow their curiosity, test ideas and learn from results that do not always work the first time.
Young researchers take centre stage
School competitions form another important part of the festival. Pupils from primary school through the upper secondary level have been invited to develop solutions to experimental challenges and present their work during the event. The competitions include tasks involving paper bridges, binary code, crash tests and mechanical ideas.
The University of Bremen is among the local partners taking part. Its programme highlights questions ranging from how the brain works to why ball bearings are useful and how algae might be used as food. The university describes the festival as an opportunity for children and young people to experience science through hands-on stations, workshops, stage performances and competitions.
This connection between public education and scientific institutions is one of the event’s constructive features. Explore Science does not present research as something distant or reserved for specialists. Instead, it introduces visitors to the habits of research: asking questions, observing carefully, building models, comparing results and revising an idea.
A free invitation to curiosity
The festival’s stage programme broadens the offer beyond individual experiments. It includes interactive science shows, a natural-science theatre production for children, a physics circus from the University of Bremen and demonstrations involving surprising discoveries and the role of chance in experimentation. Some stage sessions are accompanied by German sign-language interpretation.
Workshops on 10 and 11 September are primarily intended for school classes and kindergarten groups, although the organisers have indicated that some places remain available for spontaneous bookings. The open stations and public stage programme provide the main access point for families and individual visitors.
For Bremen, the festival offers a temporary example of how cultural and educational programming can share the same public space. The Bürgerpark becomes not only a place for leisure, but also a setting where scientific questions can be discussed, tested and enjoyed collectively.
Explore Science continues through Saturday, 12 September. Admission to the festival’s activities is free.
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