The trucks arrive at 7:00 AM. By 1:00 PM, the stage needs to be structurally complete. By 3:00 PM, the first band is doing soundcheck. Six hours of organised chaos that most festival-goers never see — here's how it actually works.
7:00 – 9:00 AM: The load-in
Four trucks back into the venue. The crew — eighteen people at Munich, slightly fewer at Hamburg — begins unloading in a specific order dictated by the production rider. Structural steel first, then the PA system, then the lighting rig, then backline. Every item has a numbered flight case. Every flight case has a destination marked on the ground plan. Nobody improvises this part.
"The first two hours are all about geometry. Get that wrong and the whole day comes apart." — Oktoberfest Rock production manager
9:00 – 1:00 PM: The build
Stagehands assemble the deck while riggers work overhead on the truss system. The PA is flown — suspended from the roof rather than stacked on the floor — which takes the longest and has no margin for error. Safety checks happen twice: once by the head rigger, once by a separate safety officer who has no other duties.
By noon the stage looks like a stage. By 1:00 PM the lighting programmer is already sitting at her console running position checks on each fixture. At 3:00 PM the first band plugs in. At 6:00 PM the gates open. And the six hours of work that made the evening possible becomes completely invisible — which is exactly how it should be.