Attending a massive music festival like Rock am Ring always requires a certain level of patience. Delays and traffic jams are nothing new for festivalgoers. Still, according to attendees arriving this year, the situation in 2025 seems even worse than usual.
Many fans who arrived on Wednesday found themselves stuck in gridlock for hours. “In all the years I’ve been coming here, I’ve never seen anything like this,” said a young man from Saarland, visibly frustrated. We spoke to him around 9:30 a.m. as we waited at a roundabout in Kelberg — a common route for those trying to reach the festival via Müllenbach. Officially, the camping grounds open at noon, but in practice, many fans show up earlier, with some campsites opening ahead of schedule. Our destination was “Camping am Nürburgring,” where we planned to meet with the campsite operator, Steffen Fischer.
Hours in Traffic, But Spirits Remain High
To get a better picture, we checked in with other visitors across the area. Friends of ours had been stuck near Müllenbach for two and a half hours by 11:15 a.m. “Everything’s completely jammed,” they reported. Others said they had abandoned their cars altogether and started walking to pick up their wristbands. “The cars are still far behind,” one group told us.
As for us, after sitting nearly motionless for half an hour—only moving when cars ahead gave up and turned around—we decided to try an alternate route. We left the roundabout and attempted to reach Müllenbach via Welcherath. That plan didn’t work either. A traffic marshal redirected us toward the B258 road via Döttinger Höhe.
That route seemed promising at first. We got onto the road without much trouble—but it didn’t last. Another dead stop. For 30 more minutes, we sat motionless. The only distraction came from chatting with other stuck festivalgoers. But to say they were “suffering” might not be accurate—despite the chaos, the mood was surprisingly upbeat. People made the best of the delay, meeting fellow fans, sharing laughs, and even blasting music from their cars. From one vehicle came Herbert Grönemeyer’s “Mambo”—a fitting soundtrack for a line of cars that had been circling for hours.