Volkwagen GTI Treffen leaves Austria for Wolfsburg

The next year’s Wörthersee GTI Treffen – annual gathering of powerful Volkswagen car owners – will be renamed to GTI Coming Home and take place adjacent to the automaker’s Wolfsburg HQ in Germany instead of Austria. The reason? Eco-activist complaints.

In earlier news, the local administration had the festival banned after receiving numerous complaints from the residents about it disrupting the ecosystem of Lake Wörthersee and the region as a whole. The authorities emphasized that there would be no such festival at that location again for at least several years to come.

The Wörthersee GTI Meeting in Austria had been attracting the owners of high-performance, rare, tuned and otherwise unusual Volkswagen cars since 1982. The event had been officially supported by the manufacturer until 2006. The festival has been known for hosting presentations of new cars, concepts and one-off design studies built by interns.

The Wörthersee GTI had been attracting crowds of up to 200,000 people, but stopped abruptly in 2019 due to Covid. In 2022, it was canceled as well, but enthusiasts brought around 5,000 cars to the lake banks hoping to break the trend. The police interfered and ended up issuing around 3,700 protocols to the participants.

These enthusiasts may rejoice now because next year, Volkswagen will be officially hosting a continuation event near its HQ in Germany. It will drop the ‘Wörthersee’ toponym from the name and be appropriately called ‘GTI Coming Home’. The date and the program remain to be announced, but the company says it will consider the wishes and suggestions of all participants. Whatever it will be, we are looking forward to premieres, spectacular shows, club meetings and more than a few surprises.