Between recognition and discrimination: Why cultural funding needs to rethink its approach to clubs and festivals

Hamburg, 26 August 2026 – The current draft of the 2027 federal culture budget, as well as developments in state and local authority budgets, highlight the structural imbalance that has always characterised the German cultural landscape. Whilst vital funding for pop culture, such as the Festival Support Fund, is set to be cut (the plan is to halve it to 2 million euros), the Bayreuth Festival is allowed to plan for an increase from 4.2 million euros to 5.2 million euros. This focus on funding cultural ‘beacons’ suggests that the Minister of State for Culture still fails to recognise the foundations on which these rest and the role that pop music actually plays in Germany.

When Minister for Culture Weimer hails the largest cultural budget ever seen in the Federal Republic in interviews, he ignores the fact that pop culture venues, with comparatively modest public funding, make a major contribution to cultural, support for emerging talent and regional economic value, and that live music events attracted just under 75 million visitors in 2025 (GEMA Song Economy, 2026).

At the same time, the latest ‘Culture Relevance Monitor’ by the Bertelsmann Foundation (2025) reveals an illuminating discrepancy: whilst 91 per cent of the population want to preserve theatre programmes for future generations, four out of five respondents did not attend any classical cultural events at all last year. 35 per cent have never been to a classical concert or an opera performance. High culture enjoys abstract social support, but is not engaged with by the vast majority.

The government’s 2027 draft fails to take this reality into account. This is because the federal government’s key programmes for pop and live music – including the Festival Support Fund, the Amateur Music Fund, the Reeperbahn Festival and the ‘Initiative Musik’ – have a combined budget of approximately 31 million euros. This is a sum equivalent to what a single theatre in a medium-sized town in Germany receives. At federal level, given the current cultural budget of 2.36 billion euros under the present budgetary circumstances, this corresponds to an estimated mere 1.3 per cent of the federal government’s cultural budget – and this despite the fact that this sum already includes socio-cultural activities and jazz. Instead, funding programmes that focus, amongst other things, on emerging talent or the preservation of venues (e.g. the Federal Noise Abatement Programme) are being scaled back to previous years’ levels or discontinued, even though the need is greater than ever before due to changes in cost and revenue structures.

Why pop culture in particular is facing disproportionately large cuts remains a question without a political answer. The current figures illustrate just how great the need is within the scene:

• 74 per cent of clubs in Berlin find themselves increasingly reliant on public funding. In reality, however, funding accounts for only 2 per cent of turnover (Source: Club study by the Berlin Club Commission, 2026)

• 95 per cent of the clubs surveyed believe that, without structural improvements, the long-term survival of many venues is at risk. (Source: Club study by the Berlin Club Commission)

• Whilst mega-events are booming, the segment of the smallest concerts (up to 500 people) is the only one to have recorded a 5.7 per cent decline in attendance compared with the reference year 2019 – despite the number of events remaining virtually unchanged. (Source: GEMA Song Economy)

• According to calculations by the German Music Information Centre, every theatre ticket at publicly funded venues in Germanyis subsidised by an average of around 191 euros per visit. (Source: German Music Information Centre) By contrast, live music events in the pop and club sectors generally receive no basic institutional funding and are financed predominantly from ticket and catering revenue; the current subsidy per ticket there is effectively zero euros.

• The funding programmes run by Initiative Musik, on the other hand, have been massively oversubscribed for years (Source: LiveMusikKommission)

An international comparison shows that there is another way

In discussions, the Minister of State for Culture likes to point out that other countries think “on a larger scale”. In this regard, it is worth taking a look at current developments in the UK: there, under the new Mayor Burnham, one of the first measures to be implemented will be to reduce business rates for live music venues, amongst other things, and to invest an additional 30 million pounds in the local music industry. Furthermore, with the LiveLineFunds , an industry-specific funding scheme is available, under which 1 pound per ticket sold at major events is channelled back to grassroots venues. This was made possible primarily through strong political backing and targeted appeals from the industry.

In Germany, too, the Live Music Fund Germanyrun by the LiveKultur Federal Foundation. However, it has not yet received the political support it deserves given the state of the sector. Furthermore, if state-funded cultural institutions were obliged – or at least encouraged – to contribute to such a fund in connection with pop culture events, the structural imbalance in the funding landscape could be significantly reduced. At a rate of one ‘Club Euro’ per ticket, the Adele concert evenings held at the Munich Exhibition Centre in 2024 alone would have generated around €730,000 in investment funds for structural maintenance.

What is now required:

1. To significantly increase the proportion of the cultural budget allocated to the promotion of popular music at federal, state and local levels (the demands of the LiveMusikKommission ).

2. To develop an inter-ministerial ‘National Action Plan for Live Culture’, modelled on the German Tourism Strategy, which sets out binding targets, concrete funding instruments and clear responsibilities for the preservation and strengthening of live music venues, clubs and festivals in Germany. This strategy is to be drawn up in the near future at a live music summit involving the relevant live music associations.

3. To continue the Federal Noise Abatement Programme, which is under threat of being discontinued, via the Federal Ministry of Building.

4. To examine the establishment of a special levy for the live music sector: The Research Service of the German Bundestag has confirmed that such a state levy – analogous to film funding – is legally possible. In particular, internationally active ticketing companies should be encouraged to contribute voluntarily to the Live Music Fund. Otherwise, a compulsory levy would have to be introduced. (Source: Research Service of the German Bundestag (2026) ‘Live music organisers in Germany’ Reference numbers WD 1 - 3000 - 007/26, WD 3 - 3000 - 060-26, WD 4 - 3000 - 039/26)

Furthermore, state-funded institutions dedicated to high culture should be obliged or encouraged, via the Live Music Fund Germany, to contribute to the preservation of the pop culture landscape in its entirety.

5. The Federal Government is called upon, in consultation with the federal states, to establish a uniform nationwide certification procedure in accordance with Section 4 Nos. 20a and 20b of the Value Added Tax Act (UStG) for music clubs and live music venues (regardless of their legal form), which ensures cultural equality with theatres and public stages.

Dialogue rather than monologue

Politicians should intensify dialogue with representatives of the live and pop culture sectors. LiveKomm therefore proposes that a ‘Live Summit’ be held to focus on the challenges facing the live music sector and to adopt an action plan. After all, following the widespread decline in revenue from recorded music, this sector is now the last remaining significant source of income for artists. These issues are pressing, so a live music summit should take place by the end of October.