What festivals, anniversaries, special commemorations in 2020 are you looking forward to?

The Luminale in Frankfurt that happens every other year. In 2020 it will be held from 12-15 March.

Video and photos from the one in 2018. The video mapping at the ECB, the Alte Oper and the Römer were fantastic.
https://luminale-frankfurt.de/en/startpage/

I hope to make this year's Cannstatter Volksfest (September 27 through the 13th of October), but if not this year I really want to for next year.

https://www.cannstatter-volksfest.de/en/landing-page/

Is carnivale in Venice and/or Rijeka, Croatia special enough. We have friends who have gone to Venice as sightseers during Carnivale a few times and are now participants. We retire next Spring and are hoping to hit both cities someday. We would also like to spend Christmas with family and friends in Germany and Croatia one year. I have so many trips planned in my head I don’t think we will live long enough to get to them all. I read about the Bram Stoker festival in Dublin, Easter in Spain or Italy.....if I start researching festivals my head will explode.

My 80th birthday.

Ha ha Monte. My 75th birthday and hoping to be able to take one more trip to Europe for it. Maybe it'll coincide with a festival somewhere too.

My 50th birthday. Planning my first trip to Austria to celebrate. It has been on my bucket list for about 30 years.

What a good thread idea! For me, it’s La Bienal de Flamenco in Seville: September 4 -October 4, 2020 http://www.labienal.com/en

Duende!

Monte, Nancy, and FerFer, congrats and great answers! My thought on reading the subject line was along the same personal lines: 35th wedding anniversary to be celebrated in Maui in March.

We avoid festivals in Europe (or anywhere else) when we travel.

Like Laurel, I try to avoid festivals. I went to Venice the week before Carnivale, when it was quiet and there were no queues.

Easter in Greece 2020! We were fortunate enough to celebrate Easter Week in Sicily a few years ago and what an amazing experience that was!

2020 is the four hundredth anniversary of the Mayflower sailing and there are lots of events planned, especially in Plymouth of course.

https://www.mayflower400uk.org

My 50th birthday! On the seventh day of the year.

Congrats to all!

Hoping to make it to Archstoyanie land art festival (knock on wood) and Edinburgh festival fringe (knock on wood *3).
Looks like no Burning Man for me in 2020 - yet again...

I hope to make it to the Homo Faber exhibit in Venice, mid-September through mid-October.

We will be celebrating our 35th anniversary next September with a 7-8 week trip, including a day at Oktoberfest just 2 days before our anniversary. We went in 2010 on our 25th anniversary trip. I don't drink beer. That's how much I want to make him happy. In 2010 it was just the two of us. Next year there will be a group of us at Oktoberfest. I think that will allow me to sneak away and look for the wine tent I have heard about. ;-)

Early congrats to everyone celebrating an anniversary!
And thanks for sharing your ideas about events you are considering.

Blinking brightly on my radar:

2020 is the 200th anniversary of the Madrid Athenaeum,
https://www.ateneodemadrid.com/Agenda/Exposiciones
which early in its history had to de-camp for London for over a decade to avoid political intrigue in Spain,
but then ended up becoming the main location for the smoke-filled back rooms where the powerful
and connected in modern Spanish history rubbed elbows with the intellectual and artistic.

For the bicentennial there are big plans, described on the website as
"The syllabus includes artistic and bibliographic exhibitions, open-doors
days, scholarships, urban events, and literary and musical exhibitions aimed
at wide-ranging audiences"

Normally they have 45-minute guided tours of the building, including the portrait gallery, on weekday mornings, but those are suspended while they are working on getting ready for the big anniversary. Not clear when they will re-open to the public...

For what its worth, we just celebrated our 50th with a three week journey to Ukraine, our fourth there.

It’s worth a lot Monte, congratulations! We will hit our 40 June of 2021 and are looking to Japan.

does anyone have a good website or resource for a calendar of upcoming festivals

You can try this website but I don't know how all inclusive it is. You can search by country and your dates.

The Oberammergau Passion Play comes up again in 2020. We would genuinely love to witness that event but, unfortunately, I don't think it will happen. We'd enjoy reading trip reports from those of you that attend!

@nancy , thanks for that site . its a start and ill check it out