Women handed shorts at Oktoberfest to guard against upskirting
The operator of a popular Munich Oktoberfest ride is distributing cycling shorts to women to protect them from secret upskirt filming, as police and city officials step up measures against the practice.
At Munich's Oktoberfest, the popular spinning-disc ride known as the Teufelsrad has for years been a site of covert upskirt filming of female riders. German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reports at least 32,000 such videos are in circulation, some viewed millions of times. An investigation by broadcaster BR found that a group of professional YouTubers from Ukraine, along with several people from Bavaria, were behind the filming — one woman reportedly earned €9,000 from a single clip.
Elisabeth Polaczy, the 80-year-old operator of the Teufelsrad, says that for the past three years she has handed out free cycling shorts to women and girls wearing dresses to protect them from being filmed in the crowd. This year she distributed more than 100 pairs. Polaczy says the donations aren't cheap, but are worthwhile for her own peace of mind. Although the ride's tent displays German- and English-language warning signs and police posters against upskirting, she says it's impossible to stop everyone filming with smartphones. Some waitresses at this year's festival have also begun wearing cycling shorts under their traditional dirndl dresses.
Police and city measures
Bavarian police have run a poster campaign warning against upskirting at Oktoberfest since 2025. This year, officers arrested a 45-year-old Swiss man for filming under a German woman's dirndl with his phone. There were 10 arrests for the offence last year and seven in 2024.
Josephine Ballon, head of German digital-rights group Hate Aid, says current law offers insufficient protection because it only covers filming under a skirt, not cases where a skirt is blown up or lifted and then photographed. She also flags new camera glasses as an emerging threat, and wants both uploaders of intimate images and the platforms hosting them to face punishment.
Separately, the city of Munich has cracked down on influencers and content creators profiting from social media posts filmed at the festival. Live streaming from the grounds is now banned, and anyone wanting to film must obtain a paid permit from the city; hundreds of such licences have been issued to influencers this year.
