Therme’s Herbarium Festival Draws 92 Aufguss and Wellness Specialists From 26 Countries

The fourth edition of Therme Bucharest’s Herbarium festival, which ran May 4–17, brought in 92 aufguss masters and herbal-wellness specialists from 26 countries and offered more than 800 plant-based sauna rituals and experiences over two weeks, according to Therme’s festival page. The roster ran from Brazil and Colombia to Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Norway and Latvia. And the operator behind it, Vienna-based Therme Group, is building new thermal destinations, including Therme Manchester, which it expects to open in late 2028.

Four editions, a wider roster

Therme billed the 2026 edition as the largest and richest Herbarium yet. Its program paired aufguss with rituals from other bathing traditions: a Japanese-inspired mindfulness ritual led by a master from the Netherlands, a Kyrgyz banya with birch aromas, Moroccan rhassoul clay cleansing, and a session built on the herbal recipes of Hildegard von Bingen. Eight practitioners, six women and two men, performed under the German flag, according to Sauna-Wellness-Update, the German trade outlet.

Herbarium is structured as an invitation-only event, not a competition bracket. Masters are selected, not seeded. That format eliminates the logistical overhead of judging panels and elimination rounds while concentrating the programming quality. It also eliminates a risk that competition organizers know well: nobody goes home in the first round. The model benefits the masters, too. A two-week festival run, with multiple performance slots and cross-pollination with 91 other specialists from many bathing traditions, offers development and visibility that a three-day competition bracket cannot.

What 800 experiences actually look like

The 800-experience figure sounds enormous until you see the venue. Therme Bucharest is a waterpark and thermal complex that drew more than 1.7 million visitors in 2025, about 30% of them foreign tourists, according to Ziarul Financiar. The festival’s sessions ran in saunas and wet saunas across the complex for 14 days.

The botanical theme is substantive, not decorative. Sessions use plant-based infusions (essential oils, herbal extracts, dried botanicals), and on both festival weekends the Herbarium LAB ran family workshops on herbarium sheets, ikebana and pressed-flower art in collaboration with a faculty of horticulture. That academic tie-in distinguishes Herbarium from the supplier-catalog wellness programming that remains the industry norm.

During Herbarium, an adult Elysium ticket, which covered the pools, saunas and festival programming, cost from 132 lei for three hours Monday through Thursday to 217 lei for a full day Friday through Sunday or on a holiday (roughly $30 to $49), according to Therme’s price list. The pricing reflects Therme’s high-volume model: absorb the programming cost into a mass-market day pass and let the aufguss serve as a differentiator rather than a standalone revenue line.

The programming reached beyond pure aufguss. The Muse Quartet performed a live classical concert inside the thermal area. The festival’s signature installation, the Sound Tree, made its Romanian premiere on the Elysium terrace. Created by the Italian handpan maker SEW Handpan with artist Paolo Borghi, it hangs hand-tuned tubular bells from metal branches modeled on an olive tree, and they sound when the wind or a visitor touches them. SEW says each installation supports replanting of olive trees devastated by Xylella fastidiosa, a bacterial disease that has ravaged olive groves in southern Italy. These elements position Herbarium closer to immersive theater than to a standard industry event.

A showcase, not a championship

The natural point of comparison is the Aufguss World Championship (Aufguss-WM), the discipline’s premier competitive event, but the comparison has structural limits. The Aufguss-WM is a scored competition with elimination rounds, judging criteria, and titles at stake. Herbarium is a showcase where specialists are invited to perform, not to compete. One format tests who is best; the other demonstrates what the discipline can look like at its most ambitious. But for the commercial sauna industry, the distinction between competition and showcase matters less than the talent density and the programming ambition. Operators evaluating aufguss programs for their own facilities care about what is possible and who is available, not who placed third in the team category.

The geography tells a story too. The Aufguss-WM draws heavily from its Central European base. Herbarium’s 26-country roster reached well beyond it. That geographic breadth has commercial value beyond the festival. An operator considering aufguss programming in Texas or the English Midlands needs to know that trained practitioners exist outside Central Europe. Herbarium’s 26-country participant list is, in effect, evidence of labor supply for markets that do not yet have an aufguss talent base of their own.

The broader pattern is fragmentation. Aufguss is expanding from a single championship model into a distributed circuit. The USA held its first national aufguss championship in 2025. Regional competitions are multiplying across Central Europe. Herbarium sits on the non-competitive branch of that expansion.

The corporate strategy behind the rituals

Therme Group is not a local bathhouse operator running an enthusiast project. The Vienna-based company, backed by a joint venture with CVC Capital Partners valued at more than EUR 1 billion and announced in June 2025, operates large-format thermal complexes including Therme Bucharest and Therme Erding in Germany, which together welcome about 3.5 million guests a year, according to CVC. Its development pipeline includes Therme Manchester, which CVC says is on track to open in late 2028, and a proposed Therme Dallas.

Herbarium fits this expansion strategy. If 92 specialists will travel to Bucharest, the company’s bet, in our reading, is that the same talent network can activate facilities across its portfolio, including in markets where aufguss is still a novelty.

That lens reframes what Herbarium is at the corporate level. In our reading, the festival also works as a talent-acquisition and brand-building instrument for a company that needs to staff aufguss programs across a growing international portfolio. Every master who performs at Herbarium is a potential hire, collaborator, or brand ambassador for a future Therme property. In our reading, the cost of bringing in 92 performers and mounting 800 sessions also works as a recruiting and market-development expense.

The model also generates programming IP. Therme can study which session formats, botanical themes, and performance styles produce the strongest guest engagement in Bucharest, then export the playbook to Manchester or Dallas. Luxury hotel operators building thermal facilities will recognize the approach: use a flagship property as a laboratory for concepts that scale across the portfolio.

Related: Therme Bucharest’s October Sauna Fest brings Aufguss masters from 29 countries.