The festival has gained national popularity with its concerts, making up the main part of the event. Its organizers pursue an aim clearly different to other big German festivals , which oft polarize by concentrating on certain genres. Das Fest is designed to attract and to entertain all social groups. Alongside the music stages hosting regional, national and international artists, there is a broad program including sports for children and families each year.
Children can visit a mobile game area with included childcare, set up by the Karlsruhe initiative Mobile Spielaktion. More than , people attend the festival every year and in the number was as a high as , according to the event organizers. In the total number of visitors reached a record of , Tihomir Lozanovski Wolkenreise and current member of the band Trigon , organized an open-air concert in Karlsruhe during the Summer of The organizers obtained all the necessary permits from the Environment Agency and the police.
Following this initial open-air concert, the group of organizers split up and Das Fest was born. The special permits from the previous year provided the groundwork for the festival. Originally, the idea was to bring bands from Karlsruhe and the local community together. Das Fest has evolved over the years from a small open-air festival to a music festival, renowned beyond the local region and visited by more than The concept of the festival has constantly been extended at the same time with this evolution.
In the preparation week before the festival, food and drinks are offered mainly in the form of beer garden as well as an evening music program on a small stage. In , the next sustainable expansion of the festival followed with its own DJ-stage, which received a big resonance and became soon established as an integral part of the festival. A greater turning-point was reached in Due to the festival being mainly financed by the sale of beverages, the festival grounds were firstly completely fenced and once at the still free entrance, visitors were checked for brought food and drinks.
Initially, this was heavily criticised. The number of visitors showed that the festival's popularity didn't suffer from this. Over the course of the fencing process the grounds were expanded westwards, so the tent stage could have its own place. The Funpark , which, so far, had taken place in the Europahalle , was integrated as a sports park into the festival grounds, and has been on a constant expansion-mode.
