Largest Sauna Festival In US Takes Over NYC: What To Know

NEW YORK CITY — The largest sauna festival made its way to New York City this weekend.

Culture of Bathe-ing transforms Domino Park in Williamsburg into an immersive, open-air bathing environment, the first of its kind event and largest ever staged in the United States, event organizers told Patch.

The festival includes seventeen distinct saunas to experience and more than 1,000 guided sessions over led by internationally renowned Aufguss World Champions and bathing practitioners from New York favorites including Bathhouse, Othership, and the Russian and Turkish Baths.

Pioneer Works, Brooklyn’s leading center for experimental art and performance, curated the festival's additional programming with live performances and immersive art to create a new kind of social and sensory environment titled, Hot Bodies.

The program also includes free, public events alongside ticketed workshops during NYC’s spring break week, led by organizations and artists including Aziwke Mohamed of Black Painters Academy, Samer Ghadry of Tone Center, and the Amateur Astronomers Association.

“Bathing is at the start of a cultural wave, think yoga in the ’90s or coffee in the ’80s,” Robert Hammond, co-founder of the High Line and President of Therme Group US, told Patch. “Bathhouses are going to be in every neighborhood. We want to make sure the cultural part of bathing isn’t washed away by the wellness trends.”

The village festival grounds are open to the public, with free public experiences and workshops scheduled throughout the run. The festival’s sauna experiences are ticketed, with sessions priced from $60–$125 based on time and day, organizers said. More than 1,000 complimentary tickets will be released to the public.

“We are excited to partner with Therme’s sauna festival at Domino Park to bring talks, rituals, workshops and performances into the bathhouse,” Gabriel Florenz, Founding Artistic & Executive Director at Pioneer Works, told Patch. “Our joint program, Hot Bodies, creates a space for embodied exploration, using heat as both a medium and metaphor to deepen how we feel, listen, and relate. In this unconventional space, we’re exploring how gathering in close proximity can open up forms of presence and connection.”

Culture of Bathe-ing will run through March 1. Tickets are now available at cultureofbathe-ing.com.