Free Cycling Shorts on the Devil's Wheel: Oktoberfest Tests a Simple Fix for Upskirting
Women riding the Teufelsrad at Oktoberfest in Munich are being offered free cycling shorts to wear under dresses to prevent upskirting.
The Teufelsrad, or Devil's Wheel, is one of the festival's oldest rides. Riders try to stay seated on a rapidly spinning disc for as long as they can, much like holding on to a giant turning record, while onlookers watch from the platform around it. Dirndl skirts almost inevitably fly up on the disc, as noted by Zeit, leaving riders briefly exposed in front of a crowd with phones in hand.
That brief exposure has been recorded and shared on a large scale. More than 32,000 videos linked to the Teufelsrad were found on Meta platforms alone, according to Süddeutsche Zeitung research cited by The Guardian. Some clips drew millions of views. Titles attached to videos of women in dirndls on the ride included "Sexy Drunk Girls" and "Heiße Fahrt auf dem Oktoberfest", according to Tagesschau.
Upskirting, which means filming under someone's skirt without consent, has been illegal in Germany since 2020. It is punishable by a fine or up to two years in prison. The law is clear. Prosecution depends on detection. Signs and police posters in German and English around the Teufelsrad tent warn against filming under people's skirts. Bavarian police have placed posters warning against upskirting at Oktoberfest since 2025. Officers recorded seven arrests for upskirting in 2024 and 10 in 2025. At the 2026 Oktoberfest, police arrested a 45-year-old Swiss man accused of filming under a German woman's dirndl.
Alongside that enforcement effort, Teufelsrad operator Elisabeth Polaczy has handed out more than 100 pairs of free cycling shorts to women and girls wearing dresses during the 2026 Oktoberfest. The shorts are offered before boarding. Use is voluntary. The measure runs in parallel to policing, not as a substitute for it.
The broader context here involves the gap between what happens inside a tent and what happens after a clip is uploaded. An arrest addresses a single alleged act in Munich. A video that draws millions of views moves beyond local jurisdiction in seconds. On-site prevention and post-upload removal operate on different timelines, with different tools and different limits.
Looking at what this means for large public events, the shorts are notable for their simplicity. They impose no new restriction on riding, filming, or dress. They shift a small part of protection to the moment before exposure occurs, rather than to investigation afterward. Cases involving people of different nationalities add practical questions about follow-up once visitors leave. Whether other operators adopt similar low-cost steps will turn on visitor acceptance, operating routines, and whether police action and platform moderation can narrow the distance between an illegal recording and its disappearance from circulation.
