Performance Report 2025: Increased participation and new priorities

Following the stabilisation phase of the previous year, the data for 2025 show a clear trend towards streamlining content, as well as a reversal in the trends regarding event formats and the composition of participants.

The number of events remains high

The folk high schools belonging to ARGE Bildungshäuser Österreichs (ARGE BHÖ) organised a total of 14,297 events in 2025. Compared with the previous year, this represents a slight increase of one percent. Noteworthy is the reversal in the trend regarding course formats: whilst short courses (1–4 teaching units) fell by 6 % to 5,242, the number of longer courses and seminars (over 4 teaching units) rose by 6 per cent to 9,055. The number of in-house events also continued to rise. With 5,450 courses on offer, this represented a 5 % increase compared with 2024. This underlines the growing autonomy of folk high schools in designing their programmes.

More compact courses with fewer teaching sessions

Despite stable event figures, the total number of teaching units fell by just under 5 % to 131,237. Although there were once again more long-format events, these were organised in a more compact manner. This reduced the average duration per event from 9.7 to 9.2 teaching units. This decline suggests a greater streamlining of the content of the educational programmes. Whilst in-house events saw a 2% increase in the number of teaching units, the figures for collaborative projects (-16%) and international guest courses (-23%) fell significantly. This indicates that external event formats are less time-intensive.

Significant increase in participation

With a total of 331,086 participants, the folk high schools recorded a 5% increase compared with the previous year. Interest in the training programmes thus remained high. Short courses in particular achieved high attendance rates, averaging 23.8 participants per session. Changes are also evident in the gender breakdown. The number of male participants rose by 14% to 145,755. As a result, their share of the total increased to 44%. The proportion of women fell from 60% to 56%.

Social, political and educational issues are becoming increasingly important

The breakdown of participation by topic reveals a shift in areas of interest. The ‘Society, Politics, Science’ category remained the strongest, with 41,431 participants, and continued to grow (+4.75%). The ‘Education and Training’ sector saw particularly dynamic growth, with participation more than doubling, as did the ‘Languages’ sector, which recorded an increase of around 44%. Courses on ‘Personality and Communication’ also saw a significant rise, with an increase of 16%.

The figures for events painted a similar picture. ‘Society, Politics, Science’ remained the leading category with 1,827 events. The strongest growth was recorded in ‘Education and Training’ (+55%) and ‘Languages’ (+31%). Further growth was seen in “Life Skills” (+10%) and “Art/Creativity” and “Personality/Communication”, each up by 5%.

More overnight stays by individual guests

The number of overnight stays rose by 6% in 2025 to 113,141. This positive trend must be viewed in a nuanced way: as event-related overnight stays were down overall, this increase is largely attributable to a rise in the number of individual guests. Accommodation, independent of course-related activity, is thus increasingly stabilising the overall result.

More staff took part in training opportunities

A positive trend also continued amongst staff at ARGE BHÖ. The number of employees rose to 520 (+3%). At the same time, participation in ARGE BHÖ’s continuing professional development programmes increased significantly: 181 staff members took part. The participation rate thus rose from 28 to 35 %. A major factor in this was the key theme ‘We are shaping the digital transformation’, which met with keen interest.

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The comprehensive 2025 report is available to download (PDF; German).