Wooden huts are glittering with golden fairylights as groups of friends gather in woolly hats, warming their hands on mugs of mulled wine.

Signs written in German are dotted about – Glühwein (mulled wine), Bratwurst (grilled sausage), Kinderpunsch (non-alcoholic punch).

This isn’t Germany – it’s Birmingham’s Frankfurt Christmas Market. Organisers say it’s “the largest authentic German Christmas market” outside the country and Austria.

Christmas markets are thought to have originated in Germany in the 14th Century, and its markets have long been admired since. But how close are the ones in the UK to that supposed traditional, real thing?

BBC News visited some to find out – and perhaps provide some inspiration for your next festive visit.

On a cold Thursday afternoon in Birmingham, we have just met Nina Adler and Till Rampe, 27-year-old German students studying for PhDs in the UK’s “second city”.

As we walk around the Christmas market, which snakes through streets close to Birmingham New Street railway station, they’re reminded of home.

They point to the wooden huts, food and drink, and the handicrafts as positive signs this is close to the traditional ideal. The chocolate-coated marshmallows at one stall impress Till, who is from a town near Frankfurt. “I could swear they are from my hometown,” he says.

But other aspects of Birmingham’s market are further removed from the German way – like the beer. “People are just connecting Germany with beer,” Nina, from Berlin, says. “In Germany usually you drink mulled wine. This is very typical.”

And as for the pop tunes blaring out of the speakers in Birmingham – like The Power of Love – you probably wouldn’t hear that at markets in Germany – rather it would be Christmas music and carols, she says.

Also visiting the market with us is Katharina Karcher, an academic at the University of Birmingham. Her verdict? It’s “super authentic”.

Having been set up in 1997 and running annually since 2001, the Birmingham market is organised by Kurt Stroscher, who is also director of Frankfurt’s Christmas market.

He uses “only wooden stalls and atmospheric white lights that don’t blink”, with the stalls built in Germany and food and drink imported from there.

It’s mostly a thumbs-up for Birmingham’s Christmas market when it comes to authenticity, then – but how does it compare to one in Germany?

While many Christmas markets in the UK have been running for a couple of weeks now, in Germany they have only just opened, as is tradition, on 24 November.

Most German towns and cities have a Christmas market, with Dresden, Nuremberg and Cologne among the most famous.

These markets hold “huge symbolic meaning” to Germans, says Dr Karcher, who’s from near Frankfurt. Along with a religious undertone, “they are what get people through the dark time”, she explains.

Some 800 miles away from Birmingham, the city of Berlin is home to more than 70 different, small Christmas markets. In Charlottenburg Palace in the west of the German capital, the market is bustling and filled with people of all ages when we visit on a Tuesday night.

The smell of roasted almonds, caramelised apples, chocolate-coated fruit, mulled wine and grilled sausages fills the air, as Christmas carols are performed live on a stage and children enjoy a small, sparkling Ferris wheel.

The 17th Century Baroque Charlottenburg Palace is illuminated in different colours, with falling snowflakes projected onto its facade and wooden stalls in front.

So what exactly makes a traditional German Christmas market?

Typically, they may have (as this one in Berlin does):

• Large tents housing entire restaurants or bars
• Stalls selling a range of handmade gifts, including woolly hats, gloves, scarves, jewellery, handmade candles, wooden nutcrackers and other arts and crafts
• Traditional German foods like Lebkuchen, the German version of gingerbread often seen in cookie form, many kinds of sausages including Bratwurst, cheeses, hearty dishes like Langos (a deep-fried Hungarian flatbread with different savoury or sweet toppings) or goulash, and Spätzle
• Mulled wine for those who drink alcohol, not so much beer
• A location in a square in the Altstadt, the old part of a town. And in cities – lots of different markets in different areas

To Magrita, 66, who is enjoying a mulled wine with her husband Dietmar, 69, German Christmas markets are characterised by their unique atmosphere: “The colourful lights and Christmas decorations make it so special.”

Dietmar explains how “Christmas markets are not the same as other markets labelled as ‘Winter Market’ or ‘Winter Wonderland,’ because of the fairytale-like feeling you only get at an authentic Christmas market”.

“I visited a Christmas market in Milan a few years ago, and it wasn’t the same, it was just a collection of different stores,” he adds.

At another table, Anna and Karolina, both 19, are catching up over some chocolate-covered strawberries. “Apart from the mulled wine and the food, the colourful lighting and the festive and cosy vibe are what make Christmas markets unique,” says Anna.

But in Karolina’s view, “the star… is definitely the food and drink. [It’s] what really makes a Christmas market authentic”.

Back in the UK, while Birmingham can boast about its markets authenticity, what of other locations in the UK?

Christmas markets have become a staple of many UK cities – Manchester, Leeds, Bath, Edinburgh and Newcastle among them. Smaller markets, typically in historic settings, are also proving popular on TikTok, sometimes incredibly so. Since 2023, Lincoln Christmas market has been closed because of overcrowding concerns.

When the BBC visited the market in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, earlier this week, we saw an open mic night, including a rendition of Neil Young’s Heart of Gold, and stalls selling the likes of pasta, Greek gyros and Yorkshire pudding wraps. There were also German foods and signs, though far fewer than Birmingham.

Visitors didn’t seem to mind though.

“I quite like that,” says Jamie Aycliffe, who was visiting the market with his wife and baby. “We’re doing our British version of the Bratwurst.”

But having been to Christmas markets across Europe himself, he felt the ones in the UK were “not as good” and “a bit more commercial”.

Others were visiting the Kingston Christmas market for the aesthetic.

“It’s fun,” drama student Amelia Shannon, 22, says. “I don’t have to go to Germany for it.”

Overall, though, this was not as true to the traditional thing as in Birmingham, and also much smaller in size. Some people told us they’d prefer it if UK-based Christmas markets like in Kingston’s sold more small gifts from independent businesses, like German markets do.

Anne-Teresa Markovic, an academic originally from Nuremberg, says she was struck by the range of food and drink offerings being “more prominent” there than in Germany while visiting Christmas markets in Manchester and Leeds. She recalls seeing “festive patatas bravas” on the menu, which needless to say, aren’t particularly German.

Christmas markets in Germany are changing, though. There’s often now more international food – and Dr Karcher says depictions of the patron Saint Nikolaus are increasingly becoming more about Santa Claus.

The warm glow exuded by Germany’s Christmas markets was dimmed during deadly car attacks on a market in Berlin in 2016 and in the city of Magdeburg last year.

Security has been stepped up at markets since. Some markets have been cancelled because the costs of security are too high for organisers.

The Berlin Christmas market we visit is surrounded by a fence with large, concrete blocks placed along it, while a police car patrols one of the entrances.

Despite the heightened security measures, the atmosphere seems relaxed.

Anna and Karolina say they have never been to a Christmas market in the UK before, but would both welcome more Christmas markets outside of Germany.

“Christmas markets are not defined by their location,” explains Anna, “but by the festive atmosphere and the time of the year when they take place.”

Eight other 2025 Christmas markets in the UK you might like:

• Wells, Somerset: Taking place in the cathedral city for for one day, Saturday 6 December, featuring more than 100 stalls
• Canterbury, Kent: With 120 stalls, including in the grounds of its 11th-century cathedral, running until Christmas Eve
• Haddon Hall, Derbyshire: Pre-booked tickets with parking at the country house have sold out, but non-parking tickets are available on the door for £9.50
• Chester, Cheshire: Stalls line Tudor and mock-Tudor streets, running until Monday 22 December, including a stall operated by Chester Zoo
• Hillsborough, County Down, Northern Ireland: Taking place on Friday 12 and Saturday 13 December, set against the 17th century Hillsborough Fort
• Aberdeen Christmas Village, Scotland: Featuring an ice rink and lots of stalls, it’s running until 31 December
• Portmeirion, North Wales: A scenic location in Gwynedd, running from Friday 5 to Sunday 7 December with a £10 entry fee
• Winchester, Hampshire: The Christmas market surrounds the cathedral, open until Monday 22 December