A Beer Festival is an organised event during which a variety of beers (and often other alcoholic drinks) are available for tasting and purchase. Beer festivals are held in a number of countries. A Beer Exhibition is usually synonymous with a Beer Festival but, whilst a beer festival may involve a limited range of beer styles or manufacturers, with an emphasis on entertainment, use of the term "beer exhibition" places emphasis on sampling or tasting a wide range of beers, usually craft-brewed in a variety of different styles by various brewers. There may be a theme; for instance beers from a particular area, or a particular brewing style such as winter ales. Beerex is a commonly used portmanteau word coined in 1977 as an abbreviated form of Beer Exhibition.

The largest beer festival in the world is Oktoberfest in Germany. Several other smaller beer festivals are held all over Germany all over the year. The 2nd largest beer festival in Germany and probably in Europe, is the Cannstatter Volksfest, hosted on the Cannstatter Wasen in the Bad Canstatt district of Stuttgart. It starts one week later and is very similar in character to Oktoberfest. Its popularity increases and more and more people come from around the world to visit the festival every year.

Beer in the Czech Republic (Czech: pivo) has a long and storied history. The first brewery is known to have existed in 1118. The city of Brno had the right to brew beer from the 12th century, and the two cities most associated with Czech beer, Plzeň and České Budějovice (Pilsen and Budweis in German), had breweries in the 13th century.

Hops have been grown in the region for a long time, and were used in beer making and exported from here since the twelfth century. The Czech Republic has the highest beer consumption per capita in the world.

The most famous Czech beer brands (and the most exported ones) are Pilsner Urquell, which was the world's first pilsner and pale lager beer, and Budweiser Budvar (in some countries trademarked as Budějovický Budvar or Czechvar). Other important brands include: Velkopopovický Kozel, Gambrinus, Radegast, Staropramen, Krušovice, Starobrno, Bernard and Svijany.

The history of beer in the modern Czech Republic, historically Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, goes back further than the creation of Pilsner Urquell in 1842. Before then Bohemia in particular was famous for its wheat beers, known in Czech as "světlé pivo" or "light beer" - the same term used in German "weissbier" or in Belgium "witbier".