Communal bathing hits its stride in the US—and New York just made it official

In Europe, communal saunas have become the new pub, or the place to socialize, sweat, and feel even better the next morning.

Now they’ve moved across the Atlantic, and New York just got the biggest version of it yet.

The largest sauna festival ever staged in the United States, Culture of Bathe-ing has transformed Domino Park on the Williamsburg waterfront into a 17-sauna open-air bathing village running through March 1, 2026. Cultural programming curated with Pioneer Works fills the park with live performance, sound, and immersive installations, blurring the line between wellness event and art venue.

New York’s first public sauna festival.

The village grounds are free and open to the public, with ticketed sauna sessions running $60–$125. More than 1,000 complimentary tickets have been released to expand access. Find open spots at cultureofbathe-ing.com.

Bigger plans beyond the festival

If the interest in this festival (and the growing demand for bathhouses in general) is any indication, a pop-up will rarely stay just a pop-up. And Therme Group, the company behind it, already has bigger plans. They’re currently developing permanent destinations in Washington D.C.—a 15-acre complex on the Anacostia River featuring thermal baths, saunas, mineral pools, and immersive art—and Dallas, where a sprawling facility along the Trinity River is planned for the Cedars neighborhood. Both are designed to welcome thousands of visitors daily at accessible price points.

So far, the appetite is there: the number of public sauna sites in the UK jumped from 45 in 2023 to 147 by early 2025, driven by both the health benefits and something harder to bottle—connection without the hangover. The company that built Europe’s communal bathing culture is now betting Americans want the same thing.