Furvester

Furvester is an international furry convention held around New Year's Eve in the region of Stuttgart in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The name is a portmanteau word of "furry" and the German word for New Year's Eve (Silvester).

History
The idea for the convention was founded in 2016 at Eurofurence 22 by DASPRiD and Flint.

Furvester 2017
The first edition of Furvester took place from December 30, 2017 to January 1 2018 at the youth hostel Stuttgart Neckarpark, located in the district of Bad Cannstatt in Stuttgart. It was hosting 126 attendees and ran under the unofficial theme "New Year's Eve".

It already featured a few usual events like fursuit games, but also specials like the organized fireworks. A true highlight was the convention-organized bar, which was completely free for all attendees.

Furvester 2018
In 2018 Furvester left the city of Stuttgart and moved about fifty kilometers to the south. The Fortuna hotel in Reutlingen-Tübingen was chosen to further host the convention. This year the attendee almost doubled and hit 212 in the end. The theme of this edition was "Snowy Paradise".

In addition to the usual entertainment, the "Dinner Fur One" play was performed and a gala dinner was organized in collaboration with the hotel. However, an unsufficient stock of food at the buffet caused a scandal, which the organizers and the hotel were able to quickly resolve by ordering a large amount of family pizzas to feed all the furries.

This was also the first year Furvester was running a charity for the animal shelter "Maria Höffner Landau", where it managed to collect a total of 2,600 Euro.

Furvester 2019
Furvester returned to the Fortuna Hotel in Reutlingen for a second time with a final attendee count of 341. That year it was running under the theme "Heroes and Mythical Creatures".

It expanded on the previous programming, and delivered special events like a completely original fursuit theater play, an introduction play in the opening ceremony and a special concert by Cosmik and Rhubarb the Bear. It also featured the first official charity, this time supporting the "Alternative Wolf and Bear Park Black Forest" with a grand total of € 5,000.00, almost doubling the amount from the last year.

Furvester 2020
The convention was again scheduled to be held at the Fortuna Hotel from December 30 to January 3, with the theme being "Mission to Mars". The convention was ultimately cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with a replacement convention due to be announced "as soon as things have returned to normal".

Board of Directors
The current Board of Directors consists of the following people:


 * DASPRiD — Chairman
 * Flint — Vice-Chairman
 * Chudlight — Head of Security
 * Peachy — Head of Media, Charity, HR
 * LilTayeGrr — Head of Fursuit Lounge
 * StarFoxCoon — Head of Stage Tech
 * Sakurenai — Head of ConOps