Mushroom Season in the Slavkov Forest — autumn woods on the spa town's doorstep

The morning the forest smells different

There is one particular morning at the end of summer when the air above Mariánské Lázně changes. After heavy rain, a scent drifts down from the woods above the town that anyone recognises at once: wet moss, decaying leaves and something sweetly fungal beneath it. That is the signal that the loveliest part of the spa year has begun. Mushroom picking in the Slavkov Forest is one of the few outings you can complete here before breakfast and still be back in town with a full basket.

This year the signal is unusually strong. At the end of August 2026 the Karlovy Vary Region topped the national Czech mushroom forecast with the highest score of all fourteen regions — the forest around Mariánské Lázně was, quite literally, in the best condition in the country. The main season in the Czech Republic traditionally falls in August and September, though some species carry on well into October.

The Slavkov Forest starts behind the last spa villa

Mariánské Lázně has an advantage few spa towns can match: you do not have to travel anywhere. The town sits at around 630 metres and is enclosed on three sides by the Slavkov Forest Protected Landscape Area (Slavkovský les, known historically in German as the Kaiserwald). It was designated in 1974 and covers 610 square kilometres — an unbroken ridge of spruce and beech woodland, peat bogs and spring-fed valleys running from Mariánské Lázně all the way to Karlovy Vary.

That geography is what makes autumn here so rewarding. You set off from the colonnade on a waymarked path and twenty minutes later you are in forest where you will not meet another soul. There is no excursion to plan — a basket and a knife will do.

When to go: mushrooms follow the rain, not the calendar

Experienced foragers will tell you the date matters far less than the weather of the previous week. What counts is warm, soaking rain that wets the ground to depth — as a rule of thumb, twenty to forty millimetres over two or three days — followed by temperatures above twelve degrees. The first fruiting bodies usually appear five to ten days later.

That is the charm of autumn in the foothills. The cool nights and misty mornings that arrive here in September and October keep the ground damp far longer than in the lowlands. Where the season ends elsewhere with the first frosts, the shaded spruce stands of the Slavkov Forest keep producing for weeks afterwards.

In late summer and the first weeks of September you are most likely to meet the penny bun and the summer cep, the parasol mushroom, and slippery jacks. As autumn deepens, honey fungus and other cold-loving species join them.

Where to go — and where not to

The best-known destination lies nine kilometres north of town: the hamlet of Kladská at 815 metres, with the hunting lodge of Prince Schönburg-Waldenburg and its pond. A bus runs up from Mariánské Lázně, so you will not need a car.

Around the Kladská pond and along the edge of the Kladská Peat Bogs National Nature Reserve runs the Kladská nature trail — a circuit of roughly 2.3 kilometres, largely on wooden boardwalks. It opened as early as September 1977, making it one of the oldest in the country, and its fourteen stops carry fifteen trilingual information boards (Czech, English, German). Around fifty thousand people walk it each year. It is undemanding and manageable for guests with limited mobility — and it is the best possible introduction to this landscape.

Here, though, comes an important caveat. In national nature reserves — which includes the Kladská Peat Bogs and Pluhův bor — Czech nature protection law prohibits leaving the marked paths. There is no foraging there, and there should not be. A raised bog is an exceptionally fragile ecosystem, and the boardwalk is not laid for your comfort but so that people stay on it. Walk Kladská as a walk; go picking in the ordinary working forests all around, of which there are incomparably more.

Closer to town a simple rule applies: the further from the waymarked trail and from the springs, the greater the quiet. You will find suitable directions in our overview of hiking and nature trails around Mariánské Lázně and on the page devoted to the surrounding countryside.

What Czech law allows

For visitors, the Czech rules are surprisingly generous. The Forest Act (No. 289/1995 Coll.) gives everyone, in § 19, the right to enter the forest at their own risk and to gather forest produce there for their own needs — free of charge and without a permit. No collecting licence, no registration.

Certain obligations come with that, and they are worth knowing:

• Gathering is for personal use only. The moment you pick for sale, you are in breach of the law.
• You must not damage the forest or disturb the forest environment — put the moss back, fill in the hollows.
• Protected fungus species must not be collected.
• Stay out of areas where timber is being felled or extracted, and out of stands that are fenced or marked with a no-entry sign.
• Instructions from the forest owner or their staff must be followed.

Visitors from Germany will notice the difference at once: at home the penny bun and the chanterelle are specially protected species, and although small quantities may be gathered for personal use, the authorities generally read "small quantity" as one kilogram per person per day. Czech forests set no such numerical limit — which makes your own restraint all the more important.

Safety: one rule with no exceptions

Pick only what you know for certain. Not "almost certainly", not "it looks like". For certain.

A few habits worth adopting:

• A basket, not a plastic bag. Sealed in plastic, mushrooms sweat and spoil within the hour, however fine they looked.
• Keep the unknown separate. Carry doubtful finds apart from the rest.
• Have them identified. The best opportunity in Mariánské Lázně is the annual mushroom exhibition (Výstava hub) staged by the Slavkov Forest Mycological Club in the building of the Protected Landscape Area administration at Hlavní 504. Alongside hundreds of freshly gathered regional species there are tastings of mushroom dishes, specimens under a binocular microscope, a quiz for children — and, above all, the chance to have what you carry in identified by an expert. The date shifts from year to year between late September and early October, so check the town's current events calendar.
• If you suspect poisoning, call at once. The Toxicological Information Centre in Prague operates round the clock on +420 224 919 293 (back-up line +420 224 915 402). It advises in non-urgent cases too — for instance when a child has eaten an unknown mushroom and has no symptoms yet. Keep the remains, or at least a photograph; it makes identification far easier.

The autumn calendar the mushrooms fit into

The foraging season coincides with the loveliest part of the town's cultural year:

• Mariánský podzim — the international folklore festival runs from 17 to 20 September 2026, its twenty-first edition. It opens on 17 September at the Chopin House, with the gala concert "The Best of Folklore" on 18 September at the Municipal Theatre. Alongside Czech ensembles, guests from Italy, Poland and Slovakia perform.
• The Spa Apple Festival — October's celebration of the harvest in the middle of the spa quarter, with the scent of strudel above the colonnade.
• The Singing Fountain plays until 31 October, when it is ceremonially closed for the winter at 8 p.m.

If you would like to plan the season more broadly, the overview is in our article on the golden season for a spa stay.

How the forest and the cure fit together

Mushrooms in the morning and a treatment in the afternoon make a surprisingly good pairing. Mariánské Lázně has held the status of a climatic spa since 2023, and the submontane climate here is described as tonic — gently invigorating. Slow walking on soft forest ground, eyes lowered, no phone: it is essentially a terrain cure with a more interesting outcome. If that side of it appeals more than the contents of the basket, read about forest bathing in the Slavkov Forest.

The afternoon then brings what people come to Mariánské Lázně for: a peat wrap for tired legs, a carbon dioxide bath, a massage. The Ensana houses keep their treatment facilities in-house, so only minutes pass between returning from the forest and lying down. The cure also includes the drinking cure from the local springs — with the one essential condition that which spring, and in what quantity, is always determined individually by the spa physician. Mineral water from the Cross Spring or the Rudolph Spring is a remedy, not a table drink.

By evening only one question remains: what to do with the haul. Restaurants may not cook it for you — food hygiene rules do not allow it — but mushroom dishes appear on autumn menus of their own accord. For ideas, see our guide to Czech spa cuisine.

Before you set off: a short list

• Boots. Forest ground is wet on September mornings even in dry spells. Waterproof footwear with a grip sole, not city shoes.
• Layers. At 800 metres on a misty morning it is five degrees colder than on the colonnade.
• Ticks are still about in autumn. The season ends only with the first frosts; long trousers and an evening check are worth it.
• Phone charged, but pocketed. Signal wavers deeper in the forest — download the map for offline use.
• Time. Set off early. Not only because of the competition: the morning light in an autumn beech wood is reason enough.

The Slavkov Forest is not going anywhere, and it looks a little different every year. But that scent after the rain has not changed in two hundred years — and it is by far the cheapest treatment you will find here.

1

2

3

What concerns you?

MusculoskeletalRespiratoryDigestive & MetabolicCardiovascularKidney & UrinaryStress & BurnoutSkin ConditionsRehabilitation

Next