What to Eat and Drink at a Copenhagen Christmas Market

The stalls at a Copenhagen Christmas market sell a surprisingly narrow menu, and it barely changes from square to square. That is good news: there are about six things worth ordering, two of which are usually described wrongly in English, and knowing which is which is most of the work.

Gløgg — and what actually makes it Danish

Every Northern European Christmas market sells hot spiced wine. What makes the Danish version specifically gløgg is not the spices. According to denmark.dk, the Danish national culture portal, the defining feature is that gløgg is made with red wine — sometimes with port or rum added — and that raisins and blanched almonds are always added.

They sit in the bottom of the cup. You drink the wine, and at the end you eat the fruit and nuts with a small spoon, which is usually handed over with the cup and which visitors frequently leave untouched because nobody explained. The raisins are often soaked in aquavit or port overnight first, which is why the last mouthful is stronger than the first.

The spicing is cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and citrus zest, and it is simmered rather than boiled — boiling drives off the alcohol and turns the spices bitter. Non-alcoholic gløgg is sold at every market and is not treated as a consolation prize; Danes drink it too.

Cost: expect somewhere around 50–80 DKK a cup at a street market, and more inside Tivoli. Those are travel-media figures rather than published prices, so treat them as a budgeting guide. Nyhavn is reliably the most expensive place in the city to buy one — you are paying for the canal.

Æbleskiver — not doughnuts

This is the other thing English-language guides get wrong, routinely. Æbleskiver are spherical pancakes, cooked in a heavy cast-iron pan with hemispherical dimples called an æbleskivepande, turned with a skewer as they cook so they round off. They are a batter pancake, not fried dough — the doughnut comparison is wrong in method and in texture.

The name literally means “apple slices”, which is a fossil: modern ones rarely contain any apple at all. They come in threes, dusted with icing sugar, with a small pot of jam on the side — strawberry or raspberry, usually.

They are eaten with gløgg, and the pairing is genuinely the point rather than an upsell. Order both, find somewhere to stand, and you have done the single most Danish thing available at a Christmas market. Budget roughly 40–60 DKK at a street stall.

Flæskestegssandwich — the one to order if you are hungry

The savoury item worth crossing a square for. Roast pork with crackling in a soft bun, with pickled red cabbage (rødkål) and cucumber. VisitCopenhagen names roast pork sandwiches among the food you will find at the Tivoli Christmas stalls, and you will find them at the street markets too.

The crackling is the whole argument. A good one is glassy and audible; a bad one is chewy and means the stall let it sit. If you can see the joint being carved, you are in the right queue.

Brændte mandler — the smell of the market

Caramelised roasted almonds, sold hot in paper cones from a copper pan the vendor keeps turning. You will smell them from thirty metres away, which is the entire commercial strategy and it works. Not complicated, not cheap by weight, and genuinely good on a cold quay.

Pølser — the everyday option

Danish sausages from a pølsevogn, the sausage wagon that predates every Christmas market in the city. The standard is a ristet hot dog — a roasted sausage with remoulade, ketchup, mustard, crispy fried onions and pickled cucumber. It is not festive and it is not trying to be. It is what you eat when you have already had two gløgg and dinner is a long way off.

Two things you will hear about but probably won’t buy

Risalamande is the Danish Christmas dessert: cold rice pudding folded with whipped cream and chopped almonds, served with hot cherry sauce. One whole almond is hidden in the bowl, and whoever finds it wins a prize — traditionally a marzipan pig. It is a genuinely lovely tradition, but be clear that it is a dinner-table dessert eaten at home, not a market stall item. If a guide implies you will buy a bowl at Nyhavn, it is padding.

Julefrokost, the Danish Christmas lunch, is the other. Pickled herring, liver pâté, frikadeller, roast pork, snaps and cold beer, eaten slowly over several hours with colleagues or family. It is a restaurant booking, not a market snack, and it starts at around 425 DKK a head against roughly 100 DKK for a decent plateful of market food. If you want the full Danish Christmas table, book a restaurant; if you want to graze between stalls, you will eat well for a quarter of the price.

Julebryg, and the date it arrives

Denmark’s Christmas beer, Tuborg’s julebryg, is released on J-Day — always the first Friday of November, at exactly 20:59. In 2026 that is Friday 6 November. Blue-hatted Santas hand out free samples in bars nationwide and the country treats it with a seriousness that surprises visitors. It lands the same week the first stall market opens and a week before the ticketed garden’s Christmas season begins on 13 November, which makes early November a better-timed arrival than it looks. See our dates guide.

How to pay for any of it

Cards work almost everywhere in Copenhagen — contactless is standard, including on the metro. The catch is MobilePay, the app most Danes actually reach for: it requires a Danish bank account or CPR number, so visitors cannot use it, and a minority of small stallholders accept only MobilePay or cash.

Carry 200–400 DKK in notes and you will never be stuck. The one place where cash is close to essential is Christiania’s indoor market, where many stalls take neither cards nor MobilePay at all.

And note the currency: Denmark is in the EU but kept the krone. Euros are not generally accepted. The krone is pegged to the euro at about 7.46 DKK to €1, so 100 DKK is roughly €13.40 — a rate that barely moves. Against the dollar it floats, at around $15 per 100 DKK at the time of writing.

A sensible order of operations

1. Gløgg first, wherever you land — it is the warm-up in both senses.
2. Æbleskiver alongside it, because that is how they are meant to be eaten.
3. Flæskestegssandwich when you are actually hungry, from the stall where you can see the joint.
4. Brændte mandler on the way out, in a cone, to eat while walking to the next square.

Do that at the free stalls on Nyhavn or Strøget and you will have spent under 200 DKK. Do it inside the ticketed garden and you will spend more, but you will also be somewhere worth standing.

Written 1 August 2026. The gløgg definition is from denmark.dk, the Danish national culture portal; risalamande and julefrokost details and the 425 DKK / 100 DKK figures are from Eating Europe. Stall food and drink prices are travel-media estimates rather than vendor-published figures and are offered as rough guidance only. J-Day’s date follows a fixed rule (first Friday of November, 20:59). Exchange rates from Statistics Denmark and market mid-rates, correct at the time of writing.