The ATLAS hadronic tau trigger plays an important role in many analyses. Among these analyses are searches for H 0 , H ± , W ' , and Z ' in the tau decay channel. In order to achieve the needed sensitivity in these measurement it is important to reduce the QCD background, but at the same time to keep the signal efficiency high. Furthermore it is important to understand the trigger efficiency in real data. This paper summarizes the performance of the tau trigger in data collected by the ATLAS detector in 2011.