Berlin Freedom Week

City-wide Festival of Freedom

The Berlin Freedom Week was launched in 2025 as a new city-wide initiative to transform the anniversary of the fall of the Wall (November 9) into a multi-day international forum for freedom, democracy, and human rights. The Governing Mayor of Berlin is the patron, and the festival week is supported by a consortium of visitBerlin, the Axel Springer Freedom Foundation, the World Liberty Congress, the Berlin Commissioner for the Study of the SED Dictatorship, and the Robert Havemann Society.

Programmatic Pillars

Throughout the week, the festival week utilizes numerous Berlin locations with events in a variety of formats:

• Conferences – most notably the Berlin Freedom Conference, which brings together leading voices from politics, business, civil society, culture, and media
• Eyewitness accounts at sites of GDR history (Berlin Wall Memorial, Stasi Headquarters, escape tunnel sites)
• Cultural events – theater, film screenings, readings, concerts
• Exhibitions and guided tours
• Workshops and interactive formats for families, schools, and an international audience
• Freedom Week Mobile – a mobile stage with a Freedom Bell and listening stations, touring the city

Hybrid Format

Many events are offered in a hybrid format (on-site and online). This allows the Berlin Freedom Week to also reach international activists, scientists, and journalists who cannot attend in person.

Venues Across the City

The festival week uses numerous Berlin locations between Mitte, Tiergarten, and Tempelhof-Schöneberg: the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Straße, the Gasometer at the EUREF Campus in Schöneberg, the former Stasi headquarters in Lichtenberg, and many cultural institutions. The idea: to bring freedom as a shared value into Berlin's everyday life, not just celebrate it in one central location.

Background

The Berlin Freedom Week is part of a growing movement in Berlin to give more visibility to November 9 as a date of significant democratic importance (fall of the Wall in 1989). The premiere in 2025, from November 4 to 16, was a complete success; in 2026, the festival week will be more compact (November 7–14) and programmatically sharpened.