Other Festivities

Carnival - The big carnival parades are mainly found in Cologne, Düsseldorf and Mainz. However, also here people dress up and there are parties and parades.

Berlinale - The Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale for short) in February is one of the A-category film festivals. They are one of the most important events in the film industry worldwide. Up to 400 films are shown in various sections and genres. Every year, around 300,000 tickets are sold to the public.

Cup Final - The football highlight of the year is the DFB Cup final in Berlin's Olympic Stadium. 64 teams (36 clubs from the 1st and 2nd Bundesliga and 28 teams from the lower leagues) compete in five rounds to reach the final. The constellation in which the teams will play each other is drawn every year at the beginning of June. The games are played from August to April, with the cup final taking place in May. The DFB Cup winner qualifies for the UEFA Europa League.

CSD - In June or July, around one million people usually take part in the Christopher Street Day Parade. The CSD commemorates the first publicised uprising by homosexuals and other sexual minorities against police brutality on New York's Christopher Street in Greenwich Village on 27 June 1969 at the Stonewall Inn bar.

CoC - Berlin could hardly show itself from a more colourful side: At the Carnival of Cultures, numerous groups of different nationalities present music, dance, performance, visual arts and acrobatics on moving floats. On normally four days of the festival, Berliners and tourists experience the capital from its best side: cosmopolitan and international, dynamic and full of life, diverse and colourful. Over 500,000 people have been celebrating the city's colourful mix every year at Whitsun since 1995.

November 11 - St. Martin’s Day. A day all young children look forward to. Every parish and/or Kindergarten has a parade in the early evening where the children carrying lanterns walk through the streets singing songs about St. Martin. The tradition for the adults is Martinsgans, roasted goose with red cabbage and dumplings.

Advent - The four weeks before Christmas are the time for the traditional Christmas markets, and baking Plätzchen (the traditional Christmas cookies).

New Year - The party of the year in Berlin: The festival at the Brandenburg Gate is one of the world's largest New Year's Eve open-air events. Live bands, DJs, the famous countdown to the turn of the year and gigantic fireworks attract hundreds of thousands of guests from all over the world to the Brandenburg Gate. Until the early hours of the morning, there was an exuberant party atmosphere on the festive mile between the Brandenburg Gate and the Victory Column.