Berlin Wall News

On 27 October 1961, about ten American and ten Soviet tanks stood roughly 100 metres apart at Checkpoint Charlie, guns loaded, for some seventeen hours. It was the only direct armoured confrontation between American and Soviet forces in the entire Cold War, and it happened at a crossing in the middle of Berlin.

On 9 November 2026, Berlin marks 37 years since the night the Wall opened. At 18:53 on 9 November 1989, Günter Schabowski read out new travel regulations at a press conference and, asked when they would take effect, answered “immediately, without delay.” Within hours, thousands of East Berliners streamed to the border crossings. The first to open was Bornholmer Strasse, where overwhelmed guards lifted the barrier just before midnight. This year, the anniversary falls inside the second Berlin Freedom Week (7-14 November 2026), a citywide festival of events on freedom, democracy and human rights. More than a hundred talks, tours, films, concerts and exhibitions fill the week, organised by a consortium including visitBerlin, the Robert Havemann Society and the Axel Springer Freedom Foundation, with Berlin’s Governing Mayor as patron. Not every event is about the Wall. We have picked out the ones that connect to the places and stories on our map.

The photographer Thomas Meyer spent eight years on Berlin’s inner-city Wall strip. His pictures open at the Berlin Wall Memorial on 1 October.

After the 2009 repainting only one 1990 original was left at the East Side Gallery. It is now being conserved, and a painting exiled to the park in 1997 is back.

Berlin chose a design for Checkpoint Charlie on 9 September 2026: an open square, a roof, a viewing platform, and the guard house stays. What it does, and when.

A district exhibition in Reinickendorf hangs the Stasi’s photographs of the border beside residents’ own snapshots of it. Free, and on until 3 October.

The Berlin Wall Foundation’s touring exhibition makes fourteen little-known photographs of Bernauer Strasse audible, with audio descriptions, Braille and a free online edition anyone can open.

A special exhibition at the Berlin Wall Memorial pairs Marie Jeschke’s art with historical objects to tell the story of escapes across the Baltic Sea. It runs until 20 September 2026.