Every weekend brings a new batch of kids' theater, hands-on workshops, family festivals and museum tours, and this list updates itself as plans come and go. We pull together the ones made for children, from puppet shows and youth circus to craft afternoons and pumpkin farms, so you can pick a plan for Saturday or Sunday without digging through a dozen event calendars.
Under the motto "Pumpkin goes to Hollywood", more than 100,000 pumpkins dress up giant figures of Mickey Mouse, Harry Potter, Marilyn Monroe and Yoda. Kids hunt through 500 varieties from around the world, from a 9-gram mini to a bottle gourd over a meter long, and pose at a pumpkin pyramid. It all sits on the farm's playground grounds.
A puppet version of the Grimm tale: a donkey, a dog, a cat and a rooster, chased off by their owners, team up and set out to become town musicians in Bremen. Played by Sebastian Günther, it is staged as a musical road movie full of blues.
It suits kids who follow spoken German or already know the story, since the words and songs carry it.
A hands-on craft workshop at MACHmit! Museum für Kinder where kids make a portrait of themselves and their gang. It sits alongside KUNSTKNALL, the museum's exhibition of ceramics, photos, paintings and textiles by women artists from Berlin and beyond. Kids work at the museum's craft tables, so it suits anyone who likes making things with friends or family.
A play festival about living together. Kids puzzle, build, craft, make music and run around, while partner KATE e.V. turns diversity, children's rights and a fair future into games they can join.
This year brings a giant diversity collage, robots sent on a nature mission and a chance to design their own idea for a fairer world. A stage show and a stamp rally carry the day.
The youth company of CABUWAZI Tempelhof, 18 young artists, performs a new circus production about wanting to be yourself and still belong. Solo and group acts on Chinese pole, aerial silks, straps, hoop diving, wire, trapeze and contortion show both the joy of freedom and the pressure of being left out. Directed by Jeele Johannsen.
A St. Martin's Day evening on a working farm in Dahlem. It opens with a short service where the story of St. Martin is told and families sing Martin and lantern songs with the parish brass ensemble.
Then everyone walks their lanterns across the estate, and the evening ends with food and drinks in the farmyard.
Czech illustrator Lucie Lučanská opens with a reading from her picture book, which follows a walk from a village into the forest and back, told one sense at a time.
Then kids draw their own route to the library on a very long roll of paper: what they saw, heard, touched, smelled and tasted, mixing in collage and rubbings. It suits kids who like to draw and take their time.
Old toys lie in an attic until the sound of a piano wakes them up. That's the setup for this story of Mischka the bear and Masha the doll, told with poetry and humor by actress Claudia Maria Franck while pianist Elena Bregman plays music by Dmitri Shostakovich.
It suits young kids curious about classical music and families happy with a short show told in German.
Honigkuchenpferde are Germany's first pop band made for parents and kids to enjoy together. Their songs are about friendship, diversity and courage, and they are made for singing, dancing and joining in. The band also speaks up for children's rights, so the party comes with a message. Expect a cheerful hour of joining in rather than a quiet sit-down show.
A Christmas funfair on Landsberger Allee with 26 rides, from a 45-meter Ferris wheel with enclosed gondolas to the 85-meter Lion Tower drop and the new Crazy Roulette. Twelve are family and kids' rides, including a mini roller coaster, carousels and a fire-fighter fun house. Younger kids will be happiest there and on the Ferris wheel; the big thrill rides suit older kids and teens.
BAUBAU is a play space inside the Gropius Bau, designed by the artist Kerstin Brätsch, where more is allowed than forbidden. Painted walls, abstract structures and heaps of loose parts (cardboard, fabric, rope, kitchenware) become whatever kids decide.
Trained playworkers keep it safe while children build, take things apart, run around or rest. There are no workshops or set tasks, so it suits kids who like open-ended play more than a guided program.
A special exhibition at the Deutsches Technikmuseum, planned with 60 Berlin schoolkids as curators. Their models of a future city sit at the center, surrounded by prototypes and ideas for housing, energy, climate and nature.
Kids can build their own city in kinetic sand, test a sensor trash can, match animals to habitats and step in front of the Invisible Shield. It suits curious primary-school kids best.
A colored shadow-puppet version of Andersen's Thumbelina, performed by puppeteer Thomas Mierau. Thumbelina is born in a flower and travels past a toad, cheerful fish, a dancing butterfly and a rich mole who wants her in his palace, until a swallow carries her to a land of flowers. Gentle and poetic, with songs. Performed in German.
Once the Museum für Naturkunde closes for the day, visitors sneak through its dark exhibition rooms by flashlight. A guide leads the search for animals of the night, and kids explore the exhibitions.
It suits curious kids who follow spoken German and are happy in the dark.
A shorter, kid-sized version of the opera house's backstage tour. Children walk past the giant stage sets waiting in storage, look down into the orchestra pit and stand on the main stage where singers perform their arias.
Along the way they see how stagehands, the props team and other departments get a show ready. It suits curious school-age kids who like to know how things work.
Families look for angels in the Gemäldegalerie's old paintings: some play music, some bring news, some fight, some pray. Then everyone makes their own winged angel figure.
Winterquartier Berlin is a Christmas market at the Napoleon Komplex in Friedrichshain, with market huts, an ice rink and curling. Kids can skate, have a go at curling and catch the Christmas show for children in the cultural program.
It's a come-and-go outing. The market, rink and curling need no German; only the kids' show is spoken.
A drop-in craft workshop inspired by the biting, funny works of artist Maurizio Cattelan. Kids make pop-up cards that bring cheeky little figures to life, then post the caricature to someone who needs to hear it or leave it somewhere in the city for a stranger to find. Suits kids who like making things and have a sharp sense of humor.
Prokofiev's musical fairy tale about Peter, an orphan boy who leaves the garden gate open, and the adventure that follows with his grandfather, a hunter, a cat, a duck, a bird and a wolf. Six musicians play it live while a narrator tells the story in German.
It is the flagship family concert of the Kammerorchester Unter den Linden, and suits kids who can follow spoken German.
One actress tells the Grimm tale of the miller's daughter, three rooms of straw and a little man who wants her first child, switching between every role in front of the kids. Children call out ideas that she works into the story, and at many points they step on stage to play along. It is told in German.
Pappelapapp is a material theater show by Amai-Figurentheater Berlin, played entirely without words. It starts with plain cardboard boxes and, with a little imagination, turns them into paper tigers, fire-breathing dragons, small cardboard people and a cardboard home.
It is made for the youngest theatergoers. There is no dialogue to follow, so it needs no German, and kids can simply watch one ordinary thing become another.
A guided walk through the museum's DINOSAURS! special exhibition, made for families. Kids meet dinosaurs from three geological eras: Tristan Otto, one of the best-preserved T. rex skeletons in the world, the 13-meter Giraffatitan and the Archaeopteryx, the world's most famous fossil.
The guide speaks German, so it suits kids who can follow along in German best.
Kids and grown-ups build a pop-up box together, filled with pictures of the people, pets, toys or places they love most. Everything is made at the table from craft materials, and the finished treasure box goes home with you. It is open drop-in making, so families work at their own pace.
A guided family talk through the special exhibition on Genghis Khan and the Mongols. Kids meet the animals of the steppe nomads, come face to face with brightly painted grave guardian figures and travel back to the Great Khan's palace in Karakorum, the Mongol capital.
The big moment is a real yurt, where kids step inside and decide whether it could be home. It suits curious kids with big questions.
A new retelling of Pinocchio by playwright Philipp Löhle, staged as a musical family play. Woodcarver Geppetto wants a child, and the puppet he carves wakes up and races off to school, distracted by the fox and the cat and a toy land where anything goes. Geppetto has to set out after him. A story about parents as much as kids.
Every weekend brings a new batch of kids' theater, hands-on workshops, family festivals and museum tours, and this list updates itself as plans come and go. We pull together the ones made for children, from puppet shows and youth circus to craft afternoons and pumpkin farms, so you can pick a plan for Saturday or Sunday without digging through a dozen event calendars.
Under the motto "Pumpkin goes to Hollywood", more than 100,000 pumpkins dress up giant figures of Mickey Mouse, Harry Potter, Marilyn Monroe and Yoda. Kids hunt through 500 varieties from around the world, from a 9-gram mini to a bottle gourd over a meter long, and pose at a pumpkin pyramid. It all sits on the farm's playground grounds.
A puppet version of the Grimm tale: a donkey, a dog, a cat and a rooster, chased off by their owners, team up and set out to become town musicians in Bremen. Played by Sebastian Günther, it is staged as a musical road movie full of blues.
It suits kids who follow spoken German or already know the story, since the words and songs carry it.
A hands-on craft workshop at MACHmit! Museum für Kinder where kids make a portrait of themselves and their gang. It sits alongside KUNSTKNALL, the museum's exhibition of ceramics, photos, paintings and textiles by women artists from Berlin and beyond. Kids work at the museum's craft tables, so it suits anyone who likes making things with friends or family.
A play festival about living together. Kids puzzle, build, craft, make music and run around, while partner KATE e.V. turns diversity, children's rights and a fair future into games they can join.
This year brings a giant diversity collage, robots sent on a nature mission and a chance to design their own idea for a fairer world. A stage show and a stamp rally carry the day.
The youth company of CABUWAZI Tempelhof, 18 young artists, performs a new circus production about wanting to be yourself and still belong. Solo and group acts on Chinese pole, aerial silks, straps, hoop diving, wire, trapeze and contortion show both the joy of freedom and the pressure of being left out. Directed by Jeele Johannsen.
A St. Martin's Day evening on a working farm in Dahlem. It opens with a short service where the story of St. Martin is told and families sing Martin and lantern songs with the parish brass ensemble.
Then everyone walks their lanterns across the estate, and the evening ends with food and drinks in the farmyard.
Czech illustrator Lucie Lučanská opens with a reading from her picture book, which follows a walk from a village into the forest and back, told one sense at a time.
Then kids draw their own route to the library on a very long roll of paper: what they saw, heard, touched, smelled and tasted, mixing in collage and rubbings. It suits kids who like to draw and take their time.
Old toys lie in an attic until the sound of a piano wakes them up. That's the setup for this story of Mischka the bear and Masha the doll, told with poetry and humor by actress Claudia Maria Franck while pianist Elena Bregman plays music by Dmitri Shostakovich.
It suits young kids curious about classical music and families happy with a short show told in German.
Honigkuchenpferde are Germany's first pop band made for parents and kids to enjoy together. Their songs are about friendship, diversity and courage, and they are made for singing, dancing and joining in. The band also speaks up for children's rights, so the party comes with a message. Expect a cheerful hour of joining in rather than a quiet sit-down show.
A Christmas funfair on Landsberger Allee with 26 rides, from a 45-meter Ferris wheel with enclosed gondolas to the 85-meter Lion Tower drop and the new Crazy Roulette. Twelve are family and kids' rides, including a mini roller coaster, carousels and a fire-fighter fun house. Younger kids will be happiest there and on the Ferris wheel; the big thrill rides suit older kids and teens.
BAUBAU is a play space inside the Gropius Bau, designed by the artist Kerstin Brätsch, where more is allowed than forbidden. Painted walls, abstract structures and heaps of loose parts (cardboard, fabric, rope, kitchenware) become whatever kids decide.
Trained playworkers keep it safe while children build, take things apart, run around or rest. There are no workshops or set tasks, so it suits kids who like open-ended play more than a guided program.
A special exhibition at the Deutsches Technikmuseum, planned with 60 Berlin schoolkids as curators. Their models of a future city sit at the center, surrounded by prototypes and ideas for housing, energy, climate and nature.
Kids can build their own city in kinetic sand, test a sensor trash can, match animals to habitats and step in front of the Invisible Shield. It suits curious primary-school kids best.
A colored shadow-puppet version of Andersen's Thumbelina, performed by puppeteer Thomas Mierau. Thumbelina is born in a flower and travels past a toad, cheerful fish, a dancing butterfly and a rich mole who wants her in his palace, until a swallow carries her to a land of flowers. Gentle and poetic, with songs. Performed in German.
Once the Museum für Naturkunde closes for the day, visitors sneak through its dark exhibition rooms by flashlight. A guide leads the search for animals of the night, and kids explore the exhibitions.
It suits curious kids who follow spoken German and are happy in the dark.
A shorter, kid-sized version of the opera house's backstage tour. Children walk past the giant stage sets waiting in storage, look down into the orchestra pit and stand on the main stage where singers perform their arias.
Along the way they see how stagehands, the props team and other departments get a show ready. It suits curious school-age kids who like to know how things work.
Families look for angels in the Gemäldegalerie's old paintings: some play music, some bring news, some fight, some pray. Then everyone makes their own winged angel figure.
Winterquartier Berlin is a Christmas market at the Napoleon Komplex in Friedrichshain, with market huts, an ice rink and curling. Kids can skate, have a go at curling and catch the Christmas show for children in the cultural program.
It's a come-and-go outing. The market, rink and curling need no German; only the kids' show is spoken.
A drop-in craft workshop inspired by the biting, funny works of artist Maurizio Cattelan. Kids make pop-up cards that bring cheeky little figures to life, then post the caricature to someone who needs to hear it or leave it somewhere in the city for a stranger to find. Suits kids who like making things and have a sharp sense of humor.
Prokofiev's musical fairy tale about Peter, an orphan boy who leaves the garden gate open, and the adventure that follows with his grandfather, a hunter, a cat, a duck, a bird and a wolf. Six musicians play it live while a narrator tells the story in German.
It is the flagship family concert of the Kammerorchester Unter den Linden, and suits kids who can follow spoken German.
One actress tells the Grimm tale of the miller's daughter, three rooms of straw and a little man who wants her first child, switching between every role in front of the kids. Children call out ideas that she works into the story, and at many points they step on stage to play along. It is told in German.
Pappelapapp is a material theater show by Amai-Figurentheater Berlin, played entirely without words. It starts with plain cardboard boxes and, with a little imagination, turns them into paper tigers, fire-breathing dragons, small cardboard people and a cardboard home.
It is made for the youngest theatergoers. There is no dialogue to follow, so it needs no German, and kids can simply watch one ordinary thing become another.
A guided walk through the museum's DINOSAURS! special exhibition, made for families. Kids meet dinosaurs from three geological eras: Tristan Otto, one of the best-preserved T. rex skeletons in the world, the 13-meter Giraffatitan and the Archaeopteryx, the world's most famous fossil.
The guide speaks German, so it suits kids who can follow along in German best.
Kids and grown-ups build a pop-up box together, filled with pictures of the people, pets, toys or places they love most. Everything is made at the table from craft materials, and the finished treasure box goes home with you. It is open drop-in making, so families work at their own pace.
A guided family talk through the special exhibition on Genghis Khan and the Mongols. Kids meet the animals of the steppe nomads, come face to face with brightly painted grave guardian figures and travel back to the Great Khan's palace in Karakorum, the Mongol capital.
The big moment is a real yurt, where kids step inside and decide whether it could be home. It suits curious kids with big questions.
A new retelling of Pinocchio by playwright Philipp Löhle, staged as a musical family play. Woodcarver Geppetto wants a child, and the puppet he carves wakes up and races off to school, distracted by the fox and the cat and a toy land where anything goes. Geppetto has to set out after him. A story about parents as much as kids.
