Berlin takes the Olympic plunge with four partners

Berlin, together with Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, wants to bring the Olympic Games and Paralympics to Germany for the first time since 1972. The bid will be presented next Tuesday (2 p.m.) in Berlin's Olympic Stadium. According to the invitation to the press conference, the bid has been submitted to the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) to be selected as a national candidate.

Berlin would be the main venue for the Games with individual venues in the other regions. It has not yet been decided which year the bid with the title "Berlin+" would end up being for.

The German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) wants to make this dependent on the decisions of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The options are 2036, 2040 and 2044. "Germany must be ready if Europe is asked," said Michael Mronz, member of the IOC and the DOSB Executive Board, a few weeks ago.

Other cities also interested

The heads of the federal states Kai Wegner (CDU/Berlin), Dietmar Woidke (SPD/Brandenburg), Manuela Schwesig (SPD/Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) and Daniel Günther (CDU/Schleswig-Holstein) as well as Berlin's sports senator Iris Spranger (SPD) will be present at the presentation. The Interior Minister responsible for sport, Armin Schuster (CDU), comes from Saxony.

Leipzig's mayor Burkhard Jung had previously announced the date in the "Leipziger Volkszeitung" newspaper. North Rhine-Westphalia also wants to present its plans for games on the Rhine and Ruhr next Wednesday. Hamburg and Munich have also expressed their interest.

Application to be ready in fall 2026

The applicants must first submit refined concepts to the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) by the end of May as part of a so-called three-stage model. These will be checked for compliance with the minimum requirements and the corresponding plausibility by the end of September 2025. All concepts that pass this review will be presented at the General Assembly at the end of this year. However, no decisions will be made at that time.

The final decision on a German bid concept should be made by fall 2026 at the latest. The whole thing will then have to be approved by the DOSB members. The last Olympic Games in Germany took place in Munich in 1972.

Berlin's governing mayor Wegner (CDU) had said about a bid for 2036, exactly 100 years after the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin, which were politically instrumentalized by the Nazis: "We could show what change can do, how a country can develop from a dictatorship to a free democracy." Other voices are critical of a bid for this year precisely because of the connection to 1936. There would also be a certain symbolism in 2040, 50 years after reunification.

How did the last bids go?

The last German bids for the Summer Games tell a story of failure:

• Berlin 2000: high hopes were associated with the bid for a reunified Germany. But after a botched campaign and with only lukewarm support from politicians, Berlin failed resoundingly in the second round of voting.
• Leipzig 2012: Leipzig still came out on top in the German pre-selection, but the IOC did not even allow the German bid into the final round. London gets the Games.
• Hamburg 2024: A public survey stops the Olympic plans of politics and sport. 51.6 percent reject a Hamburg bid in the referendum. Paris, which has already had several unsuccessful attempts, is selected by the IOC.
• Rhine-Ruhr 2032: German sports leaders and the NRW initiative are still wrestling over the key points of a bid when the IOC officially declares Brisbane the favorite. A short time later, the Australian metropolis was finally awarded the bid in July 2021.

Resistance in the House of Representatives

The Senate's plans were criticized by the opposition on Friday. "It cannot be explained with common sense that 55 sports halls in Berlin are currently closed due to structural defects and that the Senate would rather invest its millions in an Olympic bid," said Klara Schedlich, sports policy spokesperson for the Green parliamentary group, in the Tagesspiegel newspaper. Tobias Schulze, chairman of the left-wing parliamentary group, accused the government of ignoring the House of Representatives.