From 14 June to 14 September 2025, the 13th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art will present its programme at four exhibition venues: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Sophiensælen, Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, and in a former courthouse on Lehrter Straße in Berlin-Moabit. With the former Lehrter Straße courthouse, the Berlin Biennale is opening a new venue for the presentation of contemporary art in Berlin.
Image above: Former courthouse on Lehrter Straße, 2025, image: Raisa Galofre
The themes of the 13th Berlin Biennale form a specific lineage of contemporary artistic expressions, composed of different practices and art histories from non-neighbouring regions. The focus is on the potential of art in politically challenging times.
All four exhibition venues look back on ambivalent, sometimes violent, sometimes resistant histories that range from the present to the post-reunification period, the division of Germany, National Socialism and the Weimar Republic all the way back to the German Empire. Traces can still be recognised in their spatial structures that bear witness to changing histories of protest and oppression and ultimately tell of the appropriation and utilisation of the architecture by artists.
The exhibition venues are concentrated in Berlin’s city centre and can be reached on foot from the starting point at KW Institute for Contemporary Art to the former Lehrter Straße courthouse. The course of the 13th Berlin Biennale is inspired by the circular movements in which foxes – a leitmotif of the curatorial programme – move through the cityscape.
Through co-curatorial projects, the 13th Berlin Biennale forges links with cultural spaces that are closely connected to the city and emphasises the role of Berlin institutions as a source of inspiration for artistic creation. These sister organisations include the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC), the Filmrauschpalast Moabit in the Kulturfabrik, SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA and the Sophiensæle.
The 13th Berlin Biennale is curated by Zasha Colah. Valentina Viviani is assistant curator.
KW Institute for Contemporary Art
In 1996, the Berlin Biennale was founded in the context of the former Kunst-Werke, today’s KW Institute for Contemporary Art. Since its first edition in 1998, the Berlin Biennale has always shown large parts of its programme at KW. Founded in 1991 in a dilapidated margarine factory in Auguststraße in Berlin-Mitte, KW has since developed into a venue for progressive artistic practices and made a decisive contribution to establishing Berlin as an internationally relevant location for contemporary art after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
> Auguststraße 69, 10117 Berlin
Sophiensaele
Since its foundation in 1996, the Sophiensæle has been one of the most important production centres for the independent performing arts in Berlin and beyond. For the 13th Berlin Biennale, the building that houses today’s Sophiensæle will become a ‘blueprint of Berlin’ that exemplifies the history of the city over the course of the 20th century. It not only tells of the rise of social democratic forces and workers’ associations and their destruction by the National Socialist dictatorship, it also tells of the redevelopment of democratic principles and the appropriation of spaces in the centre of the city by artists.
> Sophienstraße 18, 10178 Berlin-Mitte
Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart
The Hamburger Bahnhof was founded in 1996 as the Museum für Gegenwart der Nationalgalerie in Berlin. The name and structure of the building are still reminiscent of its former function today: the railway station was opened in 1846 as the terminus between Hamburg and Berlin. However, due to the growing volume of traffic at the beginning of the 20th century, the station had to close just 40 years later, before the building was converted into a transport and building museum in 1906.
Following extensive remodelling in the mid-1990s, the Hamburger Bahnhof is reopened as the home of the Nationalgalerie collection. Today, the museum collects contemporary art as the National Gallery of Contemporary Art and organises special exhibitions and presentations of the collection.
> Invalidenstraße 50, 10557 Berlin-Mitte/Tiergarten
Former courthouse on Lehrter Straße
The former Lehrter Straße courthouse has been vacant since 2012 and will be made accessible as a venue for contemporary art in Berlin for the first time as part of the 13th Berlin Biennale. The brick building was completed in 1902 as an extension to the Northern Military Detention Centre in Lehrter Straße and connected to the prison building at Lehrter Straße 61 by a connecting bridge, known among the prisoners as the ‘Bridge of Sighs’ in reference to the Venetian bridge. Most recently, the building was used as a branch of the Tiergarten district court. In preparation for the 13th Berlin Biennale, the structure of the offices will not be changed. They still tell of the conditions of the law.
Lehrter Straße 60, 10557 Berlin-Mitte/Tiergarten
WHEN?
Saturday, 14. June to Sunday, 14. September 2025
