Advance sales for the Long Night of Museums opened today. This is what visitors will get: 75 museums, 750 events, one single ticket. This year’s edition, taking place on August 29th, 2026, follows the trail of crime under the motto “Crime in Berlin.”
Anyone drawn to the history of criminal schemes and detective-style sleuthing will feel right at home at this year’s Long Night of Museums. The program tackles crime from every angle, with plenty on offer for art lovers, families, and night owls alike. At the Bode-Museum, a conversation about art thieves and forgers with René Allonge, chief detective inspector at the Berlin State Criminal Police Office, and Stefan Simon, director of the Rathgen Research Laboratory, leads to the notorious Beltracchi case. At the Museum of Medical History at the Charité, forensic scientists offer fascinating insights into their work, and the Stasi Museum reveals how the Stasi recruited West Berlin criminals as informants.
The Natural History Museum examines prehistoric crime scenes through fossil evidence, while criminologist Gina Wollinger speaks at the Futurium about crime in the age of artificial intelligence. At the Nikolaikirche, the organ itself becomes a narrator of crime, as organist Jack Day performs pieces from film and cultural history — from Alfred Hitchcock to Mack the Knife to the German TV crime series Tatort. Even the Old Masters conceal astonishing depths: Guided tours at the Gemäldegalerie tell of murder and manslaughter, affairs, and miscarriages of justice. The MACHmit! Children’s Museum invites young visitors to explore different art techniques with its forgery workshop, and the House of World Cultures runs a detective rally aimed at families, taking a closer look at the Tiergarten park and its animal residents.
For visitors who don’t speak German, quite a few program items are designed specifically with them in mind, or don’t need spoken language at all:
- Several guided tours run entirely in English — including tours of the Gemäldegalerie’s paintings, the Neue Nationalgalerie, Schloss Charlottenburg’s new wing, the Stasi Museum/Hohenschönhausen memorial, the German Historical Museum’s collection, and the Ethnological Museum, among others.
- Jack Day’s organ program at the Nikolaikirche and the film screenings (silent film “Nosferatu,” for instance) work independently of language.
- Visual and hands-on formats — the mugshot selfie station, the composite-sketch (“Wanted poster”) workshop, escape-style missions, and quiz nights with English-friendly formats — need little to no German.
- The Anne Frank Center offers an English-language film and English guided tours of its exhibition.
Also, the Long Night of Museums offers a last chance to catch a few closing exhibitions, including artist Marc Brandenburg’s retrospective at the Berlinische Galerie, whose drawings dissect moments of urban life amid subculture, excess, and consumption. At the Gropius Bau, Marina Abramović’s exhibition explores the spiritual power of the erotic, while Gabriele Stötzer’s work spotlights feminist self-assertion in the East German underground. On the rooftop, marking the Berliner Festspiele’s 75th anniversary, the artist collective Künstlerinnengruppe Erfurt will present the performance “Exterra in the Air XX.”
Tickets are available directly via the “Long Night of Museums” ticket shop. Until August 16th, tickets cost 15 Euro (12 Euro reduced), from August 17th, 23 Euro (17 Euro reduced). Children up to age 12 get in free but need a free children’s ticket. The ticket covers admission to all participating museums as well as the Long Night’s shuttle service.
