Free first Sundays in Berlin museums - Summer 2021

Some good news in the Berlin museum world has emerged: starting this summer, around 60 Berlin museums will be free on the first Sunday of every month for the next two years (announced in this German newspaper article). The initiative was originally planned to begin last year, but due to the pandemic it was pushed back from April 2020 to July 2021. That means that the start of the free-Sunday season is in just over three weeks, on July 4, 2021.

The free-Sunday initiative includes the state-owned museums, which include the heavy-hitters on Museum Island (Bode Museum, Pergamon Museum, Neues Museum, Altes Museum, Alte Nationalgalerie / Old National Gallery). This is probably where most people, especially tourists, will take advantage of the offer. Other state museums like the contemporary art collections in Hamburger Bahnhof are also included.

In addition, many museums outside the state network are taking part. The German Historical Museum is a big one, the Georg Kolbe Museum a small one. In between are lots of others! The Jewish Museum, the Museum of Things, the reconstructed medieval village at Museumsdorf Düppel… You can find a full list here.

A number of important questions remain, however. Foremost in my mind is: Will the new museums in the Humboldt Forum be included? I suspect NOT. There is no mention of the HUF in the information that is currently available.

This is related to a big problem of communication plaguing this happy news. The state museums offer no information on this new initiative! Nor does the otherwise very useful Museumsportal Berlin – which does however have an ongoing list of Berlin museums with year-round free admission. The news coming out about the Humboldt Forum partial opening next month has a long and complicated list of what exhibitions will be free or paid, and for how long, but that is hardly a user-friendly format. Not least because it’s only in German! The HUF website itself only says that “General admission is free. Individual exhibitions…may be subject to a fee.” Which ones exactly? What is included in general admission? Hopefully more than just access to the store… All in all, not very helpful for budget-conscious visitors. Is this lack of communication intended to prevent so many people from partaking that the initiative becomes uneconomical?

An initiative like this should be a great sign of the museums finally recognizing their audiences and wanting to welcome them inside. But the lack of advertising and information about it makes it just another elitist secret. Hopefully this will be corrected in the coming months, as the initiative begins.

UPDATE June 28, 2021: Today seems to have been the official date to advertise this program, as two of the biggest Berlin museums – the Stadtmuseum Berlin and the Deutsches Historisches Museum – both posted the free first Sunday in their news blogs today (here and here). Still nothing in the state museums’ news though. I also spotted a big poster about it at the train station! Rather short notice for the first Sunday on July 4, but here’s hoping that the advertising will ramp up as it continues.