Getting around

Berlin has an excellent public transport structure. Every single U-Bahn and S-Bahn train will be running right through the night from Saturday to Sunday.

If you’re coming from any of the eastern districts of Friedrichshain, Lichtenberg, Friedrichsfelde or Biesdorf, you can travel on the U5 to the Museum Island and then, depending on which exit you take, you’ll be right outside the Humboldt Forum or the Deutsches Historisches Museum. There are a lot of museums along the U5 line, including the Computer Game Museum and the Stasi Headquarters, and many more.

You can get to a whole lot of museums on the section of the U2 between Zoological Garden Station and Stadtmitte as well; from C/O Berlin to Urban Nation, the Deutsches Technikmuseum (German Museum of Technology) and the German Spy Museum and the Museum of Communication.

And the quickest way to get from Checkpoint Charlie to the Natural History Museum is to take the U6.

Your best bet for getting around in the north-eastern districts is to take the tram. Families can get an early start at 5 pm to drop in for example at the Labyrinth Children’s Museum on Osloer Strasse. Then they can take the M13 tram along Bornholmer Strasse going east and change to the M2 tram on Prenzlauer Allee. From there it’s just four stops to the MACHmit! (JOINin!) children’s museum and six stops to the Pankow Museum.

If you don’t have a € 49 Deutschland-Ticket, your best bet is to buy a 24 hour ticket. All participating museums are in the AB fare zone. The ticket costs € 9.50 and is valid for a whole day after being stamped, and covers one adult and up to three children aged 6 to 14. Children under 6 don’t need a ticket to travel on public transport in Berlin.

You can get around even better with the Jelbi app and go that final stretch from the U-Bahn or S-Bahn station to your museum of choice on an e-bike or e-scooter. BVG subsidiary Jelbi now has vehicles from 12 different providers in the Berlin urban area, and many Jelbi stations are located close to museums.

Jelbi has set up six pop-up stations specially for the Long Night of Museums, where you can also claim your € 10 voucher for the app. They are at the Lustgarten in front of the Berliner Dom cathedral, at the crossroads between Unter den Linden and Glinkastrasse, at Pariser Platz, outside the Futurium, outside the Natural History Museum and in front of Hamburger Bahnhof.

If you’ve never tried riding an electric scooter before and aren’t quite sure about it, then why not hire one at the Lustgarten or the Brandenburg Gate and take it for a slow trial run along Unter den Linden? This famous boulevard is home to eight Long Night locations, from the Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts) founded in 1700 to the Cold War Museum founded in 2022.

If you show your Long Night Ticket at any of the Jelbi pop-ups, you can claim a € 10 voucher that you can use on the Jelbi app for rides with e-bikes, scooters, e-mopeds and taxis. The voucher is valid for two weeks. If you want to take advantage of this and don’t have the app yet, then you should download it and get registered before the Long Night.

→ to the City Map with the Jelbi stations and the Jelbi pop-ups

Maybe you’d prefer to be carried in comfort to the museum doors.

In that case, simply get into one of our shuttle buses and explore, for instance, the Charlottenburg museum district. The Charlottenburg Route starts at Zoological Garden station and ends outside Charlottenburg Palace, where there are four museums close by, all packed with goodies for art fans, from Greek statues to art nouveau furniture and arts and crafts to sculptures and drawings by Käthe Kollwitz.

If what grabs your interest is the history of technology, then you can take the Tempelhof – Steglitz Route – on lovingly restored vintage buses - from the Technikmuseum (German Museum of Technology) south to the Energy Museum on the Teltow Canal.

The Lichtenberg – Hohenschönhausen Route links the two central establishments of the former Ministry of State Security of the GDR: the Stasi Headquarters from which Erich Mielke controlled the huge surveillance apparatus, and the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial, where many well-known opposition figures were interrogated.

A short shuttle ride takes night-owls from the Treptower Park S-Bahn station to the Archenhold Observatory,which was built on the south-eastern edge of Treptower Park in 1896.

Charlottenburg Route: 6 pm to 2 am, every 20 minutes
Tempelhof – Steglitz Route: 6 pm to midnight, every 30 minutes
Lichtenberg–Hohenschönhausen Route: 6 pm to midnight, every 20 minutes Shuttle to the
Archenhold Observatory: 6 pm to midnight, every 20 minutes

The vintage buses on the Tempelhof – Steglitz Route are not barrier free.

→ to the City Map with the shuttle bus routes

Why not make a ride in a BVG bus from the 60s or 70s or a vintage bus from the 50s part of your Long Night? The best place to start is the Technikmuseum. In front of the Science Center Spectrum, the proud owners of such famous models as the E-Type Jaguar, the Wartburg 311 and the BMW Isetta will be waiting to take you away in style to the Humboldt Forum. And if you want to do more than just look or don’t want to wait that long for a ride, then just nip round the corner to Trebbiner Strasse and jump on to one of the historic double-decker buses being used on the Tempelhof – Steglitz Route.