Berlin Art Week is less a calendar than a current — a surge of images, sounds, and fleeting encounters that spill across the city. For a few September days, museums, project spaces, and off-site happenings blur into one another, forming an archive that resists permanence. This year’s edition balances monumental debuts with intimate experiments, institutional surveys with ephemeral gestures. What follows is a guide through eleven moments where Berlin’s pulse can be felt most vividly — between spectacle and stillness, monument and ephemera.

1. Hallen 06
   Wilhelm Hallen, Kopenhagener Str. 60–72, 13407 Berlin
   On view: Sep 6–14 | daily 11–20h

The vast Wilhelm Hallen in Reinickendorf once again host K60, an expansive gathering of Berlin galleries and collections. More than 50 participants occupy 9,000 square meters, presenting works that range from large-scale sculpture to performance. The industrial halls create an atmosphere where institutions and experiments collide. Alongside the exhibitions, concerts, talks, and events turn the venue into a social hub. K60 remains one of the clearest snapshots of the city’s gallery landscape today.

2. Höhlengleichnis
Potsdamer Str. 97, 10785 Berlin
On view: Sep 10–13 | Wed–Sat 11–18h, Thu 11–22h

Beds and mattresses become the unlikely architecture of this group exhibition inspired by Plato’s cave allegory. In collaboration with bett1, artists including Tadan, Lola von der Gracht, Wieland Schönfelder, Katharina Ruhm and AFAIK collective transform the space into a fabric environment that is both playful and philosophical. Shadows and projections are replaced with softness and improvisation, suggesting new forms of knowledge and perception. The cave here is not a prison but a refuge, echoing childhood fortresses while opening doors to queerness and collective imagination. As the Tadan collective notes: “Plato’s cave reminds us that education isn’t about filling heads, but turning them, away from shadow play and toward the light. With Plato, it’s the philosopher who escaped the cave, saw the sun and came back squinting. Here, it’s the artists.”

3. Gisela Getty: Ashes to Rishikesh
Ryan Mendoza Studio, Streustr. 89, 13086 Berlin
Opening: Wed, Sep 10, 17–22h
On view: Sep 11–13 | Thu 16–20h, Fri 16–22h, Sat 17–20h

In a deeply personal exhibition, Gisela Getty documents the final year of her twin sister Jutta Winkelmann’s life. The photographs are a collaboration as much as a farewell, reflecting Jutta’s active role in shaping her own departure. The series continues the radical spirit of the Kommune 1 generation, framing dying as a conscious process rather than a taboo. Getty herself will be present during the show, inviting visitors into an open dialogue on love, loss, and transformation.

4. Edgar Arceneaux: Shards
68projects by Kornfeld Galerie, Fasanenstr. 68, 10719 Berlin
Opening: Wed, Sep 10, 18–21h (with performance)
On view: Sep 11 – Oct 25 | (Art Week: Fri 11–20h, Sat 11–19h, Sun 12–18h)

Los Angeles–based artist Edgar Arceneaux makes his Berlin debut with a striking new body of work developed during his summer residency. In Shards, he strips mirrors of their reflective skin and transfers them onto canvas, creating fractured, unstable images that shimmer between relic and ruin. These haunted surfaces become metaphors for identity under pressure, linking personal fragility to the violence of systemic racism and political uncertainty. The opening will feature a performance by the artist, extending the work into live encounter. For more insights into Arceneaux’s practice and his thoughts on Berlin, see our in-depth interview with the artist.

5. Mark Leckey: Enter Thru Medieval Wounds
Julia Stoschek Foundation, Leipziger Str. 60, 10117 Berlin
Opening: Wed, Sep 10, 18–22h
On view: from Sep 11 | Thu–Sun 12–18h

Mark Leckey, one of Britain’s most influential media artists, receives one of his most extensive solo exhibitions to date. Iconic works such as Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999) and Cinema-in-the-Round (2006–08) are presented alongside more recent projects. The exhibition explores rave culture, class, and image circulation, showing how media shapes collective memory and desire. Leckey’s fascination with medieval imagery reframes the role of images as both wounds and portals across time.

6. Petrit Halilaj: An Opera Out of Time
Hamburger Bahnhof – Rieckhallen, Invalidenstr. 50–51, 10557 Berlin
Opening: Wed, Sep 10, 19–22h
On view: Sep 11, 2025 – May 31, 2026 | Tue–Sun 10–18h

Kosovar artist Petrit Halilaj stages his first major solo exhibition in Berlin with an ambitious opera developed together with the Kosovo Philharmonic. The work draws on the archaeological site of Syrigana, transforming myth and history into sound and installation. Five large-scale works from across his career accompany the opera, expanding the show into a wide-ranging survey. Halilaj creates a dreamlike environment where collective imagination becomes a tool for emancipation.

7. Trauma presents Crit Club Berlin (with Texte zur Kunst)
St. Elisabeth Kirche, Invalidenstr. 3, 10115 Berlin
Event: Wed, Sep 10, 19–22h
RSVP: here

Crit Club turns critical debate into a performative game. Two teams argue over whether art should be competitive, switching sides halfway through to defend the opposite view. This Berlin edition ups the stakes by bringing in the Berlin Adler football team, colliding sport and theory in a single arena. With artists, curators, and critics in the line-up, the evening promises intellectual sparring laced with humor and theatricality.

8. States of Being (Société × Hauser & Wirth)
Société, Wielandstraße 26, 10707 Berlin
Opening: Thu, Sep 11, 18–22h
On view: Sep 10 – Nov 1 | Tue–Sat 11–18h

Société and Hauser & Wirth join forces for a collaborative exhibition featuring thirty artists. The line-up bridges icons like Cindy Sherman, Louise Bourgeois, and Pipilotti Rist with younger names such as Conny Maier and Timur Si-Qin. The works address embodiment, identity, and fragility across generations, offering a multi-layered dialogue. For Gallery Night, the Charlottenburg space becomes a focal point, underlining the cross-pollination between Berlin and the global art world.

9. Daniel Hölzl: Propel
Dittrich & Schlechtriem, Linienstr. 23, 10178 Berlin
Opening: Thu, Sep 11, 18–22h
On view: Sep 12 – Oct 25 | Tue–Sat 11–18h

Vienna-born artist Daniel Hölzl presents his second solo show with Dittrich & Schlechtriem. His sculptural works, made of wax, carbon, and organic materials, explore cycles of erosion, renewal, and flux. Objects appear frozen mid-transformation, oscillating between decay and persistence. Propel foregrounds the temporal quality of sculpture, suggesting that matter itself carries both memory and momentum.

10. Gia Coppola: Edie
Kiosque Pixel, Besselstr. 14, 10969 Berlin
On view: Sep 11–13 | 12–20h, Sun 12–16h

Filmmaker Gia Coppola translates the streets of Hollywood Boulevard into a Berlin installation. Inspired by Ed Ruscha’s Every Building on the Sunset Strip, her film Edie was shot entirely on Google Pixel. The multi-screen presentation combines cinéma vérité with everyday poetry, capturing unscripted scenes and fleeting encounters. With minimal equipment, Coppola achieves an intimacy often absent from polished film productions, showing how technology can reshape the grammar of cinema. Presented at Kiosque Pixel, the project bridges cinema, photography, and installation.

11. Byredo: Alto Astral
NBB Gallery, Karl-Marx-Allee 85, 10243 Berlin
On view: Sep 13–14 | 12–18h

Fragrance house Byredo transforms NBB Gallery into an immersive environment for the launch of its new perfume Alto Astral. Named after a Brazilian-Portuguese expression for elevated joy, the fragrance is translated into a spatial installation curated by a Brazilian set designer. Color, rhythm, and scent merge into an ephemeral world that exists for only two days. Alto Astral blurs the line between gallery show and sensory experience, reflecting Berlin’s porous boundaries between culture, smell, and memory.

Eleven highlights can never capture the full scope of Berlin Art Week, but they sketch its spectrum — from industrial halls in Reinickendorf to intimate project spaces in Kreuzberg. The week demonstrates Berlin’s rare ability to pair monumental debuts with fragile, experimental gestures, to place museum operas next to scent environments and film installations. In this simultaneity lies the city’s enduring relevance, its refusal to let art settle into one form or one scale.

By Sunday evening the rhythm will shift back to the everyday: crates sealed, projections switched off, the echo of performances fading into silence. Yet what remains are lived encounters — conversations between strangers, a sudden stillness before an image, the memory of having witnessed something fleeting. These fragments scatter across Berlin, circulating through its streets, kitchens, and clubs. It is in this dispersion, beyond schedules and venues, that the real archive of Berlin Art Week persists — fragile, unfinished, and always ready to be reassembled next year.