5 Years of BERLIN GLOBAL: The Anniversary Festival

Meeting point: Entrance area Berlin Exhibition, 1st floor

Turn the “wheel of history”, dance in the walk-in disco ball or discover the history of the site through the telescopes from the windows of the Humboldt Forum: The tour presents historically and currently globally connected Berlin in a dialogue-based and interactive way. This anniversary tour is led by a guide who has experienced the exhibition from the very beginning – and can therefore provide fascinating insights behind the scenes.

Meeting point: Entrance area Berlin Exhibition, 1st floor

Turn the “wheel of history”, dance in the walk-in disco ball or discover the history of the site through the telescopes from the windows of the Humboldt Forum: The tour presents historically and currently globally connected Berlin in a dialogue-based and interactive way. This anniversary tour is led by a guide who has experienced the exhibition from the very beginning – and can therefore provide fascinating insights behind the scenes.

Meeting point: Entrance area Berlin Exhibition, 1st floor

The Open Spaces are three special areas in the BERLIN GLOBAL exhibition. The small special exhibitions are not curated by the museum but by groups and organisations from the city. The focus is on topics and perspectives on Berlin’s history and present that have so far received little visibility.
Curators Brenda Spiesbach and Sophie Perl guide through the three current Open Space projects:

Dara Tûyê – درخت توت – The mulberry tree by Flamingo e.V. explores transnational gardens as spaces of remembrance, healing, knowledge transfer and feminist resistance.

Time Machine Infinitum. Queer migrant Berlin by Noam Gorbat, Omar Nicolas and Sama Ahmadi invites you to a multimedia journey through time in Berlin. It connects past, present and future to highlight and honour the presence and cultural heritage of queer migrants and BIPoC.

If I were king or queen… Young visions from Neukölln by the Bürgerstiftung Neukölln shows the visions for the future of young people from Neukölln. Looking at school, public space and the world, they call for more justice, freedom of expression, peace and solidarity.

Meeting point: Entrance area Berlin Exhibition, 1st floor

Across 4,000 square metres, the BERLIN GLOBAL exhibition presents seven thematic rooms: Revolution, Freedom, Borders, Entertainment, War, Fashion and Interconnection. These rooms shed light on Berlin’s multifaceted connections with the world.
Brinda Sommer, Programme Manager of Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin and until 2021 head of the curatorial team of BERLIN GLOBAL, offers a special look behind the scenes in this tour. During the tour, visitors gain exclusive insights into the development process of BERLIN GLOBAL: from the first conceptual ideas to key curatorial decisions and the questions and challenges that accompanied the team during development.

Meeting point: WELTSTUDIO

“City Waste” is a street art creative workshop at BERLIN GLOBAL in which we creatively engage with waste, recycling and sustainability. Together we build our own 3D city models and street signs – from what is actually thrown away: plastic, cardboard, packaging and more.

Many individual parts come together to form a shared urban vision. Inspired by street culture, street art and upcycling, we show how waste can become real art – and how circular economy can be experienced creatively rather than remaining theoretical. Participants can also take their own creations home.

In cooperation with StreetUniverCity Berlin e.V.

Meeting point: WELTSTUDIO

A dance journey through Berlin’s breakdance history: José aka Beatsurfer (City Rockers Crew) provides insights into the beginnings of breakdance in Berlin from 1983 – with vivid, practical examples from the old school. B‑Boy Niven (Got the Flava Crew) shows how breaking has developed to the present day and which styles and techniques shape the scene in 2026.

In cooperation with StreetUniverCity Berlin e.V.

Do you sometimes wonder how an exhibition comes into being? Whose stories are included? How does spatial design emerge? And how do exhibition makers deal with sensitive or controversial topics? BERLIN GLOBAL is a collective product – not only of a large museum team, but also of numerous cooperation partners from Berlin’s urban society. Each room has a complex development history that can hardly be reconstructed once the exhibition has opened.

For the 5th anniversary, exhibition makers offer a look behind the scenes. They talk about decisions, challenges and moments of success and answer all the questions you bring with you.

Organisational note: The short pop-up conversations take place in the exhibition space without seating.

Timetable, rooms and curators:

14:30–15:00 Meet the Curator: Ask Daniel Morat anything about “War”
Room War

15:00–15:30 Meet the Curator: Ask Verda Kaya anything about “HipHop”
Room Entertainment

15:30–16:00 Meet the Curator: Ask Anuscheh Amir-Khalili anything about the Open Space “Dara Tûyê – درخت توت – The Mulberry Tree”
Room Berlin Images

16:00 – 16:30 Meet the Curator: Ask İdil Efe anything about the Open Space “If I were king… Young visions from Neukölln”
Room Interconnection

With Sophie Plagemann, Artistic Director of Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, and Paul Spies, Chief Curator of BERLIN GLOBAL and former Director of Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin as well as President of ICOM Germany

A musical biography by & with Sigrid Grajek
Piano: Stefanie Rediske

From 1907 to 1935, Claire Waldoff was the star on the stages of the great cabarets and variety theatres – not only in Berlin, where she lived in the Bayerisches Viertel. She performed in shirt and tie, smoked pipe and cigars, drank Nordhäuser Korn with the painter Heinrich Zille and could swear like a dustcart driver. Her voice was what one calls a “real powerhouse” – and she struck a chord like no one else because she wanted to “sing about life”. Her songs became hits that every child knew. She was already a “new woman” before the term even existed.
Actress Sigrid Grajek retraces the life story of an extraordinary artist in song and performance against the backdrop of German history.

Dance into the evening with Berlin DJ icon Femdelic! DJ Femdelic effortlessly switches between the different facets of funk: electro boogie, afro, house and disco, enriching her sets with undiscovered gems from her vast record collection. The relationship and interplay between rhythm, groove and body movement are deeply rooted in Femdelic’s DNA. With technical finesse, a sense for what works on the dance floor and perfect timing for surprising twists, Femdelic gets the Schlüterhof dancing – that is the magic!

Experience Sinti swing and jazz manouche in its most vibrant form – virtuosic, captivating and full of joy of playing. The renowned musicians Romani Weiss, Hannah Bienert, Manolito Steinbach and Axel Obert combine the unmistakable Django Reinhardt sound with elements from the Great American Songbook, classical jazz manouche and contemporary jazz. The band presents authentic Sinti swing, refined improvisations and emotional solos. As a special highlight, the band has invited guest singer Malika Alaoui. Alaoui has worked with renowned artists and toured worldwide for four years as lead singer in Cirque du Soleil’s Alegría – enchanting the Schlüterhof for us.

Anthony Hüseyin is a non-binary queer interdisciplinary maker working in music theatre, performance art, and contemporary opera. Born in Şanlıurfa, Turkey, they are currently based in Berlin.

Anthony Hüseyin invites the audience at Schlüterhof-Courtyard into a musical landscape shaped by transformation, memory, and resistance.

At the core of the program is Project O — a transdisciplinary body of work that unfolds as a personal and artistic quest around gender, voice, and belonging. Centered around the Turkish pronoun “O,” which holds “he,” “she,” and “it” at once, the work moves in cycles without beginning or end, tracing a return to childhood, to memory, and to the formation of a nonbinary self. Emerging from this ground, O Biçim Şarkılar / O Shaped Songs and hOpe Shaped Songs shift the focus toward questions of home, freedom, identity, and belonging.

Set against the backdrop of Berlin and its realities as a city of migration, these works expose the tension between the promise of safety and the lived experience of exclusion. Through a nonbinary lens, they navigate displacement, language, and the fragile construction of belonging within contemporary immigrant politics.

The program also includes excerpts from Crime of Passion, an experimental opera that confronts the historical and ongoing romanticization of violence.

Dance with DJ Mala to Afrobeats, Dancehall, Amapiano, Latin, Baile Funk, Hip-Hop, R&B, House and Middle Eastern sounds. DJ Mala is a Berlin-based DJ with Moroccan roots and part of the diverse Berlin club and event scene. With a fine sense for energy and crowd dynamics, she plays in different contexts from queer and FLINTA* spaces to open club and festival formats, always focusing on vibe, movement and musical connection. For you, she turns the Schlüterhof into a dancefloor.

“Yaramaz” is a Turkish word; translated one-to-one it means something like “good-for-nothing”. The expression is often used towards small children when they are cheeky and rebellious. Güner Künier named her second album “Yaramaz” to tell her own coming-of-age story using the means of punk and post-punk. Together with her band she brings tracks from this album to our anniversary stage.
Güner Künier was born in 1990 in Izmir, Turkey, and moved with her family to Flensburg at the age of three; in 2014 she moved to Berlin. Her debut EP was released in 2021, followed a year later by her first album Aşk. Today, Güner Künier is one of the most important protagonists of the Berlin post-punk scene. Her music moves between post-punk and minimal/synth punk – and also delivers shoegaze sounds, a Velvet Underground noir vibe and a touch of krautrock as well as references to Riot Grrrl. Look forward to it!

Since 2018, Joy Grant, also known as BABYJOY, has been celebrated as one of the most exciting newcomers and great hopes of German-language rap. Today she is an integral part of the Berlin hip-hop and RnB scene. At the anniversary festival she takes over the Schlüterhof stage as headliner. With her soft yet raw voice, BABYJOY glides effortlessly over trap beats, blending jazz, RnB and conscious rap – and switching confidently between German, English and French. Her sound is multifaceted, urban and unmistakable.
With family roots in the USA and France, she was shaped musically from an early age: her father a musician, music always present. Her own entry into the music world was therefore only a matter of time. After a short, ultimately discontinued jazz education, BABYJOY consistently pursued her artistic path independently. Following the debut EP “Troubadour” (2021), numerous feature and collaboration requests followed, including from Ahzumjot and badchieff. With “Ophelia” (2022) she showed a powerful yet emotional side, creating songs full of dynamics and depth. “Berlin Tag & Nacht” (2025) ultimately captures the many facets of the city – raw, vibey, by day and by night.

Dance together with BABYJOY from Berlin day into the night!