Airport
Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER)
Berlin ran three airports for decades and is down to a single one, out in the Brandenburg flatland southeast of the city. It is compact enough to cross on foot and lean by design — a point-to-point airport for a city that generates its own traffic, rather than a hub built to shuffle passengers between long-haul waves. Nearly everything an arrival needs is gathered under and in front of one building, which makes it an easy airport once you know that in Berlin the ticket, not the walk, is the part people get wrong.
Updated 2026-09-22
- CodesBER · EDDB
- Passengers per year (2024)25,465,872
- Elevation48 m
- ServesBerlin
- Official websiteber.berlin-airport.de
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One airport where Berlin had three
The old names still circulate in conversation and in older guidebooks: the hexagonal airport in the north that closed the week this one opened, the field in the south that has been a public park for far longer, and the East German airport next door, whose terminal served briefly as an overflow building and is closed to passengers. Scheduled flights all use the two buildings in front of you.
Terminal 1 is the main one, with check-in in a single tall hall and the railway station directly below it. Terminal 2 stands beside it, a few signposted minutes away on foot, and takes some of the low-cost and peak-season traffic; it is plainer, and it has no station and no taxi rank of its own. Sooner or later everyone walks to Terminal 1, which is worth knowing before a departure board sends you next door.
The station under Terminal 1, and the ticket people get wrong
Three kinds of train use the platforms beneath the terminal: an airport express to the city's main station, a suburban line threading the southeastern districts and the centre, and regional services passing through. Between them they leave several times an hour, and all of them are more reliable at rush hour than the motorway above.
The airport lies outside the two inner fare zones, so an ordinary Berlin ticket does not reach it — you need the version covering the outer ring, or an extension stamped onto the pass you already hold. It is the single most common mistake made here. Taxi ranks stand in front of Terminal 1 only, metered rather than flat-fare and with a surcharge on journeys that begin at the airport; app-booked cars use their own marked bays.
Point-to-point, not a hub
The mix here is unusual for a capital city: low-cost carriers alongside full-service airlines, a lot of leisure traffic, and relatively few passengers merely changing planes. That shapes the day — security is the pinch point rather than the transfer corridors, and the lines stretch in the early morning and again in the early evening, when the short-haul waves depart together.
Most arrivals here come from within the Schengen area and meet no officer at all on the way to the belts. The external-border desks handle a smaller share of the traffic, with automated gates for eligible passports and staffed booths for the rest, so the wait is usually short — until two long-haul flights land together and the desks briefly become the slowest part of the airport. What a particular nationality needs before boarding is a matter for the entry rules for Germany, not for the airport.
Late landings and the first flight out
The trains stop for a few hours overnight and night buses take over, leaving from the arrivals curb in front of Terminal 1 and connecting to the underground network at the city's southeastern edge. They are slower than the daytime trains, but they run every night of the week. A taxi at that hour is a long ride rather than a short hop.
Hotels stand in the small airport quarter facing the terminals, within walking distance rather than shuttle distance, and that is the sensible answer to a departure in the first wave, which leaves before the trains get going again. Landside left luggage, showers and a modest set of lounges cover a wait. The terminal is quiet at night, but it was not designed to be slept in.
Onward: Brandenburg, Saxony and the Baltic
Because long-distance trains run through the airport station rather than terminating in the city, this is a usable starting point for a journey that never touches Berlin's transport network at all: a through service heads south towards Dresden and north towards the Baltic coast, while regional trains fan out across Brandenburg and towards Potsdam.
Hire cars are collected from the garages opposite the terminals, with the motorway ring minutes away — the practical choice for the lake-and-forest country south of the city, or for continuing east towards the Polish border. Long-distance coaches use their own stops beside the terminal, including cross-border routes, and they are often the simplest way onward when the rail map does not cooperate.
Practical: signal, money and bags
Cards work almost everywhere inside the terminal, while the city beyond it still keeps corners — a neighbourhood pub, a market stall — that want notes, so the machines in the main hall are worth a stop. Use a bank-branded one, decline the currency conversion the screen offers, and let money in Germany cover the rest.
Left luggage sits landside near the main hall, so a bag stored while you spend a day in the city has to be collected before you clear departures. A data eSIM arranged before you fly spares you the counters, though the airport wireless is good enough to buy one on the spot. Mobility assistance is requested through the airline before travel and picked up at signed points near the check-in rows, and the family rooms, play areas and quiet zones are marked from the same hall.