When do the autumn leaves peak in Berlin?

For beech, the tree with the strongest colour, in the last full week of October. In DWD records from 2015 to 2025 the typical beech around Berlin was half coloured on 21 October and half bare on 4 November. Oak runs a couple of days later, birch and horse chestnut earlier.

Which weekend is best for autumn leaves in 2026?

The weekend of 24 and 25 October, with Saturday 31 October as the backup. Single years move by about ten days: the typical beech turned on 15 October in 2018 and on 26 October in 2023.

Where are the best autumn colours near Berlin?

Where the broadleaf trees are. Inside the city, Schlachtensee and Krumme Lanke and the lakes of the Grunewald. Outside, the beech woods at Liepnitzsee, around Buckow in the Märkische Schweiz and around Chorin monastery. Most forest around Berlin is pine, which stays green.

How does the clock change affect a leaf trip?

The clocks go back on Sunday 25 October 2026. Sunset in Berlin moves from 17:54 on 24 October to 16:52 on 25 October and 16:40 by 31 October. For Buckow or Chorin after the change, be on the train by noon.

Can I reach these places with the Deutschlandticket?

Yes, all six, including the Heidekrautbahn to Wandlitzsee and bus 928 to Buckow, which runs hourly on Saturdays and Sundays. With single tickets, Potsdam and Wandlitzsee need Berlin ABC, and Buckow and Chorin are outside the Berlin zones.

Why are the horse chestnuts already brown in summer?

Mostly because of the horse chestnut leaf miner, a tiny moth that has spread across Germany since the late 1990s. Its larvae eat the leaves from the inside and the brown trails show up in summer. How bad it is varies from tree to tree and year to year.

Autumn Leaves in Berlin: The Week the Beech Woods Turn Gold

Q: Do the leaves turn earlier outside Berlin?

Not in any way you can plan around. In the DWD records Berlin's own stations and the Brandenburg stations share the same median beech date, 21 October, and two trees in the same town can be a week apart. The kind of tree matters far more than the place.

Yusuf Ucuz

Sep 22

8 min read

Every October the same thing happens in my group chats. Someone posts a photo of Schlachtensee on fire with orange beech leaves, and by the time I get there two weekends later, the trees are bare and the path is brown mush. Other years I go too early, stand in a green wood and tell myself it is "starting".

Autumn leaves in Berlin are not a mystery, though. The German weather service has volunteers who watch the same trees around Berlin every single year and write down the day half the leaves have turned, and the day half of them are on the ground. I went through their records for every station within 100 km of Alexanderplatz from 2015 to 2025. The answer to "when" turns out to be fairly tight. The answer to "where" is more interesting than I expected.

Schlachtensee in late October, with a wall of orange and gold broadleaf trees on the far shore above the water

Schlachtensee on the last day of October. The shore here is broadleaf, which is exactly why it looks like this.

When autumn leaves in Berlin actually peak

The Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD) runs a network of phenology observers who each follow the same trees for years. For autumn they record two dates: "autumn colouring", when about half the leaves have turned, and "leaf fall", when about half are down. The good days for a walk sit between those two.

For the area around Berlin, 2015 to 2025, the typical dates are:

Horse chestnut: half coloured 8 October, half bare 23 October
Birch: half coloured 15 October, half bare 1 November
Beech: half coloured 21 October, half bare 4 November
Oak: half coloured 23 October, half bare 8 November

Beech is the one that makes the photographs, the copper and orange that glows when the sun is low. Its window is narrow. In the middle half of all beech records, colouring lands between 13 and 25 October and leaf fall between 29 October and 10 November.

So if you only plan one leaf walk, plan it for the last full week of October. In 2026 that means the weekend of 24 and 25 October, with Saturday 31 October as the backup.

The year moves it, but only by about a week

Individual years do wander. The typical beech in this region was half coloured on 15 October in 2018, a dry year, and on 26 October in 2023. Last year it was 19 October. That is a spread of about ten days, which is why I would not book anything fixed more than two weeks ahead.

The longer trend goes one way. Compared with 2000 to 2009, every one of these four trees now colours about five days later around Berlin, and drops its leaves about four to five days later too. If your memory says "the leaves were gone by mid October when I moved here", the trees agree with you less every year.

Late afternoon light falling through tall beech trunks with golden leaves in the Schorfheide-Chorin biosphere reserve

Old beech wood in the Schorfheide-Chorin biosphere reserve in early November, the last good days before the leaves drop.

Where to go: it is about the trees, not the distance

Here is the part that surprised me. When I put the stations on a map, there was no clean north-south or city-countryside pattern. Berlin's own stations and the Brandenburg stations share the same median beech date, 21 October. Two trees in the same town can be a week apart. The place matters much less than the kind of tree growing there.

And most of the woods around here are the wrong kind:

Brandenburg's forest is about 70% pine. Oak covers 6.7% and beech only 3.3%, according to the state's forest figures summarised by the Schutzgemeinschaft Deutscher Wald.
More than three quarters of Brandenburg's beech woods are in the north of the state, in the Barnim and the Uckermark.
Berlin's forests are almost 65% pine as well, according to the city's Environmental Atlas. Pine does not change colour.

So a random Brandenburg forest walk in late October is mostly green needles and sand. The move is to go where the beech is: the lake shores inside the city, and the beech woods north-east of Berlin.

Plan your leaf weekend

Drag the date and switch between beech, oak, birch and horse chestnut. The map colours each DWD tree around Berlin by where it usually stands on that day. The bars show the whole season at once, and the six places below the map tell you how their main tree is doing and when to leave Alexanderplatz to get three hours of daylight there.

What the tool makes very obvious:

Early October is too early for anything except horse chestnuts. Beech and oak are still mostly green.
Around 24 October nearly every beech dot is orange. That is the week.
By mid November it is over, apart from a few late oaks in the parks.

The clock change eats your afternoon

There is a catch built into the calendar. The clocks go back on Sunday 25 October 2026, right in the middle of the beech window. Sunset in Berlin moves from 17:54 on Saturday 24 October to 16:52 on Sunday 25 October, and to 16:40 by Saturday 31 October.

That hour matters more for a leaf trip than for anything else, because the colour only really glows in low sun. A plan that works on the 24th, leaving the city after lunch, leaves you walking back through a dark wood a week later.

My rule for the far trips:

Before 25 October, leaving Alexanderplatz by about 13:30 is fine for Buckow or Chorin.
After 25 October, be on the train by 12:00 at the latest, or pick a place inside the city.

Schermützelsee at Buckow, seen through dark tree trunks, with a solar boat on the water and turning woods on the far shore

Schermützelsee at Buckow on 20 October. The slopes of the Märkische Schweiz are beech, so they turn together.

Six places worth the trip

Inside the city

Schlachtensee and Krumme Lanke. Take the S1 to Schlachtensee, about 40 minutes from Alexanderplatz. The shore path around both lakes runs under beech, oak and maple, and it is the easiest good leaf walk in Berlin. The downside is that everyone knows it, so go on a weekday afternoon or early on a Sunday.

Grunewald and Grunewaldsee. The S7 gets you to Grunewald station in 22 minutes. The forest itself is mostly pine, so walk the 3 km to Grunewaldsee, where the oaks and birches around the water carry the colour. Oak turns a couple of days after beech, so this one still works into early November. It is also one of the big dog areas in Berlin, which you will notice.

A dog standing on the leaf-covered shore of Grunewaldsee with golden trees reflected in the water behind it

Grunewaldsee in late October. The oaks and birches around the lake do the colouring; the forest behind is mostly pine.

Park Sanssouci, Potsdam. RE1 or RB21 from Charlottenburg to Park Sanssouci station, 46 to 52 minutes from Alexanderplatz. The old park trees include plenty of oak, lime and horse chestnut, so the park turns early on its chestnuts and late on its oaks. It is the best choice for a grey day, because the palaces give you something to look at even when the light is flat.

Beech woods north-east of Berlin

Liepnitzsee. S2 to Karow, then the Heidekrautbahn RB27 to Wandlitzsee, about 55 minutes, and a 2.5 km walk to the lake. The round walk is about 9.5 km through beech wood above very clear water. The RB27 back runs once an hour, so check the time before you set off.

Buckow and Schermützelsee. U5 to Lichtenberg, RB26 to Müncheberg and bus 928 to Buckow Markt, about 85 minutes. The bus runs hourly on Saturdays and Sundays too. The Märkische Schweiz is about as hilly as it gets near Berlin, with beech on steep slopes around a deep lake, and the lake loop from Buckow is about 8 km. This is the most spectacular of the six and the longest trip.

Chorin monastery and the Amtssee. U8 to Gesundbrunnen and the RE3 to Chorin, 54 minutes, then a 25-minute walk to the monastery. The woods around it belong to the Schorfheide-Chorin biosphere reserve, where much of Brandenburg's old beech still stands. The RE3 back leaves Chorin at 43 minutes past the hour.

The brick Gothic buildings of Chorin monastery in mid October, with a tree beside them only just starting to turn

Chorin monastery on 13 October. Mid October up here is still mostly green, which is exactly what the DWD dates predict.

Getting there on your ticket

All six trips are covered by the Deutschlandticket, including the Heidekrautbahn and the bus to Buckow. If you still buy single tickets, the two city lakes and Grunewald are inside Berlin AB. Potsdam and Wandlitzsee need a Berlin ABC ticket. Buckow and Chorin are outside the Berlin zones altogether. My Berlin monthly ticket guide shows when the subscription pays for itself.

One small thing for the weekend of 31 October: Reformation Day is a public holiday in Brandenburg, but not in Berlin. The trains and the Buckow bus I checked run as normal, but expect the trails outside the city to be busier than a usual Saturday.

Autumn leaves on your own street

The leaf season does not only happen in forests. About a third of Berlin's roughly 430,000 street trees are lime and a fifth are maple, followed by oak, plane and horse chestnut, according to the Senate's street tree figures. They turn at roughly the same time as their forest cousins. In late October the side streets in the leafy districts look like this for a week or two.

A residential street in Lichterfelde in late October with parked cars under orange trees and the pavement covered in leaves

Hortensienstraße in Lichterfelde at the end of October. A good street tree can give you the whole show on the way to the bakery.

Two things are worth knowing if you live under one of these trees:

Horse chestnuts go brown early for a reason. Since the late 1990s the horse chestnut leaf miner, a tiny moth whose larvae eat the leaves from the inside, has spread across Germany. Its brown trails show up in summer, long before autumn. How bad it is changes from tree to tree and year to year, but a badly hit chestnut rarely gives you a proper golden week.
Wet leaves are the real hazard. A pavement or cycle lane covered in wet leaves is as slippery as ice in the first cold week of November. If you ride, slow down on the corners and give your bike lights a check at the same time, because the dark evenings arrive in the same week.

Krumme Lanke in late October, orange and green trees reflected in still water under a pale sky

Krumme Lanke at the end of October. The shore path from Schlachtensee continues here.

The move I would make

Keep Saturday 24 October free. If the forecast is good, take the U5 and the RB26 to Buckow before noon and walk the Schermützelsee loop in the afternoon light. If the weather or the week gets in the way, do Schlachtensee and Krumme Lanke on Sunday 25 October, but remember the clocks have gone back by then, so be on the path by two.

And if you miss the beech, do not give up on the season. The oaks around Grunewaldsee and in the Berlin parks are good for another week. After that the woods around here are the place for mushroom picking and for the longer hiking trails around Berlin. And if you want the most famous autumn evening in Brandenburg instead, my guide to the cranes near Berlin covers the same weeks.

Image credits

Source and licence details for the 7 photographs used in this article.

Schlachtensee in golden autumn colour: Asif Masimov, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Old beech wood in the Schorfheide-Chorin biosphere reserve: Motacilla alba ocularis, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Schermützelsee at Buckow in the Märkische Schweiz: Kvikk, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Krumme Lanke in Berlin-Zehlendorf in late October: Neuköllner, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Grunewaldsee in autumn: Smaria4466, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Autumn on Hortensienstrasse in Berlin-Lichterfelde: JoachimKohler-HB, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Chorin monastery in mid October: michael clarke stuff, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.