Blood Donation in Berlin: Which Centres Pay, How Often You Can Give, and the German Catch
The poster is always the same: a red drop in a U-Bahn car, a line about how few people give, and a phone number. You have probably meant to do it for a year. Then you look it up and hit three questions at once: which of the Berlin centres actually pays, how often you are allowed to go, and whether the whole thing works if your German stops at the bakery.
Blood donation in Berlin is split between very different operators. A Red Cross centre at Alexanderplatz pays nothing. A Haema centre at Gesundbrunnen pays 20 euros for the same bag. Two plasma chains near Alexanderplatz and in Köpenick pay by volume and do not print a rate at all. The rules on how often you can give come from one federal guideline, and the language rule is the same almost everywhere.
Where blood donation in Berlin happens
Berlin has 14 fixed donation centres run by five operators, plus the Red Cross drives that move through schools, town halls and churches. I checked every operator's own pages on 25 September 2026, because third-party lists still show addresses that closed years ago.
Haema, a private company, runs six centres: Wedding at Gesundbrunnen, Prenzlauer Berg at S Landsberger Allee, Charlottenburg in the Wilmersdorfer Arcaden, Tegel at the Borsigturm, Marzahn and Hellersdorf. All six take whole blood and plasma.
The Charité takes donations for its own patients through its transfusion centre, at Campus Mitte on Schumannstraße and at Campus Virchow in Wedding.
The DRK-Blutspendedienst Nord-Ost has a centre in the ALEXA shopping centre and its institute on Hindenburgdamm in Lichterfelde, plus the mobile drives.
CSL Plasma (Alexanderstraße and the Linden-Center in Hohenschönhausen) and Octapharma Plasma (Köpenick and Spandau) take plasma only.
The Charité Campus Mitte seen across the Humboldthafen. Its donation centre on Schumannstraße takes whole blood without an appointment.
The map below has all 14 with their hours, what each one takes and what it pays.
What each centre pays
German law says blood donation should be unpaid, and then allows a flat allowance for the effort, the Aufwandsentschädigung. That is why the numbers are small and why every operator words them differently.
Haema: 20 euros for whole blood and 25 euros for plasma, the same at all six Berlin sites, plus changing bonus campaigns.
Charité: 20 euros for whole blood, and a stamp card that adds 10 euros after four donations. The plasma and platelet rate is only given on site, at your screening.
DRK: nothing for whole blood. You get a snack, a drink and a good conscience. DRK plasma at the Lichterfelde institute is paid, but the amount is not published; the first check visit is paid too.
CSL and Octapharma: plasma is paid per donation, but neither publishes a figure. Octapharma says the amount depends on how much plasma you give. CSL shows an estimate in its app.
My advice: pick the centre by your week first and by the money second. A few euros between plasma operators means nothing if the only open slot is across the city on a Friday afternoon. There is one more thing worth knowing. Haema, CSL and Octapharma belong to companies that turn plasma into medicines, while the Charité collects for its own patients and the Red Cross supplies hospitals. Both kinds of donation end up helping patients. It is still good to know which one you are choosing.
The Gesundbrunnen-Center on Badstraße. Haema's Wedding centre has its own entrance at Badstraße 4a, beside the S- and U-Bahn station.
How often you are allowed to give
The limits come from the German Hämotherapie guideline, and they differ a lot by what you give.
Whole blood: at least 8 weeks between donations. Across 12 months, men can give 6 times and women 4 times. Haema and the Charité space women 12 weeks apart.
Plasma: at least two free days between donations and up to 60 a year. The Charité sets its own stricter cap of 45 a year, two weeks apart.
Platelets: at least 14 days apart, up to 26 a year, at the Charité, the DRK institute and Haema in Marzahn and Hellersdorf.
Those plasma numbers explain why plasma is a habit for some people and not for others. At 25 euros and a legal maximum of 60 visits, the theoretical ceiling at Haema is 1,500 euros a year. Nobody actually lives like that. A plasma visit takes an hour to an hour and twenty minutes, and most regulars go once or twice a week.
A plasma donation. The machine keeps the plasma and returns the red cells, which is why you can come back after two days.
Put the date of your last donation into the calendar in the tool and it draws your next twelve months: the first day you can go, every slot after that, and how the yearly cap kicks in.
The German questionnaire
This is the part most English-speaking Berliners find out at the reception desk. Four of the five operators require German, and the fifth does not say. Haema asks for at least B1 and does not allow interpreters. The Charité says interpreters are not legally allowed in the doctor's talk or in the confidential self-exclusion step. The DRK wants you to fill in the questionnaire without help. Octapharma asks for spoken and written German. CSL does not say either way, so call before you go.
The reason is safety, not bureaucracy. The questionnaire asks about recent travel, illnesses, medication and sexual contacts, and the doctor has to be sure you understood every question. A wrong tick can put a patient at risk.
Part of a German donor questionnaire. It asks about travel, rare infections and medication in the last weeks.
My advice: if your German is around B1, ask the centre for the questionnaire in advance or go with a German-speaking friend to the first visit, so the waiting room is not where you meet the vocabulary. If a question about medication or travel is unclear to you in writing, it will not get easier at the desk. German courses in Berlin that run on evenings are a fair way to close that gap over a winter.
Who can donate, and who has to wait
Age and weight: at least 18 years and 50 kilos. Since 2023 there is no fixed upper age limit, even for a first donation; a doctor decides. Haema asks first-time donors over 60 to bring their medical records.
ID: bring your Personalausweis or passport. Octapharma accepts a passport only together with a Meldebescheinigung no older than six months, and Haema asks for a fixed address in Germany.
Tattoos and piercings: a wait of 4 months.
Travel: it depends on the country, from a few weeks up to six months after a malaria area.
Sexual behaviour: since May 2023 only your own behaviour counts, not your sexual orientation. A new partner with anal sex, more than two partners, sex work, or taking HIV PrEP means a 4-month wait.
How the first visit works
A first whole-blood visit takes an hour to an hour and a half: registration, a finger-prick blood test, the questionnaire, a short talk with a doctor, 5 to 12 minutes on the needle and a rest with a drink. The Charité takes whole blood without an appointment. Haema and the DRK ask you to book.
Plasma starts with a check visit. Haema takes a blood sample and books your first donation about a week later, once the lab results are in. CSL does the check first and the donation about three days later. The Charité screens you during a whole-blood visit and gives you a plasma slot about three weeks later.
Eat a proper meal beforehand and drink more water than feels necessary. Plan an easy afternoon too.
Weekends and mobile Red Cross drives
Weekends are the gap. No fixed centre opens on Sunday, and only CSL (both sites, Saturday 08:00 to 14:00) and Octapharma Köpenick (Saturday morning) take donors on Saturday. Everything else is Monday to Friday.
The DRK mobile drives fill some of that. They move between schools, town halls and community rooms across Berlin, and they are listed by date and district on the DRK Nord-Ost donation calendar. They take whole blood only and pay nothing. The same German questionnaire applies.
The DRK centre in the ALEXA shopping centre is a few minutes' walk from the World Clock, where my walking tour starts, and it is open until 19:00 on weekdays. It is the easiest after-work option in the middle of the city.
One simple move
Choose the day first. If Tuesday evening is your free slot, Haema in Wedding, Prenzlauer Berg or Charlottenburg and the DRK at ALEXA are open until 19:00. If only Saturday works, it is plasma at CSL or Octapharma.
Then open the map, tap what you want to give, and put in your last donation date. It gives you the first day you can go and a list of every centre that takes you. The rest is a booked slot and a good lunch.
For the next time a doctor has to see you in Berlin, my guides to getting a doctor's appointment and health insurance in Berlin cover the practical side. The exact interval rules are in the Hämotherapie guideline of the German Medical Association, and each centre's own pages, such as Haema's Berlin locations and the Charité donation page, carry the current hours.
Image credits
Source and licence details for the 5 photographs used in this article.
A full blood donation bag on a mixing scale: Triplec85, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Charité Campus Mitte seen across the Humboldthafen: Flocci Nivis, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Gesundbrunnen-Center on Badstraße: Lukas Beck, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
A plasma donation cannula in the crook of the arm: ANKAWÜ, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Part of a German blood donor questionnaire: Woelle ffm, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.