Herbstferien Berlin: How Working Parents Cover the Two Weeks
Two weeks from today, on Friday 16 October, Berlin's primary schools close for the autumn. The Herbstferien Berlin calendar then runs from Monday 19 October to Saturday 31 October, and school starts again on Monday 2 November. For a child that is two weeks of freedom. For two working parents it is ten working days, and each of them needs a name next to it.
Most of the stress comes from doing that sum late. The Hort covers more than many parents expect, but it rarely covers the whole working day, and the days that are left over are the ones grandparents, colleagues and other families are also trying to fill. So here is what the Hort really covers, where the hours go missing, and a planner where you can go through your own two weeks day by day.
The poplar alley in Treptower Park in October, one of the free places to fill a holiday afternoon.
The Herbstferien Berlin dates and the two weekends around them
The dates come from the Berlin Ferienordnung set by the Senate education department. For the school year 2026/27 they are:
Last school day: Friday 16 October
Holidays: Monday 19 October to Saturday 31 October
First school day back: Monday 2 November
Working days to cover: 19 to 23 and 26 to 30 October, ten in total
Two dates inside that window change the plan. On Sunday 25 October the clocks go back one hour, so the second week gets dark around 16:50 and an afternoon in the park ends earlier than the first week suggests. And Saturday 31 October is Reformationstag, a public holiday in Brandenburg but not in Berlin. Brandenburg's schools are off from 19 to 30 October as well, so Potsdam, Werder and the lakes fill with families from both sides of the border, and on that last Saturday the shops in Brandenburg stay shut while the ones in Berlin are open.
If you are planning further ahead, the next autumn break is earlier: 11 to 23 October 2027.
What the Hort covers in the holidays
In Berlin the Hort is officially called ergänzende Förderung und Betreuung, eFöB for short, and the holidays are part of it. If your child already goes to the Hort after school, the holiday weeks are covered too. The rules on service.berlin.de are clear on the part that matters most:
Grades 1 to 3 pay nothing and need no needs check for care from 7:30 to 16:00.
Early care from 6:00 and late care until 18:00 are extra modules you book separately.
At an open all-day school, the guaranteed core is only 7:30 to 13:30; the afternoon is the Hort module.
Grades 4 to 6 need a needs assessment for longer hours and pay an income-based contribution.
The Grundschule am Traveplatz in Friedrichshain. In the holidays the same building often hosts the Hort's holiday programme.
There are two catches. The first is time: a new application has to go in at least three months before the care should start, so a family without a Hort place in October will not get one for these holidays. The second is planning: many Horte ask parents to tick the holiday days they need well in advance, because they staff the holidays from that list. My advice: if a holiday list came home in the school bag in September, find it today and send it back.
Where the working day goes missing
Here is the sum most parents only do on the first Monday. A Hort day ends at 16:00. If you work 8:30 to 17:00 and need 30 minutes each way, someone has to have the children from 8:00 to 17:30. That leaves an hour and a half every Hort day that nobody is covering, fifteen hours across the two weeks.
There are only a few ways to close that gap, and each one costs something:
Book the late module to 18:00, if your Hort still has room for it.
Shift your hours for two weeks, starting and leaving earlier.
Share the pick-up with another family from the same class, one afternoon each.
Count a home-office day honestly. A seven-year-old in the flat while you are on calls is a long day for both of you, and the planner below shows it as uncovered for that reason.
Plan your two weeks day by day
The planner takes your child's Hort hours and your own working day, including the journey. Go through the ten weekdays one at a time and pick who has the children: the Hort, your leave, your partner's leave, a swap with another family, or grandparents and friends. The chart marks every hour that is still open in red, and the totals count your leave days and the swap days you owe back.
Start with Hort for every open day before you spend any leave. That shows how much of the problem is really the late afternoon, and how much is whole days. A 16:00 Hort with a short journey is often one booked module away from covering everything.
Days that cost nothing but time
For the days you do take off, Berlin has a few things that are free or close to it in the holidays.
The Super-Ferien-Pass costs €9 and runs from the summer holidays 2026 to the Easter holidays 2027, for Berlin children up to and including 18. Its swim card gives one free visit to the Berliner Bäder indoor pools every holiday day. The Berliner Bäder set the hours: entry by 12:00 and out by 14:00, and Stadtbad Lankwitz, Stadtbad Neukölln, Stadtbad Schöneberg and the hall at the Europasportpark add a 150-minute limit. The card needs a passport photo, a name and an address, and it has to be activated once at a pool till before the first swim.
Stadtbad Lankwitz, one of the four indoor pools where the free holiday swim is limited to 150 minutes.
The pass also carries coupons, among them free entry to the Zoo and the Tierpark for children up to and including 15. If you swim often or visit the zoo every few weeks anyway, compare it with the annual zoo pass before you buy anything else.
Museums are easier than most parents think. The Staatliche Museen zu Berlin let everyone under 18 in for free on every opening day, so a holiday morning at the Pergamonmuseum's Panorama or the Neues Museum costs only the adult ticket. The Museum für Naturkunde is not part of that group, but it is one of the places in the Super-Ferien-Pass coupon book, which makes the dinosaur hall a cheaper rainy-day plan.
The Giraffatitan in the Museum für Naturkunde on Invalidenstraße, the tallest mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world.
Two more free options sit in every district: the public libraries, where the VÖBB card is free for everyone under 18, and the parks before the light goes. For a Saturday with a bit more structure, my pumpkin guide lists the shows and farm festivals around the city and how long each takes from Alexanderplatz.
The weekend at the end of the break
The second Saturday is the one to plan around. It is Halloween, it is Reformationstag in Brandenburg, and it is the last Saturday before school. If you are driving out to Potsdam or a Brandenburg outlet that day, the shops there are closed, so keep Brandenburg for the walk and do the shopping in Berlin.
The Elefantentor of Zoo Berlin after dark. Once the clocks change on 25 October, it is dark here before 17:00.
My advice: keep Sunday 1 November empty. Pack the school bag, check that the Hort list for the Christmas holidays (23 December to 2 January) is not already in it, and let the week start quietly. If a younger child starts school next year, note that the school registration fortnight runs from 5 to 16 October, right before this break, and the Hort question for that child comes up in the same months.
Image credits
Source and licence details for the 3 photographs used in this article.
The poplar alley in Treptower Park in autumn (cropped): Virtual-Pano, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The entrance of Stadtbad Lankwitz: Dirk Ingo Franke, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Giraffatitan skeleton in the Museum für Naturkunde: Dosseman, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.