Ice Skating in Berlin: Which Rink Opens When and What It Costs
The first cold mornings arrive in October, and somebody in every Berlin group chat asks the same question: is the ice open yet? The honest answer this week is "one rink, almost". The Sportforum in Hohenschönhausen plans to open its speed-skating hall to the public on Monday 12 October, while most of the city's other rinks have not even published a 2026/27 start date.
That gap is the whole story of ice skating in Berlin. The rinks are run by different people (the Senate, district offices and private operators), they open weeks apart and they charge anything from 4 euros to 9.50 euros. If you pick the wrong one on a Saturday in early November, you stand in front of a locked gate in Wilmersdorf while the hall in Friedrichshain is full.
The seasonal rink around the Neptunbrunnen, seen from the TV Tower in December. Christmas rinks like this one come later than the stadiums.
Ice skating in Berlin: which rink opens first
Berlin's ice season does not start on one day. It starts rink by rink, and the order is roughly the same every year:
Sportforum Hohenschönhausen is first. The indoor speed-skating hall on Konrad-Wolf-Straße lists 12 October 2026 as its start, marked provisional because of building work, on berlin.de.
Winterquartier at Ostkreuz follows on Friday 6 November. It is a private indoor rink with 1,000 square metres of real ice in Friedrichshain, open until February, according to its own page.
Horst-Dohm-Eisstadion in Wilmersdorf and Eisbahn Lankwitz are expected in November. Berlin.de lists the Wilmersdorf oval for "November 2026 to early March 2027", and Lankwitz usually opens at the start of November. Neither has a fixed date yet.
Eisstadion Neukölln and Erika-Heß-Eisstadion in Wedding have no 2026/27 date at all so far. Neukölln opened on 2 November in 2024, after a two-year rebuild.
The outdoor rinks need several cold nights before the machines can hold the ice, which is why their dates stay vague until late October. The indoor halls can plan, and they do.
Public skating in the Sportforum hall in Hohenschönhausen. It is the first rink to open, usually in October.
The board: what is open on the days you can actually go
Most people who live here skate on the same few days: a weekend afternoon, maybe one evening after work. So the useful question is not "which rink is open" but "which rink is open on my Saturday, at an hour I can get there".
Pick a date on the board below, mark the days you are free and switch on the after-work filter if you only have evenings. The map shows where the six rinks sit around the S-Bahn Ring, the season chart shows which ones have confirmed dates, and each card lists the sessions you could make in the next seven days.
Where a rink has not published its 2026/27 timetable yet, the board shows last season's sessions and labels them as expected. I would trust those for planning a week ahead, and check the rink's page on the morning itself.
Indoor or outdoor: the choice that matters more than the district
The six rinks split cleanly into two kinds, and the split decides more than distance does.
Indoor halls (Sportforum, Winterquartier and the hall at Erika-Heß) run whatever the weather does. A mild, rainy week in December, which Berlin has more often than a cold one, does not touch them. The trade-off is time: Winterquartier sells 90-minute slots that you book online, and the Sportforum sells Friday to Sunday, Monday evening and school-holiday tickets only online.
Outdoor rinks (Horst-Dohm, Neukölln, Lankwitz and the outdoor rink at Erika-Heß) are the classic Berlin version: floodlights, music from old speakers, your breath in the air. They also close when warm rain turns the ice to slush, so on a grey 8-degree day I would phone first or check the rink's page.
Eisbahn Lankwitz on a bright January morning. Outdoor rinks are at their best on cold, dry days.
Horst-Dohm and its 400-metre ring
Horst-Dohm-Eisstadion on Fritz-Wildung-Straße is the one I send people to when they want to skate somewhere, not just go round in circles. Its outer ring is a 400-metre speed-skating oval, so you can skate a long, steady line instead of dodging children in a small rink. Berlin.de lists 4 euros, or 2 euros reduced, a skate hire and sharpening shop on site, and late sessions until 22:00 on most weekdays.
The 400-metre ring at Horst-Dohm-Eisstadion in Wilmersdorf, busy on a February Sunday.
What a skating afternoon really costs
The admission price is only half the bill. The other half is skate hire, and it is easy to forget until you are at the counter:
City rinks (Sportforum, Horst-Dohm, Neukölln): 4 euros for adults, 2 euros reduced. Sportforum charges 7 euros for skate hire.
Erika-Heß-Eisstadion: 7 euros for adults, 6 reduced, 4 for children, according to berlin.de.
Eisbahn Lankwitz: 7 euros for adults, 6 reduced, 4 for children under 12, plus 7 euros for skates.
Winterquartier: 6 to 9.50 euros depending on the slot, with the cheapest tickets on weekdays before 16:00, family tickets from 14 euros and skates for 5 euros.
For two adults and two children with hired skates, that is about 40 euros at the Sportforum and about 50 at Lankwitz. Neukölln also runs a happy hour with cheaper entry towards the end of a session, which is worth knowing if you only want an hour on the ice.
If you skate more than three or four times a winter, buying your own skates pays off quickly. Check whether your sports membership covers any of these places too; I compared what the passes include in my post on Urban Sports Club against a normal gym.
Inside the Erika-Heß-Eisstadion in Wedding. The hall reopened in October 2025 after 18 months of repairs.
When to go, and when to avoid the crowds
Weekend afternoons are the busiest time at every rink, and the first cold Sunday of the season is the worst of all. Three things help:
Go in the evening. Sportforum, Horst-Dohm and Neukölln all run evening sessions, and a Tuesday at 19:30 feels like a different rink from a Sunday at 14:00.
Use the school holidays carefully. During the Christmas break the weekday daytime sessions fill up with families. My guide to the Berlin autumn school holidays has the logic that applies again in December.
Note the family slots. The Sportforum keeps its weekend afternoon sessions mostly for families with children, and its weekday mornings mostly for school classes.
The Christmas rinks are a separate world. The rink around the Neptunbrunnen and the one at Potsdamer Platz come with the Christmas markets, and they are more about the setting than the skating. I cover the rest of that season in my post on Christmas in Berlin beyond the markets.
Frozen lakes: nobody will tell you the ice is safe
Every few winters, Berlin gets a proper freeze and people walk out onto the Schlachtensee, the Landwehrkanal or the Obersee in Hohenschönhausen. It looks wonderful, and it is entirely on you. The Berlin water police state plainly that they never release an ice surface for walking, that the district offices and the Senate do not either, and that anyone who steps onto the ice does so at their own risk.
The ice can be thick in one place and thin a few metres away, because many lakes and canals have inflows and currents underneath. If a freeze comes, I would stay on a rink or keep to the shallow edge of a small pond, and never go out alone. If cold water is your thing, my post on winter swimming in Berlin covers the safer version.
The frozen Obersee in Hohenschönhausen in February 2021. Natural ice like this is never officially released in Berlin.
My advice for this winter
Do not wait for the cold to decide for you. If you want to be on the ice in October, the Sportforum is your only real option, and its weekend tickets go online, so book before you set off for Hohenschönhausen. From November, choose by the kind of afternoon you want: the long ring at Horst-Dohm on a cold, clear day, the hall at Ostkreuz when it rains, and Neukölln for a cheap hour after work.
Pick your days on the board, save the rink's page in your phone, and check it on the morning you go. The rest of what changes in the city as it gets darker is in my note on what closes in Berlin in winter.
Image credits
Source and licence details for the 5 photographs used in this article.
The Neptunbrunnen rink seen from the TV Tower: Dirk Ingo Franke, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Public skating in the Sportforum Hohenschönhausen: Geoprofi Lars, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Eisbahn Lankwitz: Lukas Beck, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The 400-metre ring at Horst-Dohm-Eisstadion: Axel Mauruszat, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The frozen Obersee in Hohenschönhausen: Geoprofi Lars, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.