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Power Cut in Berlin: Where to Go When Your Kiez Goes Dark

Writer: Yusuf Ucuz
Yusuf Ucuz
Oct 29
6 min read

On Saturday 3 January 2026, at 05:44, the power went out in Nikolassee, Zehlendorf, Wannsee and Lichterfelde. The first word was that it would be back by the evening. It came back for most streets on Wednesday afternoon, in a frost, and for the first two days nobody inside the dark area could even make a phone call.

I live in Berlin and I had never once looked up where I would go if that happened in my own street. So I did it now, for every postcode in the city, from the official list of Katastrophenschutz-Leuchttürme, the emergency points the districts open in a crisis. The answer is less comforting than the name.

Travellers walking through the unlit pedestrian underpass at S-Bahnhof Wannsee during the January 2026 power cut, lit only by a few work lamps

The underpass at Wannsee station on 5 January 2026, the third day without power in the south-west.

What a power cut in Berlin actually switches off

The best account of January is not a news report. It is the 63-page review the Steglitz-Zehlendorf district office published in June 2026, and it is worth reading if you rent a flat in this city. It counts more than 100,000 people without power. The Senate's own notice on the first day put it at 45,400 households and 2,200 businesses.

What stopped with the electricity, according to the review:

  • Every phone. Landlines, mobile phones and the internet failed across the area. Telekom put up mobile masts at its edge, and after about 48 hours emergency calls worked again where the signal reached.

  • The heating. About 12,000 homes on district heating went cold, because the pumps need power. Gas flat heaters and other systems with electric controls stopped too. With a hard frost outside, the flats cooled fast.

  • Lifts, street lights and traffic lights. And afterwards came the damage: frozen and burst pipes, broken circulation pumps, fire alarm panels and lifts that did not restart.

  • Doctors and pharmacies. In Berlin they usually have no backup power, so the ones inside the area simply closed.

What kept working is just as useful to know. The water ran, because the Beelitzhof waterworks has its own emergency power. Buses and trains ran, although the S1 went through the dark stations in the evening without stopping, because the platforms had no light. And because the dark area was at most 3 km wide, anyone who could walk or drive did their shopping just outside it.

The Teltowkanal in winter with snow on the banks, bare trees and the chimneys of a power station in the distance

The Teltowkanal on 5 January 2026. The fire was on a cable bridge over this canal.

Katastrophenschutz-Leuchtturm: what it is and what it is not

A Katastrophenschutz-Leuchtturm, a "disaster lighthouse", is a public building, usually a town hall or district office, that a district opens in a crisis. The Berlin list says every one of them offers the same four things: an emergency call point, updates on the situation, official advice, and information on where to get supplies and help. Some districts add smaller information points, run by volunteers.

Two lines on Berlin's official page matter more than the rest. They are not permanently open, and each district decides itself when, where and for how long it opens them, and announces it separately. So a lighthouse is not a shelter you can walk into on any cold evening. It is a place that may open, on the day, if your district decides so.

The official sign of a Katastrophenschutz-Leuchtturm, with a red and blue location pin and six small symbols for information, first aid, water, power, heat and phone

The national sign for a Katastrophenschutz-Leuchtturm, here on a building in Brandenburg. Look for this logo, not a lighthouse.

In January it worked like this. The district only learned at about 15:30 on the first day that the cut would last days. From then on the lighthouse in Rathaus Zehlendorf was switched on, and an emergency shelter opened there and at the Cole Sports Center. The lighthouse and the shelter in the town hall stayed open until Friday 9 January at 12:00. The other shelters were only 10 to 15 percent full, and on 6 January the Governing Mayor announced that the state would pay for other accommodation.

Find your nearest emergency point in Berlin

Here is the part that surprised me. On the official list I checked on 29 October 2026, Berlin has 56 lighthouses, and only 25 of them are marked ready to open in an emergency. The other 31 are still in planning. There are also 17 information points, every one of them in Reinickendorf.

Four districts have no ready lighthouse at all on that list: Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Neukölln, Pankow and Steglitz-Zehlendorf. Yes, the district of the January cut. Rathaus Zehlendorf, which carried the whole week, is still listed as planned.

The tool below takes your postcode, draws every point on the map and gives you the three closest ready ones with a walking time. It also tells you when a planned point is closer. For 14163 in Zehlendorf, the nearest ready lighthouse is 7.6 km away in a straight line. In Kreuzberg 10999 it is Rathaus Mitte at 2.6 km. Under the map you can step through the six days of January and tick what you already have at home. The same tool has its own page: the Berlin Blackout Emergency Map.

My advice: do not save the address on your phone. Write your nearest ready point, and the nearest planned one, on paper and stick it inside a kitchen cupboard. In January the phones were the first thing to go.

A petrol generator running next to the entrance of Wannsee station during the power cut, behind red and white barrier tape

A generator at the entrance to Wannsee station on 5 January 2026, keeping a few lamps going.

How you hear about it when the phone is dead

On the fifth morning, at 09:30, phones across Berlin that had a signal got a warning through Cell Broadcast, in German and English, from the Senate department for the interior. It told people to inform themselves through the usual warning media. Inside the dark area, many phones had nothing to receive it with.

Two Cell Broadcast emergency alerts about the Berlin power outage on an iPhone lock screen at 09:30 on Wednesday 7 January 2026, one in German and one in English

The Cell Broadcast warning of 7 January 2026, 09:30, in German and English.

In Berlin a warning can come three ways. Cell Broadcast reaches phones that still have a signal, without an app. Sirens are the second, and the city's warning page says it is building that network step by step. The third is the one that works when your phone does not: the radio. The federal civil protection office, the BBK, tells every household to keep a battery or crank radio, so that in a long power cut you can follow what the authorities say. In January the district added paper flyers from the third day.

My advice: buy the radio now, not on the day. In a dark area, the shops that sell batteries are dark too.

The kit that would have mattered in Zehlendorf

The BBK's planning figure is to manage on your own for ten days if you can, and it says three days already helps a lot. For water it counts 2 litres per person per day, half a litre of it for cooking. In January the water never stopped in the south-west, so in a Berlin flat I would read the ten days as a goal and the three days as the part that matters.

What January actually asked for, in the order it came:

  • Light that is not a candle. A torch or headlamp with spare batteries. The BBK lists candles too, but asks you to air the room regularly when you use them. In a cold flat nobody wants to open the window.

  • A radio with batteries or a crank, for the reasons above.

  • Cash. The BBK's reason is short: cash machines stop working in a power cut.

  • A charged power bank, for the moment the network comes back at the edge of the area.

  • Warmth for one room. The BBK's advice is warm clothes and blankets, one room in use with its doors shut, and air it anyway. Never grill or run a camping stove indoors.

  • Food you can eat cold, for the days you cannot cook.

  • A week of your regular medicines. Pharmacies inside the area were shut.

  • A bed somewhere else. Most shelters in January were only 10 to 15 percent full, and the safest bed is one you have arranged. Agree with one person in another district, now, that you would come for three nights.

Commuters standing on the platform at Wannsee station on a cold clear morning during the power cut, with a regional train waiting

Wannsee station on 5 January 2026. The trains kept running through the dark area.

If the cold is the bigger worry, my posts on the Berlin heating season and mould in Berlin flats cover what your landlord owes you and how to air a cold room. For the numbers to call, Berlin's emergency numbers are in one place.

My move

Type your postcode into the map tonight, while the lights are on. Write two addresses on paper: your nearest ready lighthouse and a friend in another district who would take you in for three nights. Then put a torch, a battery radio and some cash in one drawer. That is twenty minutes, and it covers most of what January asked of people. For what changes in Berlin each week, my weekly newsletter is where I put the short list.

Source and licence details for the 4 photographs used in this article.

The unlit underpass at S-Bahnhof Wannsee, 5 January 2026: Roy Zuo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Teltowkanal in south-west Berlin, 5 January 2026: Roy Zuo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

A generator at the entrance to Wannsee station, 5 January 2026: Roy Zuo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The platforms at Wannsee station, 5 January 2026: Roy Zuo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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