On Saturday, 14 November, at 11am, Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart opens its doors for an unusually long museum weekend. It will remain open continuously until 6pm on Sunday, 15 November; admission is free. The occasion is the 30th anniversary of the museum, which opened on 3 November 1996 as a venue of the Nationalgalerie. For more than 30 hours, the former station building on Invalidenstraße will become a place where exhibition visits, music and late-night events come together.
The programme can be organised by time of day rather than by gallery: a guided tour in the afternoon, records and performance in the evening, films deep into the night – and a tour in your pyjamas on Sunday morning. Those staying longer can take breaks in the open studio and the Education Lounge.
Saturday afternoon: look first, then ask
For a daylight introduction, there are the exhibitions and the “Unendliche Führung” (Never-Ending Tour), which, according to the event programme, runs continuously through the museum from noon. A German-language curator-led tour of “Sophie Calle. Is It Better?” is scheduled for 2pm; the exhibition opens the day before. An English-language tour of the same exhibition follows at 4pm, with a tour of “Next Door” at 5pm. A talk about Susan Phillips’ “East by West” is scheduled for 7pm.
Registration for guided tours and talks about the works takes place at the information desk on site. Anyone keen to attend one of these events should therefore arrive early and ask about available places. Admission to the other exhibitions is free throughout the anniversary weekend.
At night: records and dance
From 9pm to 2am, the “Art of Vinyl Listening Night” puts shared listening centre stage. Hamburger Bahnhof is collaborating with Neukölln hi-fi space Pastiche for the event; a set drawn from the museum’s record collection comes first, followed by a two-hour programme from Billy Caso and afrodisiac. From 10pm to 1am, performers working with Lina Lapelytė dance in the Historische Halle. Both events give the night a different rhythm from the usual circuit from one artwork to the next.
Between 1am and 5.30am, the “Night at the Museum” film programme features films by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Anne Imhof and Wim Wenders. Those who would rather get involved themselves will find the Rieckhallenatelier open around the clock, according to the organisers. In the Education Lounge in H4, small tents are available for playing and camping; they are intended to offer somewhere to rest in the museum. A pyjama tour rounds out the programme on Sunday morning.
Getting there and home again
Hamburger Bahnhof is at Invalidenstraße 50–51, near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. The S-Bahn is a useful mainstay for getting home at night: according to S-Bahn Berlin, services generally run throughout the night from Saturday into Sunday. In the city centre, weekend night services usually run every 15 to 20 minutes; individual lines and routes may vary. Check your connection on the day of travel, including engineering works and disruptions, especially if travelling onwards to the outer districts.
The 30 hours are not an invitation to tick off as much of the programme as possible. It is precisely the mix of focused exhibition visits and later events with a different rhythm that makes the weekend appealing: you can arrive when the doors open, return for a single late-night event or stay until morning. The anniversary programme ends at 6pm on Sunday.
Original reviewed by the editors · 11 November 2026
