de With its fifth season, Babylon Berlin comes to an end. A series epic that captured a vibrant era with unparalleled intensity.
Berlin, February 1933. The lights are burning, the music is playing, the nights seem endless. But beneath the glamour, the city is changing. With its fifth and final season, Babylon Berlin returns to Gereon Rath and Charlotte Ritter in the very weeks when the Weimar Republic falls apart and life changes for everyone.
All eight episodes have been available in the ARD Mediathek since 10 September 2026. After five seasons and 48 episodes, this closes a chapter that has shaped German television for almost a decade.
A City Between Euphoria and Upheaval
The final season takes us into 1933. Gereon Rath disappears after the Berlin Press Ball, and Charlotte Ritter goes looking for him. A trail leads to a psychiatrist and to a medical file from the First World War. As the investigation unfolds, the pressure on the police, the press and political opponents grows. For the characters, the question becomes ever more urgent: conform, resist or flee?
The story is loosely based on Volker Kutscher’s novel The March Fallen (Märzgefallene). Its historical background gives the crime drama its particular tension: the characters act in a time whose outcome we know, yet whose decisions feel open from one moment to the next. In this way, the series does not just make history visible, it lets us experience its consequences up close. (SWR on the historical context, in German)
Why Babylon Berlin Is So Exceptional
As a cinematic masterpiece, Babylon Berlin captures an era with unparalleled intensity. The camera moves through ballrooms, back courtyards and police corridors as if it were part of the city itself. Production design, costumes, lighting and music create a Berlin that is seductive, alive and full of contradictions all at once. The result is a visual language that goes far beyond a historical backdrop: it turns the city into the main character.
The series combines a crime story with a many-voiced portrait of society. Glamour meets social hardship, artistic freedom meets political violence, personal longing meets historical reality. Gereon and Charlotte give these upheavals a human face. The award-winning direction and powerful performances make it great television that entertains and stays with you long after.
Its success is also reflected in its reach. When it premiered on free TV on Das Erste in 2018, 7.83 million people tuned in. The ARD now counts more than 100 million streams in its Mediathek, and by 2020 the series had already been sold to more than 140 countries.
Babylon Berlin also resonated strongly in the United States. After its launch on Netflix, it became a widely noticed insider tip there, accompanied by enthusiastic reviews in outlets including The New York Times, Vogue, The New Yorker and NPR. In 2024, both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal named the fourth season among their picks of the year. The final season launches in the US and Canada in February 2027.
Its awards reflect this international recognition. Babylon Berlin received the first European Achievement in Fiction Series Award from the European Film Academy, as well as the Grand Prize at the Seoul International Drama Awards and the Magnolia Award at the Shanghai TV Festival, among others. The European Film Academy honoured the series as a cinematic spectacle and a precise portrait of the political and social reality of 1920s Berlin.
A Berlin Legacy
Babylon Berlin is so successful because it combines big images with big emotions and close observation. It did not turn 1920s Berlin into a nostalgic postcard, but brought it back to life as a vibrant, contradictory place. Its farewell is a powerful reminder of how rich this era was and how irretrievably it changed.
Part of this atmosphere lives on beyond the series. Our products capture the spirit of historic Berlin, handcrafted in the city that inspired it all.
