For those who take a programming path, community is key to both professional development and career success. While you’ll definitely find support, knowledge exchange, and discussions in online groups, offline communities can offer you two more ingredients of professional success: (1) face-to-face communication with fellow humans and (2) networking. And if you have relocated to a new city for work—in our case, to Berlin—these two will make your integration smoother and faster.
This is exactly why we thought it’s worth to make a map of Berlin’s major tech events and list the local offline dev communities.
Here, we have listed the biggest 10 tech conferences and festivals in Berlin. The map below shows the respective venues.
Click on the map pins to learn more about what’s happening in that area and when.
Here is basically the same information that’s on the map above, just in a more readable format.
10 biggest tech conferences and festivals in Berlin by seasons of the year.
Spring |
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|---|---|---|---|
| Rise of AI | 13–14 May 2020 | Deutsche Telekom AG, Representative Office | Rise of AI Conference has been around since 2014. Now, it is a 2-day event with 1,000 attendees, 100 AI companies involved, and 80 speakers from different backgrounds. More: riseof.ai |
Summer |
| TOA Berlin | June–July 2020 (TBA) | Funkhaus Berlin | The biggest annual tech event in Berlin, takes place since 2012. Tagline: “150+ thought-leaders from tech, art, and science share their vision on how they see the world evolving.” 2019 conference in numbers: 20,000 attendees, 120+ satellite events, 150+ speakers, 3,800 founders/CxOs. More: toa.berlin |
| Angular Conference | 30–31 August 2019 | Bolle Festsäle; Ameron Hotel Abion Spreebogen |
NG-DE is the first non-profit community-driven Angular conference in Germany "with great coffee and childcare." NG-DE in numbers: 400 attendees, 30 speakers and trainers, 6 workshops, 2 days, 16 sessions, 1 track. More: ng-de.org |
Fall |
| PyCon DE & PyData Berlin | 9–13 October 2019 | KOSMOS | Over 1,000 guests, more than 100 sessions dedicated to PyData (artificial intelligence, machine learning, ethics...) and Python topics (programming, DevOps, Web, Django...). More: de.pycon.org |
| Science Hack Day Berlin | 1–3 November 2019 | Motionlab.Berlin | “An intensive and inspiring weekend full of creative, collaborative and interdisciplinary hacking and making for developers, designers, artists, engineers, scientists and science enthusiasts of all stripes.” More: berlin.sciencehackday.org |
| Deep Berlin Conference | 5 November 2019 | The Drivery GmbH | The Deep Berlin Conference focuses on AI driven technology. They bring a selected group of startups and speakers to share their experience on the advancements at the forefront of the development of AI applications. More: deep-berlin.ai |
| Codemotion Berlin | 12–13 November 2019 | Kulturbrauerei Berlin | 2 days, 60 speakers from big tech companies and cool projects (GitHub, Uber, Atlassian, Google, AWS, and more), 5 parallel stages, 14 tracks; talks on topics including Devops, Blockchain, AI/Machine Learning, Inspirational, IoT, Big Data, Front-end, Cloud, Cybersecurity, Serverless, Software Architecture, Design, UX. More: codemotion.com |
| Data Natives Conference | 25–26 November 2019 | Kühlhaus Berlin | The conference positions itself as “Europe’s biggest data science gathering”. In 2019, over 2,000 attendees and more than 130 speakers are expected across 4 tracks: Future, Tech, Startups, and Impact. More: datanatives.io |
Winter |
| React Day Berlin | 4–6 December 2019 | KOSMOS; SRH Hochschule Berlin |
Organised by the React Open Source Community. RDB in numbers: 800 attendees; 24+ speakers; 2 tracks with talks and workshops on architecture, Design Systems, React, React Native, GraphQL, Reason or other. More: reactday.berlin |
| Disrupt Berlin | 11–12 December 2019 | Arena Berlin | A huge conference organised by TechCrunch.com in multiple cities, including Berlin. They promise enormous press coverage, networking opportunities, lots of workshops, and a chance for startups to win $50K in Startup Battlefield. More: techcrunch.com |
Here is a map with some of the local tech hubs, coworking spaces, Berlin’s major company offices, etc. that serve as meetup and get-together locations for engineers and developers.
Click on the map pins to learn more about what’s happening in your area.
This is where something is happening pretty regularly:
→ Delivery Hero locations;
→ Both Factory Berlin campuses;
→ The Family Berlin;
→ Zalando Tech Events Berlin at one of the company’s locations;
→ Silicon Allee Events at R/D Coffee Bar & other locations;
→ N26 office at Klosterstraße;
→ eBay Europe;
→ SoundCloud HQ.
Communities and user groups listed in this section are not strictly tied to a particular programming language or development area. Some of them are open to everyone who is into technology in general, and others have certain membership criteria or rules (such as “women only” or “no recruiters”).
Here, we’ve listed 12 of Berlin’s “general tech” user groups that looked most active.
| Women Techmakers Berlin | Monthly or more often Various locations |
Women Techmakers Berlin are a part of Google Developer Group (GDG) Berlin. Their mission is to encourage diversity in Berlin’s tech. Activities: study groups, fireside chats and international events. All events are open to everyone, regardless of gender/age/race/experience, etc. Fun fact: WTM Berlin were recognised as the most active tech community in Berlin in 2018. |
|---|---|---|
| GDG Berlin | Every few months Various locations |
Google Developer Group (GDG) Berlin is an open group of people who use technologies & software developed by Google. |
| coding berlin | At least every 2 months Various locations |
A regular meetup for everyone who codes, regardless of technology or language. Talks, demos and presentations with at least 1 line of code, questions & answers. Some of their rules: • everyone can become a developer • everyone can become a better developer • being a bad developer doesn't make you a bad person • there are no bad developers |
| Developer Group Berlin | Normally monthly Often (not always) at Fairmas GmbH, Sachsendamm 2 |
German-language tech talks, workshops, coding dojos and developer groups meetups (for example, .NET). Organisers of events such as Data Science Open Space, Developer Open Space, Spartakiade. |
| BerlinStartups | Weekly meetups + additional events The Place Berlin (weekly) + additional locations |
Active user group which hosts weekly "TGIF" meetups and also networking events, talks, etc. Although their main focus is entrepreneurship, they host some great tech talks from time to time. |
| Facebook Developer Circle Berlin | Once a month and more often Various locations |
A part of the global network of developer communities, the goal is to bring together developers, to encourage knowledge exchange, discussion of hot tech topics and collective solving of problems. |
| Women Who Code Berlin | More or less every 2 weeks Various locations |
Part of Women Who Code, the largest and most active community of engineers dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology careers. Their events are talks, meetups, and hack evenings. |
| Berlin Hack and Tell | Monthly c-base Raumstation, Rungestrasse 20 |
This is the Berlin fork of the NYC Hack and Tell Meetup Group. Offline version of the "Show HN" or "Ask HN" posts on Hacker News. Speakers present a tool, hack, library, whatever, and the participants ask questions and provide feedback. Hacks from the past meetups here. |
| IBM Developer Berlin | Monthly or so Various locations |
IBM Developer Berlin group that hosts workshops on Cloud Native Development and Containers, Serverless, AI and ML, Data Science. They have hackathons and more which are announced on their page. |
| GraphQL Berlin | Every few months Various locations |
A regular meetup of people interested in GraphQL and its ecosystem. They invite speakers from all around the globe talking about the latest developments in the GraphQL world. |
| Hackerstolz | About twice a year in Berlin Various locations |
From their website: “Hackerstolz is a young association originating from the metropolitan area Rhine-Neckar. We organize hackathons, support the /digital’bright blond’|table soccer/g culture and promote the inclusion of more women in IT.” Their hackathons and meetups take place mainly in West Germany, but sometimes also in Berlin. |
| Berlin Science Hacking | Monthly Motionlab.Berlin, Bouchéstrasse 12, Halle 20 |
Monthly science hacking meetups from the community of “weird scientists and hackers” from Science Hack Day Berlin to “get together, get inspired, hack things, get help, have some Spaß, and keep this awesome science ball a-rolling.” |
Finally, there are specialised groups as well. In a big city like Berlin, pretty much every programming language (in case of JS, also its frameworks and libraries) has a sizable community of its own. What’s interesting, some of them can be even bigger than mixed communities (check out the Python Users Group, for example).
Below are 27 language- or technology-specific user groups in Berlin which get together on a regular basis. Click on the respective buttons to filter out the irrelevant ones.
Our team hopes that you’ll find this information helpful, especially if you are new to Berlin.
After all, joining a user group and attending meetups will help you make new friends and feel more integrated into the local (IT) community.