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Until May 11, the Senate and numerous partners are planning around 100 events, including exhibitions, discussions, wreath-laying ceremonies, guided tours and concerts.

The event will kick off in the morning (10 a.m.) with a wreath-laying ceremony with Governing Mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) at Schulenburgring in Tempelhof. This is where Wehrmacht General Helmuth Weidling signed Berlin's surrender to the Red Army on May 2, 1945. A memorial plaque on the building commemorates the historic event. Governing Mayor Michael Müller (SPD), who was in office from 2014 to 2021, later grew up in the building and also took part in the commemoration.

An open-air exhibition "Peace at last?!" will open at the Brandenburg Gate at 11 am. In the evening (8 p.m.), the oratorio "Liberation" with European artists, which the composer Marc Sinan created especially for this occasion, will celebrate its premiere right next door in the Akademie der Künste. The Second World War in Europe ended in 1945 with the surrender of the German Wehrmacht. On the night of May 8-9, 1945, representatives of the Wehrmacht signed a document to this effect before the victorious powers of the USA, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union in the building that is now the Museum Berlin-Karlshorst.

Against the backdrop of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, commemorating the end of the war is a balancing act. The Berlin Senate decided not to invite any foreign guests to the country's official commemorative events - i.e. neither from Russia nor from Ukraine or other successor states of the Soviet Union. The Red Army, which liberated Berlin from National Socialism, included soldiers from many ethnic groups and all of the former Soviet republics.

The program of the Berlin theme week "80 Years of the End of the War" also includes a joint commemoration with Brandenburg: On Sunday (4 May), Berlin's Governing Mayor Wegner and Brandenburg's Minister President Dietmar Woidke (SPD) will meet Holocaust survivors at the memorial site of the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp. On May 5, Wegner discusses the Second World War and the lessons to be learned from it today with young participants in a workshop at the State Archives. On May 7, Margot Friedländer is expected to attend a memorial service by the Senate and the House of Representatives in the Rotes Rathaus. The 103-year-old Holocaust survivor will give a reading.

The actual Day of Liberation from National Socialism on May 8 is celebrated as a public holiday in Berlin for the first time. Representatives of the Senate lay a wreath at the Soviet memorial in Schönholzer Heide in the district of Pankow. However, according to the Senate Chancellery, this commemoration is not open to the public. The Brandenburg Gate will be illuminated to mark the anniversary, Wegner announced. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will speak at a commemorative event organized by the federal government in the Bundestag.