Exhibitions and Programme Highlights for the 2026 Anniversary Year

Visitors can look forward to a wide range of exhibitions, concerts, family Sundays and digital formats. With the exhibition Between the Lines: Daniel Libeskind and the Jewish Museum Berlin, the museum spotlights Libeskind's iconic architecture, while the major exhibition in the old building, The Opposite of Now: Artistic Paths to a Different Present, will enlist international artistic approaches to help explore new social perspectives.

The exhibitions will be accompanied by a programme in which participation is written large: music in the museum garden, a nationwide campaign for the Jewish Places website, which showcases Jewish life throughout Germany, family Sundays, and not least a children‘s festival. Because ANOHA, the Children’s World of the JMB, is also celebrating an anniversary: its 5th.

25 years of the JMB – that means a quarter of a century of curiosity, exchange and social engagement. The museum is celebrating its anniversary as an open, inclusive institution that preserves the past, questions the present, and helps shape the future.

Exhibitions

OPENING

Between the Lines
Daniel Libeskind and the Jewish Museum Berlin

7 May – 1 November 2026

This exhibition looks at Daniel Libeskind‘s building and the time in which it was created. In the summer of 1989, the New York architect won the competition for the extension of the Berlin City Museum – which brought him world fame. Libeskind had undertaken a deep study of Berlin's historical landscape and inscribed it in his building. His design went far beyond the original brief, and consequently Libeskind and his building have had a decisive influence on commemorative culture in Germany. Using models, drawings and discourses, the exhibition takes visitors back to the period of reunification and post-Wall Berlin, helping them to understand the origins of today‘s discussions about remembrance, memory and commemoration.

OPENING

The Opposite of Now
Artistic Paths to a Different Present

4 September 2026 – 10 January 2027 

To mark its 25th anniversary, the Jewish Museum Berlin is inviting its audience to release themselves from the present with the help of 12 artistic projects, and to search for approaches that can change society. The projects will be developed specially for the exhibition and aim to encourage the public to engage with an often oppressive present in order to counter it with their own ideas. The perspective of the Jewish minority, which has had to endure many unbearable presents throughout its history, is one of the starting points for The Opposite of Now. The exhibition calls for a turnaround, an opposite, a better life for all.

With Yael Bartana, Andrea Büttner, Chto Delat, Arnold Dreyblatt, William Forsythe, Dana Kavelina, Alexander Kluge, Daniel Laufer, Dor Zlehka Levy, Ari Benjamin Meyers, Alona Rodeh, Eran Schaerf.

2025 OPENING

Claude Lanzmann
The Recordings

27 November 2025 – 12 April 2026

Celebrating the 100th birthday of journalist and documentary filmmaker Claude Lanzmann (1925–2018), the exhibition presents for the first time the audio archive that accompanied his film Shoah (1985). Together with the film, which made history 40 years ago, the archive was inscribed into the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2023. The collection comprises 152 previously unknown audio cassettes. They document the numerous conversations that Lanzmann and his assistants had with victims, perpetrators and third parties during the several years of research prior to the start of filming in the 1970s and early 1980s. The audio recordings are the focus of the exhibition, supplemented by objects, documents and film footage.

Accompanying programme
10–11 January 2026
Film screening Shoah (1985) by Claude Lanzmann (full length)

27 January 2026
Film screening Je n’avais que le néant – ‘Shoah’ par Lanzmann (All I Had Was Nothingness), documentary (2025) by Guillaume Ribot, and Conversation with the film director

9 February 2026
Event The Making of Claude Lanzmann's Film Shoah. Conversation Corinna Coulmas and Irena Steinfeldt-Levy (in German)

9–10 February 2026
Conference The Sounds of History. Claude Lanzmann’s preprations for Shoah (in German)

7–6 March 2026
Film screening Shoah (1985) by Claude Lanzmann (full length)

More information