ਬਰਲਿਨਬਰਲਿਨ

Berlin is the capital and largest city of Germany, home to 3,700,577 people on the banks of the Spree, and a city-state in its own right. For Punjabis, Berlin holds the largest Indian community of any German city: 45,189 Indian citizens in June 2025, more than Munich and Frankfurt, the next two cities in the same count, combined. It is also one of the five cities where most of Germany's Sikhs are found, and its sangat is served by Gurdwara Singh Sabha, Berlin.

Where is Berlin, and why do Punjabis live there?

Berlin stands in northeastern Germany, surrounded on every side by the state of Brandenburg, built along the Spree where the river flows into the Havel in the western borough of Spandau. About a third of the city is forests, parks, gardens, rivers, canals and lakes, and its largest lake is the Muggelsee in the east. First documented in the 13th century at the crossing of two important historic trade routes, Berlin became the capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1417, of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701 and of the German Empire in 1871. After the Second World War the victorious Allies divided it: East Berlin was declared the capital of East Germany, West Berlin became a western enclave, and the Berlin Wall split the two for a generation. German reunification in 1990 made Berlin the capital of all Germany again.

Punjabis came to Berlin through the wider German Sikh story. When Britain tightened its immigration rules, Sikhs began settling in northwestern continental Europe in the 1970s as single male labour migrants, entering countries first meant as transit points, and the political turmoil in Punjab after 1984 brought further waves especially to Germany, many applying for asylum. Berlin added a second, newer pull: a capital city economy built on high technology, the service sector, creative industries, startup companies, research facilities and media, with great universities and a cost of living long lower than Munich or Hamburg. Families followed both waves, and the result is a Punjabi presence woven through a city where 42.3 per cent of registered residents had a migration background at the end of 2025. Berlin continues this series' map of Punjabi places in Germany.

What do the numbers say?

Germany keeps no census of religion or ethnicity by city, so there is no official count of Sikhs or Punjabis in Berlin, and this page invents none. Nationally, the religious studies service REMID estimated 25,000 Sikhs in Germany in 2020, while the German Information Center for Sikh Religion estimated 18,000 in 2017; most German Sikhs have roots in Punjab, India, and the rest are mainly from the Afghan Sikh community. What is counted exactly is citizenship. Berlin held 45,189 Indian citizens in June 2025, the largest city figure in Germany by a wide margin, in a country where about 301,000 people of Indian descent lived in 2024. In Mitte, the central borough, India is listed among the largest countries of origin. Within those Indian totals the Punjabi share is not separated out.

Gurdwaras and community life

The national gurdwara list records one temple in Berlin, Gurdwara Singh Sabha, among about twenty gurdwaras in Germany counted by the Atlas of Religious Minority Rights. It carries the city's Sikh rhythm: weekly diwans and langar open to everyone, and, like gurdwaras across Europe, it doubles as a social and educational centre running Punjabi classes for Sikh youth, because religious services are held in Punjabi and passing the language and the Gurmukhi script to the German born generation is the community's standing task. For the first arrivals, who came as labour migrants and, after 1984, often as asylum seekers, the gurdwara was also the first address for help with work, housing and paperwork in a divided and then a reunified foreign capital.

Study, startups and the newer Berlin

Berlin's Indian growth today is led by study and skilled work. Indian students in Germany have risen from 3,516 in 2008-09 to about 60,000 in 2024-25, making Indians the largest group of international students in the country, and Berlin's universities and research institutes take a large share of them. Around the students sits the capital's startup scene, its technology firms, media houses and creative industries, the same professional pull this series describes for ਮਿਊਨਿਖ in Bavaria and ਹੈਮਬਰਗ on the Elbe. Punjabis in Berlin belong to that professional flow and to the older Sikh settlement at once, spread through ordinary districts rather than gathered in a single Punjabi quarter. Berlin has no Little Punjab; its Punjabis are threaded through the working life of a capital that has always been remade by arrivals.

Berlin is the trade crossing turned imperial capital, divided city and reunified heart of Europe, a place rebuilt by every generation that arrives in it. For Punjabis it is Germany's biggest Indian city and one of its five Sikh anchors: one gurdwara, 45,189 Indian citizens, and a community now raising its third generation between the Spree and the Havel. Compare it with the Bavarian capital: read about ਮਿਊਨਿਖ, or see the full map of Punjabi places in Germany.