Berlin Museums Closed for Renovation: What Is Shut and What to See Instead
Most tour mornings at the World Clock somebody asks me the same question, and they ask it with a booking confirmation already on their phone. They came to Berlin for the Pergamon Altar. They want to know which entrance to use.
The honest answer is that they cannot use any entrance. The Pergamonmuseum has been shut to the public since October 2023, and the part of it that holds the Ishtar Gate is not expected back until around 2037. That is not a rumour. It is on the museum's own renovation page, in plain German, next to a countdown clock.
Berlin has an unusual number of famous buildings behind hoarding at the moment. Some of them will be back soon enough to plan around. Some of them will not be back in the lifetime of your travel plans. Knowing which is which is the difference between a good museum day and a wasted morning in Mitte.
The Ishtar Gate, photographed before the south wing of the Pergamonmuseum closed in October 2023. It is the single most requested thing in Berlin that nobody can currently see.
Which Berlin museums are closed for renovation right now
Checked on 8 September 2026, from each institution's own pages:
Pergamonmuseum: completely closed to visitors. No part of it is open, and there is no bookable ticket for it in the state museums' shop.
Museum Berggruen in Charlottenburg: closed since 5 September 2022 for a full overhaul of the Stüler building. Four years and counting, with no published reopening date.
The Zeughaus and the German history overview exhibition at the Deutsches Historisches Museum: closed for building work. The museum's Pei building next door stays open.
The Komische Oper's own house on Behrenstraße: closed since summer 2023 for a rebuild and extension. The company itself never stopped.
Everything else you have probably heard of is open. That includes all four other Museum Island houses, the Neue Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof, the Humboldt Forum and Charlottenburg Palace.
The Pergamonmuseum from the Kupfergraben. The colonnade is the picture everyone takes. The crane is the reason the door behind it does not open.
The Pergamonmuseum has one date you can trust and one you cannot
This is where most trip plans go wrong, because the museum has two answers and travel articles usually print only the first one.
The first date is real: 4 June 2027. On that day the north wing and the northern central building reopen. That brings back the altar hall and the hall of hellenistic architecture from the Antikensammlung, and the entire collection of the Museum für Islamische Kunst across two floors and 25 new rooms. The house is running a public countdown to it and has already opened group bookings for June 2027.
The altar hall as it looked when the museum was open. This is the room that comes back on 4 June 2027.
The second date is 2037, and it is an estimate. The south wing has been closed since 23 October 2023 and will stay closed after the 2027 reopening. It holds the Vorderasiatisches Museum, which is the collection with the Ishtar Gate and the Processional Way, and the hall of Roman architecture with the market gate of Miletus.
From June 2027 the Vorderasiatisches Museum will show a selection of highlights in one hall of the north wing. The museum has not published which objects those will be. So if you are picturing yourself standing in front of that blue wall of lions, plan on a decade, and treat any 2027 headline about the Pergamon reopening as covering half the building.
The Mschatta hall in May 2025, mid-renovation. The façade is one of the pieces that returns in 2027.
What actually comes back in 2027
The Pergamon Altar and the hellenistic architecture hall
The Mschatta façade, the Aleppo Room, the Alhambra dome and the rest of the Museum für Islamische Kunst
A selection of Vorderasiatisches Museum highlights, in the north wing
What does not
The Vorderasiatisches Museum's own galleries, including the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way
The hall of Roman architecture and the market gate of Miletus
The Processional Way. It is in the south wing, which is the part of the building on the long timetable.
The tool below plots all of this on one timeline. Pick the thing you came for and it will tell you when it is back and what is worth doing instead this week.
The two closures nobody warns you about
The Pergamon closure is at least famous. These two catch people who have already built a day around them.
Museum Berggruen holds the Picassos, Klees, Matisses and Giacomettis that make Charlottenburg worth the U2 ride. It has been shut since September 2022 while the Stüler building is rebuilt and the collection travels. It was a guest of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston until September 2026. There is no announced return.
If that collection is what you wanted, go to the Neue Nationalgalerie at the Kulturforum instead. It holds the rest of the classical modern collection, it is open Tuesday to Sunday with a late Thursday, and it costs 20 euro for everything or 14 euro for the collection alone.
The Stüler building on Schloßstraße, opposite Charlottenburg Palace. The Museum Berggruen is inside it, and has been closed since September 2022.
The Deutsches Historisches Museum is the sharper trap, because the building on Unter den Linden looks completely open from the street. The Zeughaus is shut and the big overview exhibition of German history from the Middle Ages to the fall of the Wall is not on show anywhere.
The museum is unusually straight about the timing. Its own building-works page says no reliable completion or reopening date can be given yet, that strip-out work runs into mid-2027, and that only after that can the builders commit to a schedule. I read that as gone for the rest of the decade.
What is open is the Pei building behind it, with changing exhibitions, every day from 10:00 to 18:00. A single exhibition is 7 euro, all of them together 10 euro, and under 18s are free. It is also one of the very few central Berlin museums that opens on a Monday, which makes it a genuinely useful card to hold.
The Pei building behind the Zeughaus. This is the half of the Deutsches Historisches Museum that is still open, and it opens seven days a week.
Museum Island itself is not closed
It is worth saying clearly, because "Museum Island is under renovation" gets repeated until people skip the island altogether.
Four houses are open and none of them is a consolation prize:
Neues Museum, for Nefertiti, the Egyptian collection and the prehistory floors
Altes Museum, for the rest of the Antikensammlung, 14 euro and 7 reduced
Bode-Museum, for sculpture and the coin cabinet, same prices
Alte Nationalgalerie, for 19th century painting
The James-Simon-Galerie, the white colonnaded entrance building on the Kupfergraben, stays open right through the Pergamon works and is where most island visits now start. And Das Panorama, the rotunda beside the Pergamonmuseum, is the closest thing to a substitute for the altar: Yadegar Asisi's 360 degree reconstruction of the ancient city shown together with masterpieces from the Antikensammlung, 14 euro, 7 reduced, free under 18.
If you want the whole island in one purchase, the three day Museumspass Berlin is 32 euro, 16 reduced, and covers around twenty houses across the city. My Berlin pass comparison works through whether that beats single tickets for your particular trip.
The James-Simon-Galerie. It opened in 2019 and stayed open through everything since.
Then there are the closing days
Renovation is the dramatic version. The quieter version is arriving on the one weekday a museum is shut. Berlin does not run a single rule here, and three of these surprise people every week:
Humboldt Forum closes on Tuesday and opens on Monday. That is the reverse of almost every other museum in the city, and it makes the Humboldt Forum the obvious Monday plan.
Kunstgewerbemuseum, Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg, Museum Europäischer Kulturen and the Friedrichswerdersche Kirche all close on Monday and Tuesday.
Schloss Köpenick shortens its week from October: Thursday to Sunday only, 11:00 to 17:00.
If your trip lands on a Monday, my Berlin on a Monday guide has the wider list of what is open.
My advice
Fix the thing you actually came for before you fix the itinerary. If it is the Pergamon Altar, come after June 2027 or accept the Panorama as the version you get. If it is the Ishtar Gate, take it off this trip entirely and build the day around the Neues Museum instead, which is two minutes away and holds monumental architecture of its own.
I have watched people spend an hour walking the island looking for a door into the Pergamonmuseum, because a guidebook printed in 2019 told them it was the highlight of Berlin. That hour is the whole reason this page exists. Ten minutes of checking beats an hour of circling the building.
One simple move before you travel: open the state museums' opening hours page and the Pergamonmuseum renovation page, and check the two or three houses your trip depends on. Building schedules slip, and these are the pages that slip first.
On my free walking tour I stop on the Friedrichsbrücke with the whole island in view and explain which of those buildings you can walk into that afternoon and which you cannot. It is about two hours through the historic centre, and the museum question comes up on almost every walk. If you are still deciding which houses deserve your time, the best museums for first time visitors guide is the place to start.
Image credits
Source and licence details for the 7 photographs used in this article.
The Ishtar Gate in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Pergamonmuseum: Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Pergamonmuseum portico on the Kupfergraben with a construction crane beside it: HerrAdams, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Pergamon Altar hall filled with visitors: Hnapel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Mschatta hall in the Pergamonmuseum north wing during the renovation, May 2025: Thomas Tunsch, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Processional Way to the Ishtar Gate, Pergamonmuseum south wing: Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Stüler building on Schloßstraße in Charlottenburg, home of the Museum Berggruen: Andreas Praefcke, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Pei building of the Deutsches Historisches Museum at night: Ansgar Koreng, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, via Wikimedia Commons.