Freie Universität Berlin has been a German University of Excellence since 2007. The university was able to use its success in all three funding lines of the Excellence Initiative of the German federal and state governments to develop itself as an “International Network University,” a world-class institution for cutting-edge research. The university is a magnet for students and researchers from around the world and an outstanding location for training talented researchers. Interdisciplinary collaboration has further strengthened the performance of individual disciplines, as regularly demonstrated by international rankings. The university has never lost sight of the ideal arising from the concepts guiding its founding in 1948, using them as the basis for its proposal in the Excellence Initiative: Veritas, Iustitia, and Libertas – truth, justice, and freedom.

In 2005 with the Excellence Initiative, the German federal and state governments launched a competition for funding among the best German universities. The program was also intended to strengthen Germany as a whole as a leading location for research.

In contrast to its successor program, called the Excellence Strategy, the Excellence Initiative had three funding lines in both program phases (2006 to 2012 and 2012 to 2017): 1. Graduate schools to promote junior researchers, 2. Clusters of Excellence to promote top-level research, and 3. Developing strategies for universities to promote cutting-edge research.