Last year, the Berlin Senate unveiled plans to strike 250 million euros from the city’s tertiary education, research, and science budget in 2025. While the precise nature of these cuts has yet to be confirmed, it is expected that state universities will face a deficit of more than 100 million euros. The cuts that have been planned for 2025 and the manner in which further cuts will be integrated into the budgets for upcoming years pose considerable challenges for Berlin’s universities. They also endanger Berlin’s reputation as a hub for research and science in the long term.

Freie Universität Berlin is heavily affected by these budget cuts: In total, it faces a budget deficit of around 37 million euros in 2025. For now, the university should be able to mitigate these cuts by up to fifty percent through its reserve funds. The remaining half will come from short-term measures that will apply only to the year 2025 for the time being. Unfortunately, it remains unclear whether additional cuts will be announced for Freie Universität Berlin over the course of 2025.

Even less is known about the plans for 2026 and 2027, and how much money the university will be expected to save then. The university’s decision to make use of its reserve funds to soften the blow of these considerable cutbacks means that many of its planned construction projects will now have to be revised. The funding originally planned for construction and renovation works will now have to be used to preserve existing research, study, teaching, and administrative structures at Freie Universität Berlin.