PRESS RELEASE | Start of the Anniversary Week: “25 Years of Twin Cities Windhoek – Berlin”

The anniversary week celebrating 25 years of the city partnership between Windhoek and Berlin will start in just a few days. From the 17th to the 23rd of November 2025, Kulturprojekte Berlin will present a rich and diverse programme with more than 30 events, around 40 cooperating partners and more than 100 participants all over the city that includes contemporary art, culture, film and music, civil society dialogue, the creative industries, the sciences and archives.  

In 2025, Windhoek and Berlin are celebrating an anniversary that represents an active culture of remembrance and future-orientated collaboration. Over the 25 years they have been twin cities, many different relationships have grown in areas such as culture, education and business, relationships that are picked up and carried forward by the anniversary programme. Grappling with Germany’s historical responsibility towards Namibia is fundamental to this and for envisioning a shared future. The programme is therefore based on a wide range of community perspectives and collaborations, and seeks to foster dialogue between stakeholders from Berlin and Windhoek that includes many different voices. At the same time, music theatre, guided tours of the city, exhibitions and cinema offer a wide range of experiences and encounters for the public – and almost all the events are free.  

The anniversary week will kick off with “Memory Scripts”, an artistic intervention by Windhoek artist Vitjitua Ndjiharine, which will be projected onto the Berlin House of Representatives throughout the anniversary week. As a member of the press, you can register for the opening ceremony on the 17th of November at 16:45, which will be attended by the artist as well as the President of the House of Representatives, Cornelia Seibeld, and the Mayor of Windhoek, Ndeshihafela Larandja, by writing to pressereferat@parlament-berlin.de by the 14th of November. The Humboldt Forum will host the European premiere of the music theatre production “People of Song”, which was developed by a Namibian-German artist collective associated with the theatre organisation Momentbühne and combines traditional choral singing with contemporary compositions, uniting them with dance and drama in a single magnificent work of art. The film festival “AFRIKAMERA” will present a night of Namibian films, talks and music at the SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA. “Traces of Memory”, an event at the Gropius Bau curated by Kulturprojekte Berlin, will explore the theme of archives and ask how the past and present are linked in them. Daily guided tours of the city by Berlin Postkolonial and deSta – Decolonial City Tours invite the public to explore Berlin and its history with a critical eye. 

You can find the full diverse anniversary programme, which includes many more exhibitions, panel discussions, special guided tours, performances and participatory projects such as a children’s podcast and a community singing event, at www.windhoek-berlin.com. 

The celebrations in Berlin were preceded by an anniversary week in Windhoek, which took place from the 14th to the 19th of October 2025. The focus there was on participatory projects that engaged in dialogue about future potential and possibilities for productive collaboration within the city partnership, as well as creating opportunities for meetings between representatives of civil society, companies, school students and local creative professionals. The world premiere of “People of Song” also took place in the National Theatre of Windhoek, while the fashion show “Street Threads”, curated especially by the Namibia Institute for Democracy, took place in public urban space. The week included an official delegation visit by Kai Wegner, the Governing Mayor of Berlin, Sarah Wedl-Wilson, Berlin Senator for Culture and Social Cohesion and other representatives from politics, culture and business.    

The Berlin anniversary programme celebrating “25 Years of Twin Cities Windhoek – Berlin” is being curated and organised by Kulturprojekte Berlin, on the initiative of the Governing Mayor of Berlin – Senate Chancellery, and in cooperation with a large number of partners. The programme in Windhoek took place in cooperation with the City of Windhoek, the Namibia Institute for Democracy and the Creative Industry Institute Africa. Made possible by funds from the Lotto Foundation Berlin.