Your plan is set: finding funding for greening in Berlin – guide

Editorial team·updated on 15 Sep 2026

Deadlines, funding rates, responsible offices, projects and events in this guide come live from our records. They are not written into the text and are not maintained twice.

You know what you want – roof, courtyard, façade, rainwater – and now the question: will anyone chip in? Berlin has fewer programmes than the internet suggests, and they differ in exactly four points. Once you know those four, you need ten minutes instead of ten evenings.

Your starting point

Four facts decide every programme. Who you are: tenant, owner, owners' association, housing company, business, association, school, public body. That is the hardest filter – most Berlin programmes presuppose ownership or a right of disposal. What you plan: programmes are sorted by project type, not by wishes. „I want it greener“ is not a project; „green roof on 240 square metres of existing roof“ is.

Where: two of the most important programmes have a spatial limit – the state programme for roofs and façades applies only inside a funding area defined by a list of postcodes, and one district courtyard programme applies only to private property inside the S-Bahn ring. Your address can rule out a programme before anything else counts. When: almost all grants require that you have not yet begun. The order is part of the condition, not a recommendation.

Is this realistic?

Realistically, the Berlin landscape looks like this. For building owners, the state programme for roof and façade greening is the big item – three-figure grants per square metre of roof, a share of costs for façades, plus funded planning costs. For tenants there are exactly two routes, both at district level: the courtyard programmes in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. For associations and initiatives, project funds from Berlin's nature conservation foundation are the right pot. For schools and nurseries there is a dedicated state programme for greening school grounds. For everyone with a plot, reducing the rainwater charge is not a grant but the only effect that returns every year.

And the gaps, named openly: there is no programme for balconies. None for a single tree pit either. There is no dedicated investment grant for private cisterns and infiltration systems. The Berliner Entsiegelungsprogramm and the EU-co-financed state programme for climate adaptation address public, non-profit and commercial bodies – not private individuals. Knowing that in advance stops the searching.

A warning about sources: the federal funding database lists some Berlin programmes out of date. What counts is always the original page of the body handing out the money.

Step by step

1. Translate your plan into funding language Write your plan down the way programmes name it: roof greening, façade greening, courtyard greening, desealing, rainwater, street greening, community garden. Plus the number: how many square metres of vegetated area will be created? Minimum areas are the most common reason for exclusion.
2. Establish your role and settle consent Are you eligible to apply, or do you need someone who is? Tenants and initiatives can apply under several programmes – but only with written consent from the owner's side. Stopping point: do not even start without that consent; it is an application requirement and cannot be supplied later.
3. Check your address against the area limit Is your postcode inside the state programme's funding area? Is your plot inside the S-Bahn ring, where the district programme requires it? Stopping point: this check takes a minute and can save weeks.
4. Read the deadline, status and check date Is the programme still running? Is there a fixed closing date, or does it run „until funds are exhausted“? When was the information last checked? Programmes get paused, application portals close temporarily, guidelines change in January. The datasets on this site carry their check date visibly – that is where you see it.
5. Keep the order: apply before you commission The most expensive mistake of all. Concluding a supply or works contract usually already counts as starting the project. Sign the contract with the trade before the grant decision arrives and you lose the funding entirely. You may obtain quotes; you may not place the order.
6. Assemble the documents properly once Typically required: proof of ownership or entitlement, a short description, a time and cost plan, a site plan, an area calculation, photos, quotes from specialist firms – often at least three –, a complete financing plan and a declaration that work has not begun. Do the set once properly and it fits several applications.
7. Obtain permits in parallel Building permit, monument protection permission, special use permit for the pavement: whatever you need must be in place by the time funding is approved, and you have to declare it. Stopping point: funding does not replace a permit – and official fees are often expressly not eligible.
8. Take the obligations with the decision Usually a start within one year, establishment care as a binding part of the project, proof of use with a report and photos within a few months of completion, and a retention period of often ten years during which the greening has to be kept maintained and functional. And for building programmes: the measure may not be passed on to the rent.

Time and cost

Time: the pre-check – project, role, address, deadline – is half an hour. A complete application with quotes, plans and permit declarations realistically costs a weekend plus the waiting times at firms and offices. From application to decision, weeks pass.

Cost: the application itself is free. What costs money is what it requires: planning (often eligible itself), quotes, official fees such as for a special use permit (usually not eligible) and the owner's share. Almost all programmes are part-financing – they pay a percentage or a maximum per square metre, never everything. You must be able to secure the total financing, and that is checked.

Afterwards: the effort after approval is small but time-bound. The two deadlines that cost money if missed: starting within the approval period, and the proof of use after completion.

What are you allowed to do?

Funding is neither an entitlement nor a permit. Grants are made within the available budget; no legal claim arises from them. And a decision permits nothing that building, monument or road law forbids – other public law provisions must not be breached by the measure, and the necessary official decisions have to be obtained by the time of approval.

What is compulsory is not funded. Greening required anyway by a development plan, a condition in a building permit or the Bauordnung für Berlin is expressly excluded from state funding. So are new buildings and the renovation of existing green roofs or green façades.

Tenant protection. Under the state programme for roofs and façades, neither the grant nor the owner's own share may be passed on to the rent in any form or used to justify rent increases. In one of the district courtyard programmes, owners even have to confirm this in writing.

Several pots. Additional funds from other state programmes are possible in principle, but double funding of the same costs is excluded. Anyone acting commercially also comes into contact with EU state aid law – then ceilings and reporting duties apply.

And the sentence that appears on every page here: this is our own compilation. What is binding is the original source with its check date.

Matching funding

Here is the stock we keep for Berlin – provider, project type, area, eligible applicants, type of deadline, status, original source and check date for each dataset. The list can be filtered: by project type, Bezirk (district), eligible applicant, deadline and status. What is here is maintained in one place and takes effect in all guides and all three languages at once – which is why no text here ever states a deadline or a rate.

Advice is the second half of the answer and often the more important one. The state programme has its own application advice service, rainwater has a state agency, courtyards and tree pits have district offices, and urban greening has an open advice session. Half an hour on the phone saves half the application:

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