Berlin is currently facing an unprecedented surge in lawlessness, driven by a criminal underworld undergoing profound shifts. Germany, a country accustomed to modest levels of criminal violence, now appears to be waking up to a new reality.

Historically, Germany appeared largely insulated from the highly violent organized crime landscape in Western and Northern Europe. That sense of distance has faded, however, with recent worrying developments in the Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden sounding a warning signal to authorities.

Over the last few years, Berlin has experienced a dramatic increase in criminal violence, particularly involving firearms. According to the latest data from the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), Germany’s federal criminal police office, the city has the highest rate of gun-related violence in the country. Gun crime increased by 68% between 2024 and 2025, and the trend has not slowed. Since January 2026, there have been at least nine incidents involving shots being fired at people or property. Several cases have involved guns being discharged at business premises, including shisha bars, car garages, houses, cafés and restaurants, seemingly as an act of intimidation. In one instance, a hand grenade was set off at a nightclub.

In 2025, the Berlin police launched a task force – ‘Ferrum’, the Latin word for ‘iron’ – to counter the escalating level of criminal violence in the city. In February, the unit was joined by a specialized team of public prosecutors – named ‘Telum’, a Latin word meaning ‘weapon’ – to investigate over 200 cases that had accumulated.

While this level of insecurity is a new phenomenon in Berlin, similar developments in other German cities have been ringing alarm bells for some time. Since 2024, there has been a marked increase in violent incidents involving gangs and organized crime groups in cities such as Stuttgart, Cologne, Frankfurt and Hamburg. Many of these cases have been linked to the Netherlands, and are viewed as a spillover effect of that country losing control of its organized crime ecosystem. There have been several cases of explosive attacks and attempted assassinations in which perpetrators based in the Netherlands, often minors, have been hired to carry out violence-as-a-service, a formerly unknown threat in Germany. 

With its highly diverse and competitive criminal ecosystem, Germany has long been identified by the GI-TOC as being at risk of increasing levels of violence. The disorder in Berlin since 2025 appears to confirm this trend, despite major differences between the situation in the capital and the rest of the country.

Berlin’s illicit economy differs significantly from that of cities like Cologne, Frankfurt and Hamburg, which are more closely linked to criminal markets in Western and Southern Europe. The influence of networks from the Netherlands, such as the ‘Mocro’ mafia, or of Italian organized crime groups, is believed to be limited in the German capital, although the activities of the latter are likely to be underreported. In Berlin, so-called clan criminality, that is, family-based criminal actors of Mhallami–Kurdish, Lebanese or Palestinian origin, dominates the threat perception, alongside Russian–Eurasian criminal networks.

Several simultaneous trends appear to be feeding into Berlin’s criminal epidemic. Power shifts and competition seem to account for much of the tension. One of the drivers is believed to be a reshuffling of zones of influence in local drug markets. The criminal structures in the city are said to have become fragile, providing opportunities for drug trafficking networks to renegotiate their share of the trade. The recent death of a prominent figure in the city’s clan ecosystem has created an opportunity to rearrange spheres of control. As one funeral attendee put it, ‘Now hell will break loose in Berlin.’

There is also a new element emerging in the city’s criminal ecosystem: violent extortion. Berlin has a sizeable Turkish population, and many of the recent shootings have targeted businesses within this community. In March, a Turkish business owner, whose car repair shop had been shot at, reported that the perpetrators had demanded €250 000 from him for ‘their brothers in jail all over Europe’. One of the main players is reportedly a network known as ‘the Daltons’, the so-called ‘Gen Z of the Turkish mafia’. The group’s operations span from Türkiye to Germany, which is home to the largest Turkish diaspora in Europe. This youth gang has acquired an extremely violent reputation in Türkiye’s major cities, and several of its leaders have sought refuge abroad – for example, in Iraq and Russia – to avoid  growing judicial pressure back home.

In the case of Berlin, reports suggest that gunmen are recruited in Türkiye, enter the country on tourist visas, carry out specific jobs and then leave immediately. This pattern of highly mobile young perpetrators is similar to that seen in western German cities, where Dutch youths are used as a strategic tool in organized crime turf wars.

What makes the situation in Berlin more delicate is that this wave of attacks is hitting a criminal ecosystem that is already fragile, highly violent, and in the process of change. The combination of a turf war and criminal actors intervening from abroad is a new challenge for the authorities, who seem to be struggling to tackle it. With resources focused on local clan criminality, the emergence of violence-as-a-service and highly mobile criminal networks is testing the city’s authorities and their enforcement toolkit. Despite enhanced efforts to reduce violence, the problem continues to intensify.

Germany’s current government appears to be taking the fight against organized crime more seriously than its predecessors. A recently adopted action plan aims to strengthen the country’s organized crime strategy, including by reversing the burden of proof in financial investigations and streamlining customs and police cooperation in tackling international drug trafficking. These are long-awaited steps, but they are not expected to have an immediate impact. As the old and new worlds of organized crime collide with increasing force, Berlin will need to devise a new strategy to confront the growing threat.