First lessons from the Berlin power cut in January 2026

By Herbert Saurugg 16 January 2026

First lessons from the Berlin power cut in January 2026

This newsletter is mainly about the major power cut in Berlin from 3 to 7 January 2026 and about drawing first lessons from it. It is based on preliminary analyses of publicly available sources and media reports.

The aim is

to bring together key findings on how the crisis was handled
to identify structural weaknesses and information gaps, and
to draw first lessons for future-proof crisis and blackout preparedness.

The illusion of security

The Berlin power cut once again refutes the widespread assumption that the power supply is invulnerable, even if this continues to hold true in large regions and for most people. The problem is less the outage itself than the lack of preparation and the surprise, which make a quick and orderly response more difficult.

Even though a great deal of effort is generally made to guarantee the very high security of supply, there is no such thing as one hundred per cent security. Anywhere. This applies all the more in times of increasing turbulence. On the other hand, the bumpy handling of the crisis has once again made clear how important well-founded preparedness is, even for such regional situations. General blackout preparedness would certainly have contributed to much better crisis management here.

Resilience does not arise from flowery buzzwords and constant repetition, but from anticipating possible developments and from timely adaptation and preparation.

Current situation and outlook

Before we delve deeper into the Berlin event, we unfortunately also have to touch briefly on the coming weeks in view of current developments. For these could keep us busy sooner and more extensively than we would like.

Differing perceptions – large-scale power cut in France

Immediately after the power cut in Berlin, there was another large-scale power cut, which was only mentioned in passing here. On 9 January, winter storm “Goretti” caused power cuts for around 380,000 people in France. Two days later, around 90,000 people were still without electricity.

Tight supply situation

During this event a substation was also damaged, so that the important Flamanville nuclear power plant is expected to be off the grid until the beginning of February. This aggravates the already very tense situation in the European interconnected grid. Due to the low temperatures, new consumption peaks have already been reached in several countries, while at the same time hardly any reserve capacity is available.

Current weather models increasingly forecast a further cold spell and dark doldrums (Dunkelflaute) for the coming weeks. This puts not only the electricity supply but also the gas supply under growing pressure.

German gas storage situation

Should the forecasts come true in this form, a drastic escalation of the gas supply situation would emerge, as German gas storage facilities are currently only slightly more than 40 % full. Last year this level was not reached until more than a month later, at much milder temperatures. What it would mean if the gas storage facilities reached the critical level of below 20 % is currently completely unclear.

Officially, the issue is still being played down. However, the market reacted sharply this week: the gas price rose by 17 % within a few hours. The previous deep relaxation with very low prices seems to be over. Added to this is the worsening geopolitical situation, with further unforeseeable consequences for energy supply and prices.

This is another reason to engage with the topic of preparedness. A gas shortage would have far-reaching effects on many areas of supply – and not only in Germany. Should things go well again this winter, the outlook for next winter will by no means be better, as it is expected to begin with even significantly lower storage levels.

Cyber attack on the Polish power infrastructure

As reported today, there was a cyber attack on the Polish power infrastructure at the end of 2025 that could potentially have caused a blackout. It was an attempt to interrupt communication between numerous decentralised renewable generation plants and the grid operators in a large area of Poland. The attack was successfully repelled. The Polish government assumes that it was a state-directed Russian cyber attack. Since the beginning of the year, further massive cyber attacks have also been observed.

Unfortunately, the impression is therefore emerging that more and more decision-makers are relying on their luck so far, because everything has always gone well until now. That is a dangerous game, and it also leads back to the actual topic of the power cut in Berlin.

Berlin: the event and its immediate effects

From 3 to 7 January 2026, the south-west of Berlin (Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Lichterfelde and Wannsee) experienced the most serious and longest power cut in Berlin’s history since the Second World War. It was triggered by a targeted arson attack on a cable bridge over the Teltow Canal, which represents a central bottleneck in the power supply from the Lichterfelde power plant. As with the first major power cut in 2019, both or several systems – and therefore the redundancy – were destroyed. At that time, the damage was caused by construction work.

The improvised connections, which would normally take weeks to restore under the current weather conditions, were restored in the record time of around 100 hours. Restoring the regular connections is currently expected to take months.

Effects

Around 100,000 people (45,000 households) and 2,200 businesses were affected.
Outages or considerable restrictions in public transport and road traffic.
Massive restrictions in telecommunications as well as failures of home emergency call and doorbell systems.
Disruptions to the water supply (pressure booster stations).
Heating failure for several days at temperatures around zero degrees.
Disruptions at supermarkets, bakeries and other supply facilities (cold chains, checkout systems), some with closures or severely restricted operation for several days.
Emergency operation in several hospitals.
Around 70 care facilities had to be supplied with external emergency power; two care homes had to be evacuated.
Difficulties in restarting due to disrupted or damaged equipment (heating systems, electrical appliances).
According to current estimates, the economic damage for companies, retail, crafts and service providers in the affected area amounts to several million euros.

In the early phase, there were noticeable coordination problems between the Senate, the district, the grid operator and aid organisations, for example regarding the information situation, the prioritisation of critical facilities and the care of particularly vulnerable people.

Especially in large housing estates with fragmented social structures and few neighbourhood contacts, the situation worsened dramatically. Older people who could not leave their flats due to lack of mobility were often isolated, and their neighbours knew nothing of their situation. This is a specific structural problem of urban areas that cannot be solved by generic preparedness measures alone.

Municipal crisis planning should therefore take social structures into account, such as age distribution, mobility restrictions and neighbourhood density. The emergency register supported by GfKV (notfallregister.eu) lends itself to this; since the event it has seen a large influx, above all from the authorities.

Distinction from a real blackout

Despite its extent and duration, the incident in Berlin was not a blackout, even though this term was used very frequently in the reporting. For there was neither a failure of the transmission grid nor a supra-regional spread. In addition, external help (THW, Bundeswehr, other federal states) was available at all times, even if, due to organisational shortcomings, it was deployed too late in some cases. At the same time, typical cascade effects occurred, as would be expected in a blackout – albeit in a weakened form.

Perpetrators and reactions

There is still only speculation here, but no confirmed findings. The fact is: no matter which direction the extremism comes from, or whether state actors are even behind it, our infrastructure is vulnerable. For GfKV, what counts are therefore the consequences and how they are dealt with.

The current calls for more security, technology or harsher penalties etc. only distract from the real problem: the lack of preparedness and thus the responsibility of politics. This political discussion also continues to lead citizens to neglect their own preparedness, because it seems to be “only a problem for those at the top”. If “those at the top” do their job properly, many believe, everything is settled and secured.

Politicians are calling for more secrecy about cable routes and infrastructure data. But this information has long been publicly accessible and available, whether via Google Maps, Open Infrastructure Map, grid expansion plans, satellite images or digital twins. Moreover, it is needed to prepare construction work. This mainly leads to “security by obscurity”, i.e. a sham security that achieves little but brings other side effects.

Anyone with open eyes and some knowledge can recognise weak points even without the internet. What is needed is physical hardening of critical points and geographical redundancy. Both cost money that no one has so far wanted to pay.

As always, this is not about either-or, but about both-and. The different interests, side effects and interactions, and the expected effects should be weighed up.

Redundant lines should be routed separately in space and infrastructure (different routes, structures, possibly operators), so that one event does not paralyse both connections at the same time. If the main and back-up routes are led together over the same structure (here the bridge), the redundancy is effectively cancelled; the node is then “more critical than it should be” in terms of security. However, even if such a critical point should not exist at all, it would have to be secured much better in view of the current situation – especially as there have already been several attacks on infrastructure and earlier damage has also shown an escalation of the effects.

However, this means considerable additional personnel, technical and financial effort and does not offer absolute protection against all threats. Moreover, the measures will certainly be scaled back again once “disaster dementia” sets in. You can repress reality, but not the consequences of a repressed reality. This insight has been confirmed once again – and it will not have been the last event of its kind.

Responsibilities, crisis management and the political dimension

Much more decisive is the ability to respond. Here, the lack of accountability became visible once again in Berlin, aggravated above all by diffusion of responsibility and a poor error culture.

A mayor who plays tennis during the crisis and a district mayor who believes she was not responsible at all are just two more examples of political irresponsibility that unfortunately still goes largely unsanctioned. The Senate delayed declaring a major emergency. Crisis communication was chaotic and poorly coordinated. There was no “face of the crisis”.

It now remains to be seen whether a serious review will take place or whether there will continue to be only cover-ups and distraction. In order to be able to act quickly and effectively in crisis situations, radical steps are necessary, as various experts have long been demanding.

The power cut revealed serious deficits in crisis management:

overwhelmed district administration, delayed state-level coordination
lack of a uniform command structure
too-late classification as a major emergency (around 36 hours after the start of the event)
resource and logistics bottlenecks due to lack of preparation and too-late reaction
with the actual all-clear that the power was back or would soon be back, an “extreme warning” was mistakenly issued Berlin-wide via cell broadcast. A serious blunder.

Critical points that deserve special attention

The delayed classification as a major emergency had several consequences, because only afterwards

could the urgently needed release from work be ordered for volunteer helpers.
could cost commitments for emergency organisations be secured.
could the Bundeswehr be formally requested.

The criteria for major emergencies should therefore be defined more clearly and unambiguously and should not require much discussion when the case arises. A regional power cut in winter weather affecting 100,000 people should automatically and immediately be classified as a major emergency if restoration of the power supply is not foreseeable within one day.

The “Kat-Leuchtturm” concept

The more than ten-year-old “Kat-Leuchtturm” (disaster lighthouse) concept, which was even developed in Berlin, existed in theory but was obviously not seriously prepared and implemented operationally. Instead, crisis management was based ad hoc on using the police and fire brigade as contact points, which tied them up additionally – something that should be avoided at all costs in such a crisis situation.

As in Switzerland, such contact points should be activated in every power cut that is not resolved after a few minutes. This way, the procedures can be practised and the population can become familiar with them. For in a larger event, people will probably not be able to look up on the internet where the nearest contact point is.

The Berlin major emergency also confirms familiar patterns from the Ahr Valley disaster in 2021: federalism and the administration work in everyday life but are quickly overwhelmed in crisis situations. This is also because long-standing warners in Berlin were ignored or sidelined and the necessary professional qualifications were not ensured. Priorities were preferably set elsewhere, even though there have been several similar serious incidents since 2019.

Hotels near the affected area played an important buffer role: some businesses provided rooms at special rates, others even free of charge. After the major emergency was declared, the city covered the costs. The lesson from this is that municipal crisis planning should negotiate preliminary contracts for emergency capacities with hotel and logistics businesses in advance in order to be able to respond more quickly in an emergency.

Positive aspects:

excellent work by the emergency and aid organisations
deployment of the Bundeswehr, which also drew criticism, since other helpers could have been called on
setting up of warming and care rooms
functioning neighbourly help
willingness to help on the part of private individuals and companies
improvisation at the food stores in the affected region
self-organisation
contrary to frequent expectations, there were no serious security incidents.
despite candles and improvised heating, there were no fires. Nevertheless, candles not secured in glasses and other open fires should always be viewed critically in such a situation.

Recommendations

From our point of view, there are so far no significant new findings that we have not already taken into account and communicated in the context of (blackout) preparedness. Those who have prepared for a possible blackout scenario can also deal much better with such regional situations, which are even more likely.

Individual preparedness is the central basis for any crisis management. It enables self-sufficiency and relieves public assistance, so that this can be prioritised for vulnerable groups such as older people, people with disabilities or people in need of care.
At the same time, organisational preparation at municipal and company level is indispensable. It must be combined with individual preparedness, federal-state coordination and continuous exercises in order to prevent damage effectively and use resources optimally.
In local/regional events and crises, a rapid escalation in the provision of assistance is always advisable, especially when a situation like the one in Berlin is emerging over several days at low temperatures: immediate activation of crisis teams, especially at the lower levels, organisation of neighbourhood emergency teams and decentralised responsibilities and structures, involvement of aid organisations (THW, fire brigade, German Red Cross) and setting up of emergency shelters, staffing of hotlines and prioritisation of the registration of vulnerable people. At district/state level, the major emergency or state of disaster must be declared within hours, the necessary staffs convened and administrative assistance (e.g. emergency power from the Bundeswehr) requested.

That there was not more damage, more injuries and deaths is extremely surprising and should not be taken for granted. As was already noted at the major debriefing in 2019, it was perhaps simply luck that once again a region with few high-rise buildings and good social structures was affected and not a problem district.

But luck alone is no guarantee of a good future. This power cut was not a system test but pure chance. Real resilience is lacking. How we deal with such a situation is therefore certainly in our hands. And each and every one of us can contribute to this in our own environment.

Now is once again a good opportunity to raise the topic of preparedness in your own family, neighbourhood or organisation. Use this chance and become our ambassador once more. And let us continue to hope that we will not need it after all, or only rarely and to a limited extent.

We will keep you informed.

Kind regards Herbert Saurugg and Peter Erlhofer

Germany crisis-ready