Updated 5 min read Mary Kaynelidi
CTM Festival is Berlin's annual week for experimental, electronic and left-field music, running since 1999 under its original name, Club Transmediale, before shortening to the acronym it now goes by. The 28th edition runs 22nd-31st of January 2027 across the city, and Mood already lists 16 confirmed CTM shows from the programme as organisers announce it, spanning Berghain's Panorama Bar, a planetarium and a crematorium-turned-arts-centre.
What CTM actually is
CTM began in the late 1990s as a club-culture companion to transmediale, Berlin's festival for digital art, and the two still run alongside each other every January even though CTM long ago grew into its own, larger event. Where transmediale leans into visual and media art - most listings put its 2027 edition at 27th till 31st of January, though one Berlin events page lists 28th till 31st, so the exact start day is still worth confirming on transmediale.de closer to the date - CTM is built around live performance: commissioned pieces, album-length sets and club nights that run until sunrise, spread across roughly a dozen venues rather than one fairground site.
The festival's reputation rests on range rather than genre. Past editions have put modular-synth duos in the same week as noise acts, chamber ensembles and techno DJs, and the 2027 programme already shows the same spread: a planetarium screening, a candlelit organ performance in a bombed-out memorial church, and three nights inside Berghain itself.
The club nights: Berghain's CTM residency
Three of the 16 listed shows run inside Berghain's Panorama Bar, opening the festival on Friday 22nd of January with Initialising, followed by Surging on Thursday 28th of January and Spatial Radiants closing out the Berghain run on Friday 29th of January. These are the nights built for dancing rather than sitting, and Mood's enrichment data backs that up directly: Initialising carries a danceability score of 0.8 and an energy score of 0.9, both the highest of any CTM 2027 listing Mood currently tracks, alongside a flat 1.0 on selectivity - numbers that would sit comfortably inside a peak-time Berghain techno booking, not what CTM's experimental-music branding might suggest from the outside.
Churches, a crematorium and a planetarium
The rest of the programme is where CTM's reputation for unusual rooms shows up. silent green Kulturquartier, a former crematorium in Wedding, hosts the festival's Opening Concert on Friday 22nd of January, then runs four more CTM bookings through the following Sunday, including In Listening on Saturday 23rd of January and the Spatial Audio Experimentation Lab Finale on Sunday 24th of January.
Paul-Gerhardt-Kirche in Schöneberg hosts two seated concert bookings on Sunday 24th of January, and the Zeiss Major Planetarium hosts Portale on Monday 25th of January, a spatial-audio piece built for the dome.
Mood's data points to a genuinely counter-intuitive split here. Across the 16 tracked CTM shows, the average undergroundness score is 0.52, but the single most polished booking in the lineup isn't a club night at all - Portale at the planetarium clears 0.8 on polish, ahead of every Berghain date. Composer Kali Malone performs »Burning Song« on the festival's pipe organ at Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on two separate nights, Sunday 25th and Tuesday 26th of January - distinct performances, not a duplicate listing - while Modeselektor's MDSLKTR and Guests plays Haus der Visionäre on Sunday 24th of January and Radialsystem hosts The Time Between Us on Wednesday 27th of January.
Not every booking is built for a crowd that wants to move, either. Methoding, the Friday 22nd of January opener at silent green, carries one of the highest vocality scores in Mood's CTM data at 0.8, yet its danceability sits at just 0.1 - a reminder that even CTM's most voice-led booking this year is a listening-room piece, not a floor-filler, whatever the festival's club-night reputation suggests.
Tickets and getting there
CTM and transmediale sell their own tickets and festival passes directly through ctm-festival.de; Mood is not the festival's ticketing platform, but every show above is listed on Mood with full venue, date and time details. Berghain's door has no age or guest-list exceptions for CTM nights - the club's usual approach to entry still applies. silent green, Paul-Gerhardt-Kirche and Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church are all reachable by U-Bahn or S-Bahn within 20-30 minutes of central Berlin; check each venue's own transport page closer to the date, since January timetables can run on reduced service.
A first edition, refreshed as the programme grows
CTM typically confirms the bulk of its line-up in the weeks before the festival, so this is an early picture built from what's already public and what Mood already lists - not the full 2027 programme. Mood will update this guide monthly through January as more shows are confirmed and added.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is CTM Festival in Berlin?
CTM is Berlin's annual festival for experimental, electronic and left-field music, running since 1999. It spans roughly ten days each January across club venues, concert halls and unconventional spaces like planetariums and former crematoria, mixing commissioned live performances with club nights.
When is CTM 2027?
CTM Festival 2027 runs 22nd till 31st of January 2027 in Berlin, per the festival's own announcement on ctm-festival.de. transmediale, the related digital-art festival, runs alongside it in the same window, with most listings pointing to 27th till 31st of January.
Is transmediale the same festival as CTM?
No. CTM and transmediale are separate festivals that run in the same week and share some audience and programming overlap, but transmediale focuses on digital and media art at Akademie der Künste, while CTM is built around live music performance across multiple Berlin venues.
Can I buy CTM tickets through Mood?
No. Mood lists CTM shows for discovery, with venue, date and time details, but tickets and festival passes are sold directly by CTM through ctm-festival.de.
Is CTM only for techno fans?
No. The 2027 programme already includes a planetarium sound piece, a pipe-organ performance in a memorial church and seated chamber concerts alongside three nights at Berghain, so the week covers a wider range than club music alone.
Every CTM 2027 show Mood has listed so far, alongside the rest of January's Berlin calendar, is browsable on Mood's Berlin events page.
Find events
Browse all of Mood's Berlin events for January 2027
