The DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program is one of the most renowned residency programs for international artists and cultural practitioners in the fields of visual arts, film, literature, and music & sound. 

Each year, it awards residencies in Berlin to around twenty outstanding cultural producers. The residency enables the chosen fellows to focus on their creative thinking, actions, and research pursuits without being obliged to produce. Encounters with other artists and cultural producers stimulate transdisciplinary cooperation and initiate reciprocal learning processes.

Both during and after their period of residency in Berlin, the fellows receive support from the Artists-in-Berlin Program to develop and present exhibitions, concerts, performances, film projects, readings, and publications. Collaboration with guests and partners results in new creative endeavors that are presented at the daadgalerie, in other cultural institutions in Berlin, throughout Germany, and in locations all around the world.

The Artists-in-Berlin Program builds lasting relationships with its alumni. By facilitating and supporting projects by both current and former fellows, it sets an international example and underscores the importance of cultural coproduction and critical engagement with contemporary issues. Through its wide-ranging program of events and digital offerings, it creates a resonance space for the creative practice of its fellows and alumni, whose narratives, pictorial worlds, and soundscapes invite audiences to expand their horizons of aesthetic, social, and political experience.

Since its founding in West Berlin in 1963, the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program has made a significant contribution to the internationalization of cultural production. As an institution, it is currently undertaking a critical examination of its own history with regard to past exclusions and blind spots.

In its multiple roles as host, supporter, and enabler, the Artists-in-Berlin Program is committed to promoting diversity, as well as to combating racism and all forms of discrimination. It offers shelter to cultural producers whose artistic freedom and freedom of expression are at risk. In response to the climate crisis, the Artists-in-Berlin Program is committed to adopting climate-neutral practices and to reducing its CO2 footprint.
By maintaining the continuity of its work, the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program highlights and firmly supports the multivocality of the arts.

When the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin program founded the daadgalerie in West Berlin in 1978, it created a place for fellows from different cultural fields to engage with the city and its residents. Since then, the venue has remained the hub of the program’s activities in Berlin.
In 2017 the daadgalerie moved to Kreuzberg—a district characterized by displacement as well as by a commitment to building a plural and diverse urban community. Since 2018, the two floors of the building on Oranienstrasse have been used to establish new forms of presentation, introduce transdisciplinary formats in association with current and former fellows, and implement initiatives aimed at local children and young adults. The daadgalerie program is developed in close cooperation with the fellows, as well as in collaboration with other creative practitioners, festivals, universities, galleries, museums, and cultural institutions.