Overview
- Brandenburg police seized more than one tonne of pyrotechnics in a raid in Falkensee near Berlin and opened explosives law investigations against two suspects.
- Berlin’s crackdown removed about 147,000 prohibited items, including roughly 108,000 F4 products reserved for professionals, as the city set expanded no‑fireworks and weapons ban zones at Alexanderplatz, Sonnenallee, Steinmetzkiez and the Admiralbrücke plus the Brandenburger Tor area.
- Emergency services scale up for the night: Berlin deploys 4,300 police officers and more than 2,000 fire and rescue personnel, while NRW reports 7,600 police on duty compared with last year.
- Pre‑New Year incidents underline the risk, with Böller thrown at a Duisburg tram, a police‑targeted firecracker in Gelsenkirchen, serious injuries and fires reported, and Berlin’s UKB describing the night as a planned mass‑casualty level operation.
- Customs highlights over seven tonnes of dangerous pyrotechnics seized in 2024 and recent border confiscations in eastern Saxony, as Dutch buyers flock to German stores before the Netherlands’ private fireworks ban takes effect in 2026.