World Map of Peace
The most dangerous cities in Germany
Frankfurt am Main, Berlin and Bremen had the most recorded offences per inhabitant of all large German cities in 2025. All 39 cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants compared, with violent crime, federal states, the change from the previous year and a guide to reading the figures
Key points at a glance
- The most dangerous city in Germany in statistical terms is Frankfurt am Main: according to the Police Crime Statistics 2025, the police recorded 15,026 offences per 100,000 inhabitants there, compared with 6,591 nationwide.
- On this page, dangerous means the most recorded offences per inhabitant. The statistics only show the light field, meaning offences that were reported or discovered by the police, and say nothing about the people of a city.
- For violent crime, Frankfurt am Main, Hanover and Dortmund lead. Without offences against residence and asylum law, a large share of which the Federal Police detect in Frankfurt, Frankfurt moves to fifth place.
- Across the 39 large cities, the police recorded 4.6 percent fewer cases in 2025 than in 2024. This page does not give travel advice.
In numbers
15,026
offences per 100,000 inhabitants
in Frankfurt am Main, the highest figure of the large cities
6,591
offences per 100,000 inhabitants
on average across Germany
−4.6%
recorded cases compared with 2024
in the 39 large cities combined
- Frankfurt am Main15,026
- Berlin13,642
- Bremen13,559
- Düsseldorf12,999
- Hanover12,849
- Halle (Saale)12,824
- Cologne12,727
- Magdeburg11,569
- Dortmund11,446
- Hamburg11,196
- Germany as a whole6,591
- Frankfurt am Main691
- Hanover622
- Dortmund588
- Cologne539
- Berlin537
- Bremen534
- Halle (Saale)519
- Wuppertal506
- Düsseldorf499
- Magdeburg496
- Germany as a whole254
All offences
- Frankfurt am Main
- 15,026 (1)
- Berlin
- 13,642 (2)
- Bremen
- 13,559 (3)
- Hanover
- 12,849 (5)
- Halle (Saale)
- 12,824 (6)
Without offences under immigration law
- Frankfurt am Main
- 12,541 (5)
- Berlin
- 13,233 (2)
- Bremen
- 13,322 (1)
- Hanover
- 12,621 (4)
- Halle (Saale)
- 12,732 (3)
- Data basis
- Police Crime Statistics 2025, city table in the version of 16 October 2026
- Publisher
- Federal Criminal Police Office, Wiesbaden
- Compared
- 39 cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants
- Reading
- Recorded cases per 100,000 inhabitants, the frequency rate
- Author
- Johannes Max Harms
Which are the most dangerous cities in Germany?
According to the Police Crime Statistics 2025 of the Federal Criminal Police Office, among cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants the police recorded the most offences per inhabitant in Frankfurt am Main: 15,026 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. Berlin follows with 13,642, Bremen with 13,559, Düsseldorf with 12,999 and Hanover with 12,849. For Germany as a whole, the figure was 6,591.
On this page, dangerous means the most recorded offences per inhabitant. All offences are counted, from fare dodging and shoplifting to assault. The figure describes what became known to the police in one year and is not a judgement about a city or the people who live there.
The statistics also only show the light field. Offences that nobody reports and that the police do not discover themselves are missing. What things look like worldwide when cities are compared by their homicide rate is shown in the ranking of cities with the highest homicide rate.
In which large cities do the police record the most violent crime?
Frankfurt am Main also led for violent crime in 2025, with 691 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. It is followed by Hanover with 622, Dortmund with 588, Cologne with 539 and Berlin with 537. The figure for Germany as a whole was 254, and none of the 39 large cities was below it. The lowest figures were in Mainz with 263 and Karlsruhe with 269.
The statistics count as violent crime, among other things, murder and manslaughter, rape and sexual coercion in particularly serious cases, robbery, aggravated and grievous bodily harm and hostage-taking. Simple assault is not included. Violent offences make up only a small share of all cases, 3.9 percent nationwide.
The order differs from the ranking of all offences. Hanover is fifth there and second for violence. Düsseldorf is fourth for all offences and ninth for violence. If you want to know how much a city is affected by violence, read both figures side by side, as in the table below.
What lies behind the high figure for Frankfurt am Main?
The statistics count an offence where it happens, and in Frankfurt that includes the airport. In its yearbook on the crime statistics 2025, the Frankfurt am Main police headquarters writes that the city’s figures also include offences recorded by the Federal Police at the airport and on railway property, in particular entry-related document forgery and violations of the Residence Act.
The police recorded 18,792 offences under immigration law in Frankfurt in 2025, of which, according to the yearbook, the Federal Police handled 13,507. If these offences are left out, as the city table allows with a separate key, the city’s figure falls from 15,026 to 12,541 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. Frankfurt then moves from first to fifth place, behind Bremen, Berlin, Halle (Saale) and Hanover.
For violent crime, Frankfurt remains in first place, because offences under immigration law are not counted there in any case. For pickpocketing, the yearbook names the city centre, the station district and Sachsenhausen as hotspots. How many people spend time there every day without living in Frankfurt is not captured by the frequency rate.
How do the federal states differ?
The lowest frequency rate in 2025 was in Bavaria with 4,371 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Baden-Württemberg with 4,902 and Rhineland-Palatinate with 5,427. Among the non-city states, Saxony-Anhalt had the highest figure with 8,090, ahead of North Rhine-Westphalia with 7,524. The three city states, Berlin with 13,642, Bremen with 13,393 and Hamburg with 11,468, are far higher.
Comparing them with the city states is lopsided, because cities almost always have higher figures than the surrounding state. In municipalities with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants, the police recorded 3,667 cases per 100,000 inhabitants nationwide in 2025, in cities with 500,000 inhabitants or more 10,962. A city state consists only of a city, a non-city state also of villages and small towns.
Within a state, the large cities are often far apart. In Hesse, Frankfurt am Main is in first place and Wiesbaden in 34th. The 15 large cities in North Rhine-Westphalia range from fourth to 32nd place. The three Bavarian large cities, Munich, Augsburg and Nuremberg, are all among the last four, while Halle (Saale) and Magdeburg in Saxony-Anhalt are sixth and eighth.
How has the number of offences changed since 2024?
Nationwide, the police recorded 5,508,559 offences in 2025, 5.6 percent fewer than the 5,837,445 in 2024. Violent crime fell by 2.3 percent, from 217,277 to 212,335 cases. In the 39 large cities, the number of all cases fell by 4.6 percent and that of violent offences by 1.1 percent.
In 29 of the 39 large cities, fewer cases were recorded than in the previous year. The decline was largest in Bonn at 18.2 percent, in Dresden at 12.3 percent and in Augsburg at 12.0 percent. Cases rose compared with 2024 in Wiesbaden by 5.9 percent, in Düsseldorf by 4.7 percent and in Chemnitz by 4.6 percent, among others. In Frankfurt am Main, the number stayed almost the same, up 0.3 percent.
For violent crime, the changes partly look different: in Chemnitz the number of cases rose by 27.0 percent, in Bremen by 12.2 percent, while the total in Bremen fell by 10.7 percent. Case numbers are compared here because the frequency rates of the two years are based on different population figures. Whether a change means more or fewer offences or different reporting behaviour cannot be settled by the statistics alone.
How should the frequency rate be read?
The frequency rate divides all recorded cases in a city by its residents and scales them to 100,000 inhabitants. It helps to compare large and small cities. But it counts every offence the same, whether fare dodging or robbery, and it relates the offences only to residents, not to everyone who spends time in a city.
The Federal Criminal Police Office points out that a large share of offences never become known to the police and that reporting behaviour varies greatly by offence. Some offences, such as drug offences, only become known to the police through their own work. The priorities the police set therefore have a great influence on the number of registered cases.
A ranking based on the crime statistics is therefore a snapshot of the light field and not a statement about individual neighbourhoods or the people of a city. How peaceful Germany is compared with other states is shown by the Global Peace Index and the page on the safest countries in the world, and cities in international comparison by the page on the Safe Cities Index and cities worldwide. This page will be updated with the next edition of the crime statistics.
Federal Criminal Police Office, crime statistics analyses and dark field research, translated
Without additional information from dark field studies, it remains uncertain whether the figures of the official crime statistics actually reflect the development of real crime or merely result from a shift between the light field and the dark field.
Sources
- Federal Criminal Police Office: Police Crime Statistics 2025, city tables (German)
- Federal Criminal Police Office: Police Crime Statistics 2024, city tables (German)
- Federal Criminal Police Office: Police Crime Statistics 2025, state tables (German)
- Frankfurt am Main police headquarters: Police Crime Statistics 2025, yearbook (PDF, German)
- Federal Criminal Police Office: dark field research (German)
- Police crime prevention of the German states and the federal government (German)
All large cities by recorded offences in 2025
| Rank | City | Federal state | Offences per 100,000 inhabitants | Violent crime per 100,000 inhabitants | Cases compared with previous year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Frankfurt am Main | Hesse | 15,026 | 691 | +0.3% |
| 2 | Berlin | Berlin | 13,642 | 537 | −6.7% |
| 3 | Bremen | Bremen | 13,559 | 534 | −10.7% |
| 4 | Düsseldorf | North Rhine-Westphalia | 12,999 | 499 | +4.7% |
| 5 | Hanover | Lower Saxony | 12,849 | 622 | −7.2% |
| 6 | Halle (Saale) | Saxony-Anhalt | 12,824 | 519 | +2.3% |
| 7 | Cologne | North Rhine-Westphalia | 12,727 | 539 | −2.8% |
| 8 | Magdeburg | Saxony-Anhalt | 11,569 | 496 | +0.6% |
| 9 | Dortmund | North Rhine-Westphalia | 11,446 | 588 | −5.6% |
| 10 | Hamburg | Hamburg | 11,196 | 457 | −5.0% |
| 11 | Erfurt | Thuringia | 11,067 | 402 | −11.1% |
| 12 | Aachen | North Rhine-Westphalia | 10,726 | 340 | −0.6% |
| 13 | Leipzig | Saxony | 10,722 | 402 | −4.9% |
| 14 | Duisburg | North Rhine-Westphalia | 10,395 | 443 | +0.4% |
| 15 | Münster | North Rhine-Westphalia | 10,069 | 372 | −6.7% |
| 16 | Kiel | Schleswig-Holstein | 9,957 | 408 | −10.6% |
| 17 | Wuppertal | North Rhine-Westphalia | 9,885 | 506 | +2.7% |
| 18 | Mannheim | Baden-Württemberg | 9,813 | 324 | −1.1% |
| 19 | Freiburg im Breisgau | Baden-Württemberg | 9,631 | 347 | −7.0% |
| 20 | Chemnitz | Saxony | 9,270 | 437 | +4.6% |
| 21 | Mönchengladbach | North Rhine-Westphalia | 9,171 | 373 | −3.5% |
| 22 | Lübeck | Schleswig-Holstein | 9,162 | 363 | −5.3% |
| 23 | Krefeld | North Rhine-Westphalia | 9,040 | 365 | +3.2% |
| 24 | Essen | North Rhine-Westphalia | 9,013 | 343 | −8.2% |
| 25 | Gelsenkirchen | North Rhine-Westphalia | 8,939 | 450 | −6.9% |
| 26 | Stuttgart | Baden-Württemberg | 8,797 | 457 | −0.5% |
| 27 | Bonn | North Rhine-Westphalia | 8,593 | 381 | −18.2% |
| 28 | Bochum | North Rhine-Westphalia | 8,538 | 313 | −0.3% |
| 29 | Rostock | Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania | 8,319 | 350 | −4.2% |
| 30 | Oberhausen | North Rhine-Westphalia | 8,109 | 323 | −1.7% |
| 31 | Braunschweig | Lower Saxony | 8,069 | 335 | −4.1% |
| 32 | Bielefeld | North Rhine-Westphalia | 8,041 | 459 | −4.7% |
| 33 | Dresden | Saxony | 7,781 | 342 | −12.3% |
| 34 | Wiesbaden | Hesse | 7,554 | 382 | +5.9% |
| 35 | Karlsruhe | Baden-Württemberg | 7,407 | 269 | −9.7% |
| 36 | Nuremberg | Bavaria | 7,206 | 329 | +2.5% |
| 37 | Mainz | Rhineland-Palatinate | 6,600 | 263 | −8.4% |
| 38 | Augsburg | Bavaria | 6,464 | 301 | −12.0% |
| 39 | Munich | Bavaria | 6,061 | 309 | −2.8% |
Source: Federal Criminal Police Office, Police Crime Statistics 2025 and 2024, table of cities with 100,000 inhabitants or more. The 39 cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants are included. The frequency rate gives the cases known to the police per 100,000 inhabitants, based on the 2022 census. The last column compares the number of recorded cases with 2024, not the frequency rate, because the 2024 table uses a different population basis.
More in this series
- The most dangerous cities in the worldConsejo Ciudadano ranking 2025Port-au-Prince in Haiti had the highest homicide rate of any city in the world in 2025, followed by Babahoyo in Ecuador and Nelson Mandela Bay in South Africa. What the ranking measures, what it does not, and how Germany’s large cities compare
- The safest cities in GermanyPolice Crime Statistics 2025Munich, Augsburg and Mainz had the fewest recorded offences per inhabitant of all large German cities in 2025. All 39 cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants compared, with violence, burglary, smaller cities and the differences between the federal states
More questions about crime in large German cities
Which city is considered the most criminal city in Germany?
That depends on what you count. Per inhabitant, the police recorded the most offences in Frankfurt am Main in 2025, 15,026 per 100,000 inhabitants. In absolute numbers, Berlin leads: 502,742 cases were recorded there, 208,538 in Hamburg and 130,400 in Cologne.
Absolute numbers grow with the size of a city, so this page compares the frequency rate, the number of cases per 100,000 inhabitants. Criminal is not a quality of a city or its residents here, but a description of the offences recorded there.
Which large city has the fewest recorded offences?
Among the 39 cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants, Munich had the lowest figure in 2025 with 6,061 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, ahead of Augsburg with 6,464 and Mainz with 6,600. For violent crime, Mainz with 263 and Karlsruhe with 269 were lowest.
The complete ranking from the bottom, with burglaries and the figures for smaller cities, is on the page about the large cities with the fewest recorded offences.
What counts as street crime?
The Police Crime Statistics count as street crime offences committed exclusively or mainly on public streets, paths or squares, including public transport. These include pickpocketing, handbag snatching, robberies on streets and squares, theft of and from cars and bicycle theft. Nationwide, 18.5 percent of all recorded cases in 2025 fell into this category.
Among the large cities, the police recorded the most street crime per inhabitant in 2025 in Bremen with 3,293 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, in Münster with 3,228 and in Cologne with 3,214. The lowest figures were in Stuttgart with 1,074, Augsburg with 1,139 and Munich with 1,178. The city table does not show how offences are distributed across individual places such as stations.
Are offences involving commuters and tourists included?
Yes. The Police Crime Statistics record an offence in the municipality where it happened, regardless of where the offender or victim lives. The frequency rate, however, divides these cases only by the city’s residents. Offences involving commuters, visitors or travellers are counted, but the people themselves are not.
In cities with large stations, airports, trade fairs and shopping streets, the frequency rate can therefore be higher without the risk for local people being greater. This is not a measurement error but a property of the indicator that has to be kept in mind when comparing.
Which cities in Germany should you avoid?
This page does not give travel advice. A frequency rate describes a whole city over a year and does not show how offences are distributed across neighbourhoods, times of day and places. It therefore says little about your personal risk.
Practical advice, for example on protecting yourself against pickpocketing and burglary, is provided by the police crime prevention programme of the German states and the federal government. For travel abroad, the travel and safety advice of the German Federal Foreign Office is the reliable basis.
Peace does not begin in a ranking
Behind every position are people who settle disputes, connect neighbourhoods and build trust. That is exactly where W3ltfrieden starts: with peace missions that you can start or support yourself.
Find your peace mission