Berlinale 2026 rebuilt its bear from points of light and set it in an 'anarchic' sans

Design a festive, playful poster and key visual for the 76th Berlinale that could carry the festival across the city, from U-Bahn stations to theater screens.

The Berlinale Bear returned as a creature made of points of light — people, perspectives and films connecting — against rigorously static white type set in Tausend.

A particle-built bear in vibrant colors was set against a compact, uniformly sized white typographic block in Fontwerk's new Tausend sans, drawn by Christoph Koeberlin with Gabriel Richter.

The identity carried the 76th festival citywide — the official poster an eye-catcher at Alexanderplatz, the bear and wordmark on the festival theater's screens — and gave Fontwerk its second straight Berlinale after 2025's Pangea.

The 76th Berlinale's poster and key visual were once again by Berlin designer Claudia Schramke. The bear, the festival's mascot, returned to center stage as what she called 'a veritable festival creature, composed of points of light that represent people, perspectives, and films. They come together, connect, enter into a dialogue, and collectively become something greater and stronger.' The result was festive, colorful and playful — a deliberate re-centering of the bear in the identity.

Against the vibrant key visual, Schramke chose clean typography: white, static text set as a consistent typographic block — compact, precise, at one uniform size, so the rigor of the type gives the colorful image room.

The typeface was Tausend, a new sans-serif family from Fontwerk designed by Christoph Koeberlin in collaboration with Gabriel Richter. It follows the German sans tradition 'but with an anarchic core: the slight overhang, the gentle top-heaviness, the smile and wink in the curves.' Koeberlin described its personality as 'brutally honest, self-assured, and confident,' and it was the optical size, Tausend Medium — dense, compact, with unpolished forms — that anchored the branding.

The pairing ran across the city: the official poster stood at Alexanderplatz subway station, and the bear and wordmark played on the screens of the festival theater. For Fontwerk, the appearance marked the second year in a row that Schramke chose a typeface from its library for the festival — in 2025 she had chosen Pangea.

A festival identity has to read at every scale, from station posters to cinema screens, so contrast does the work: maximal color in the key visual against a single static type block.

Setting all text in one uniform size keeps hierarchy from eroding the artwork — legibility by rigor rather than by varying weights and sizes.

Tausend's deliberately imperfect forms mirror the festival's self-image: minimalist and self-assured Berlin with a wink.

Bringing back the same designer two years running let the identity evolve as a system instead of resetting each edition.

A festival identity earns play through contrast: let the mascot run wild in color, then discipline everything else — one static type block, one size — so the wildness reads.

The identity carried the 76th festival in February 2026. Fonts In Use framed the edition as one that would be remembered for its films and perhaps its visual identity, 'even if it only reached Berliners, tourists, and festival-goers.' For Fontwerk the festival became a flagship case: for the second consecutive year the Berlinale identity was set in one of its typefaces.