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Radisson Collection Hotel, Berlin, Iconic City Hotel of the Year 2026

European Hotel Awards 2026 / September 28, 2026

Marco Eichhorn, General Manager — Radisson Collection Hotel, Berlin © European Hotel Awards 2026

Some city hotels become landmarks because of age. Others earn that status by reinventing themselves at the right moment. Facing Berlin Cathedral in the heart of Mitte, Radisson Collection Hotel, Berlin reopened in 2025 with a new architectural identity, a transformed social heart and a renewed relationship with the capital. That rebirth has earned it the title Iconic City Hotel of the Year 2026 at the European Hotel Awards.

Radisson Collection Hotel, Berlin received the Iconic City Hotel of the Year 2026 distinction at the European Hotel Awards. Officially reopened on 12 February 2025 and led by General Manager Marco Eichhorn, the property combines the scale of a major metropolitan hotel with a location that places guests directly inside Berlin’s historic and cultural centre.

At the centre of Berlin rather than simply in Berlin

The hotel’s address on Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse gives it an unusually direct connection with the city. Berlin Cathedral stands opposite; Museum Island, the Humboldt Forum and Alexanderplatz are all close by. For a large urban hotel, that setting changes the nature of the stay. Guests do not need to travel across the capital before they begin to experience it.

A successful city hotel should act as both base and gateway. It needs the operational capacity to receive international leisure travellers, business guests and events, while remaining permeable to the energy of the destination. In Mitte, the Radisson Collection has the advantage of being surrounded by some of Berlin’s strongest visual and cultural references.

Radisson Collection Hotel, Berlin occupies a defining position in Berlin-Mitte © Radisson Collection Hotel, Berlin

427 rooms and suites within a high-capacity city hotel

The hotel offers 427 rooms and suites, serving a broad mix of city-break, corporate and international guests. Some rooms open towards views of Berlin Cathedral, while the larger suite categories offer additional space for guests who need a more residential experience.

At this scale, the challenge is not simply to provide capacity. It is to make a large property feel legible. Guests need to move naturally between room, lobby, restaurant, meeting space and the city outside. The best high-volume hotels reduce the sense of complexity even when the operation behind the scenes is substantial.

The 427-room property combines metropolitan scale with contemporary accommodation © Piotr Gesicki

The Living Tree as a new urban signature

The most visible symbol of the transformation is the Living Tree, a vertical botanical installation rising through the hotel’s vast atrium. Approximately 24 metres high, reaching up to around 20 metres wide and composed of nearly 2,000 plants, it gives the lobby an identity that is immediately recognisable.

Its significance goes beyond visual impact. The atrium is one of the hotel’s principal zones of circulation and encounter, so the installation changes how a very large interior is perceived. Vegetation, changing light and the scale of the structure soften an environment that could otherwise feel purely monumental. The Living Tree functions as architecture, atmosphere and orientation point at the same time.

The 24-metre Living Tree has become the defining visual signature of the hotel’s new identity © Piotr Gesicki

Food, drink and social life under the atrium

The hotel’s urban character continues through food and beverage. San Éna brings a contemporary Greek and Mediterranean influence to the property, while the Atrium Bar creates a more informal meeting point beneath the Living Tree. These spaces matter because a central-city hotel cannot rely on bedrooms alone if it wants to participate in the life of its destination.

A restaurant, lobby and bar can serve very different audiences across the same day: residents, local guests, conference delegates and people meeting for a drink or a working conversation. That mix gives a large hotel social relevance and prevents the property from operating as a closed environment reserved only for overnight guests.

San Éna and the hotel’s social spaces extend the property beyond the traditional room-led city hotel model © Piotr Gesicki

Meetings and events at metropolitan scale

The Radisson Collection Hotel, Berlin also offers 15 meeting and event spaces representing around 2,750 square metres. The DomLounge, positioned high in the building beneath a glass roof, adds panoramic views across central Berlin to that offer.

This event capacity reinforces the hotel’s role as an urban platform. A major city hotel is not only a place where travellers sleep; it also receives companies, conferences, private gatherings and professional communities. The operational strength of the property lies in accommodating those overlapping uses without allowing them to compromise the individual guest experience.

Why Radisson Collection Hotel, Berlin received Iconic City Hotel of the Year 2026

The European Hotel Awards Board selected Radisson Collection Hotel, Berlin because its return to the Berlin hotel landscape is more than a refurbishment. The distinction recognises the combination of a defining Mitte location, an ambitious transformation, 427 rooms and suites, major event capacity, food and beverage designed as part of city life, and a new architectural signature centred on the Living Tree.

The Living Tree is the most visible expression of the project, but the Award is not for a single installation. What matters is the wider coherence between architecture, accommodation, restaurants, meeting spaces and the relationship with Berlin itself. The hotel has recovered the visibility of a landmark address while giving it a distinctly contemporary reason to be noticed again.

The Board also recognised the work carried out under Marco Eichhorn to relaunch a property that was already familiar to Berlin and international travellers. Reinvention is particularly difficult when an address carries an existing memory. The hotel had to create something new without losing the power of its position. That ability to convert the past of a well-known site into a fresh metropolitan proposition is central to the idea of an Iconic City Hotel.

An icon that changes with Berlin

Berlin has never been a city defined by immobility, and its strongest hotels need the same capacity to evolve. Radisson Collection Hotel, Berlin now combines the confidence of a large capital-city property with a more organic, open and socially connected identity. Its Award reflects not simply where it stands, but how successfully it has re-entered the life of the city.