Driving Exam Routes in Berlin: Practise Before Your Praktische Fahrprüfung

Searching for Berlin driving exam routes in English usually means one thing: you are taking the German practical exam, the praktische Fahrprüfung, in a city whose language you are still learning. Official routes are not published anywhere, but the roads around each Berlin exam centre are fixed and knowable — and this guide lists the ones that recur across our practice routes.

Last reviewed 2026-09-10 · by SteerClear editorial · also available: Prüfungsstrecken üben (German)

Where you take your driving exam in Berlin

SteerClear has 60 practice routes that start and finish at Berlin's 6 exam centres. For each centre, the roads below are the ones that appear on the most routes — the local network every exam from that centre is drawn from.

Route facts come from SteerClear's practice routes, which are built on the real road network around each centre. They are not a copy of any examiner's route — TÜV Rheinland and DEKRA do not publish one.

What the Berlin exam involves

Berlin's practical exams are run by TÜV Rheinland and DEKRA from six centres spread across the city, from Spandau in the west to Marzahn and Hohenschönhausen in the east. You book through your driving school, not directly: German law requires the exam to be taken in a driving-school car with dual controls, with your instructor in the passenger seat and the examiner behind you.

Since the 2021 reform the class B exam runs to about 55 minutes in total, with at least 25 minutes of actual driving. It has to cover driving inside and outside built-up areas, and in Berlin that means a stretch of the A100 city motorway or a dual carriageway is a realistic possibility, alongside the residential 30 km/h zones and the big multi-lane arterials such as Landsberger Allee and Tempelhofer Damm. The examiner records everything on an electronic protocol and gives you the result in the car at the end.

Taking the exam if you don't speak the language

The theory exam can be taken in English — it is offered in twelve languages — but the practical exam is conducted in German. The examiner's directions come in German, and your instructor is not allowed to translate them for you during the exam. In practice the vocabulary you need is small: links, rechts, geradeaus, an der nächsten Kreuzung, bitte wenden, halten Sie hier. Learn those two dozen phrases until they are automatic, so that none of your attention goes on decoding the instruction.

If you hold a licence from outside the EU, whether you need the practical exam at all depends on the country that issued it: some licences convert directly, others require the theory exam, the practical exam, or both. Your driving school or the Berlin Fahrerlaubnisbehörde can tell you which applies before you spend money on lessons.

How to practise your Berlin exam routes

1. Start at the centre. Every route begins and ends at the exam centre's exit, so learn that junction — which lane, where the sight lines are poor, what the traffic does at your exam time.
2. Drive the recurring roads in both directions. The lists above are your syllabus. A junction that is easy turning one way is often the hard one turning the other.
3. Practise at your exam time of day. A route at 08:00 with commuters and school traffic is a different exam from the same route at 11:00.
4. Rehearse the directions in the exam language. Have your supervising driver give instructions the way the examiner will, so the words stop costing attention.
5. Finish with a full-length scored drive. A mock driving test of exam length shows whether faults cluster late, when concentration dips.

SteerClear builds these practice routes on the roads above and scores each drive live — speed, braking, cornering, lane position and observation — so a repeated hesitation at one junction shows up as a pattern you can fix before the exam.

Berlin roads and rules that catch people out

Rechts vor links

On unmarked residential junctions, traffic from the right has priority. Berlin's older neighbourhoods are full of them, and failing to yield is an automatic fail. Slow down at every junction without signs or markings and look right first.

Trams and their tracks

East Berlin in particular runs trams through the middle of the road. Trams have priority over turning traffic, you may not overtake one on the side where passengers board, and wet tracks are slippery for a car turning across them.

Cycle lanes everywhere

Berlin has protected bike lanes, painted lanes and shared pavements. Before every right turn the examiner expects a proper shoulder check — the Schulterblick — for cyclists coming up on your right. Missing it is one of the most common serious faults in the city.

30 zones and 50 arterials

Berlin is a patchwork of 30 km/h residential zones and 50 km/h main roads, with more 30 km/h stretches on main roads every year. The signs at the boundary are small; know where the limit changes on the roads listed above rather than reading it off the sign under pressure.

Frequently asked questions

More on driving exam routes

Our international guide to driving exam routes covers what the practical exam is called in 31 countries and whether routes are published anywhere. All German centres are listed at Germany test centres. Other city guides in English: Hamburg, Munich, Amsterdam, Brussels.