CALMA Saunagarten Opens Three Saunas in a Berlin Club Garden
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The successor to Kreuzberg’s Frida Calma has a 25-person dome sauna with an Aufguss every hour, a barrel sauna, a yurt and a fire bowl. Entry is €15, and volunteers earn their visits.
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CALMA Saunagarten opened October 17 in the garden of ://about blank, the club at Berlin’s Ostkreuz, with three saunas, a yurt and a fire bowl. Entry is €15, or about $17 at the October 21 exchange rate. The sauna garden held a two-day opening weekend, then began regular evening hours on October 19, and it plans to run through March 31, 2027.
It’s the successor to Frida Calma, a sauna on the Spree in Kreuzberg that, according to Frida Calma’s website, has closed for good. A four-person partnership, Calma GbR, runs the new site: Bastian Brabec, Gur Eilon, Helen Schroeter and Dirk Steins, according to the site’s legal notice.
CALMA at a glance
- Where the garden of ://about blank, Markgrafendamm 24c, Friedrichshain, Berlin; the entrance is around the corner from Werkstraße
- Hours evenings from 6 p.m. to midnight, closed Wednesdays and Saturdays while the garden is still being built out
- Entry €15 (about $17); a 30-day pass is €50 (about $56), and a 10-visit card is €120 (about $135)
- Season through March 31, 2027
- Bring a towel, sauna slippers and a bathrobe
The biggest sauna is a blue fabric dome for 25 people
The Ritual Sauna is a geodesic dome covered in blue fabric, with room for up to 25 people. CALMA’s Aufguss schedule puts an Aufguss there every hour on the half hour. In an Aufguss, a sauna master pours water on the stones and fans the heat through the room with a towel. A barrel sauna and a smaller dome sauna make up the other two hot rooms. Calma Space, a yurt, holds rituals and workshops.
Outside there are outdoor showers and a seating area around a fire bowl. Indoors, a lounge the operators call the Schmuse Halle (roughly, the “cuddle hall”) has a bar. The site doesn’t say how the saunas are heated, whether there’s a cold plunge, or whether swimsuits are required. Its house rules ask for awareness and respectful behavior.
The opening weekend sold out on Sunday
The opening program ran from 4 p.m. to midnight on October 17 and 18, with an opening Aufguss ritual, an ecstatic dance space and a cacao ceremony each day. Saturday added a workshop on making felt sauna hats, at €15 for six places a session. On Sunday evening the Aufguss group Urban Healing Unit took over the saunas, with DJs playing in a circus tent. Advance tickets were €22 a day or €35 for the weekend, two for the price of one. The Sunday ticket was listed as sold out.
The first event since then is a DJ night on Friday, October 23, from 5 p.m. to midnight, at the regular €15 entry.
Volunteers earn their sauna visits
CALMA runs partly on volunteers, whom it calls Calmies. Every 15 hours of help earns a 10-visit card, worth €120 (about $135) at the door. Passes are personal and scanned by QR code at the door.
Berlin’s sauna scene is growing outside the spas
Frida Calma opened in the winter of 2025 with two saunas, one among the trees and one right on the water. It is listed in the community of Saunasplash, which bills itself as the big gathering of the growing DIY sauna community and held its 2026 edition at Strandbad Orankesee from October 2 to 4. The city’s public pools are adding heat too. The Berliner Bäder-Betriebe has put two 15-person barrel saunas outside at the Prinzenbad in Kreuzberg, running at 185 to 203°F for €11.50 (about $13), Der Tagesspiegel reported on October 13.
Social saunas built for groups are opening in the US as well. All’s Well in Minneapolis, which opened October 3, calls its 50-person sauna “friendship infrastructure,” and Aufguss now has four world championships.
