Göttingen

Chapter 1 · July 2026

A town regrouping

The story of the year is the university. In May 2025 the Excellence Commission declined to renew funding for the Multiscale Bioimaging cluster, leaving the former “Excellence University” with no clusters at all — locally read as a science-policy alarm bell. The response is a rebuild: in May 2026 the Senate unanimously elected physicist Johannes Wessels, formerly of Münster, as the new president, arriving late this year. In the rankings the university still sits around 243rd worldwide and roughly eighth in Germany, and remains strong in the life sciences.

The city contradicts the gloom

The numbers on the ground are healthier than the mood. Enrollment held near 27,700–28,000 for the winter semester, with international students rising to 18.5%. Sartorius, the city’s flagship employer, opened 2026 with first-quarter sales of about €899 million, up 7.5% in constant currencies, and added staff to more than 14,200. And the enormous new university hospital — 624 beds, 31 operating rooms — poured its foundations early this year, on track to open around 2030.

What it costs to live here

The city government is in hard consolidation mode, closing a roughly €50 million annual gap with a 97-measure savings package that a three-party council coalition pushed through; the state approved the supplementary budget in June. Expect ongoing fights over pools, youth services and fees. For residents, the practical dial moved a little: the Deutschlandticket rose to €63 a month in January, and rents keep creeping up to around €12.50 per square meter, still far below big-city levels, with tenant-protection caps in force through 2029. One running local joke got shorter — the long-closed Godehardkreisel roundabout in the Weststadt finally reopened on June 30.

The summer

Culture is in full swing. The 38th Göttinger Kultursommer runs July 4 to August 15 across the Deutsches Theater, the Altes Rathaus and smaller venues, with the KWP open-air festival in the Stadtwald capping it on August 14–15. The International Handel Festival, this year themed “Enticement,” ran in May with some 550 artists.

Chapter 2 · July 2026

An E. coli scare, mid-summer

The one hard piece of news this week was a public-health one. On July 2 the Landkreis Göttingen ordered a recall of several raw-sausage (Rohwurst) products from Fleischwaren Wulff GmbH & Co. KG, based in the city on Hans-Böckler-Straße, after Shiga-toxin-producing E. coli — the bacteria behind EHEC — was found in a day’s production. The affected items were batches of Schinken-Streichmettwurst, Zwiebelmettwurst and Delikatess Schinken Zwiebelmettwurst in various pack sizes.

Authorities urged people not to eat the products and to return them, noting that infection can appear within about a week and that infants, young children, older people and those with weakened immune systems are most at risk of severe illness, which in rare cases can include acute kidney failure. Away from the recall, the summer kept its calm rhythm — the Larifari Kindersommer children’s series opened on July 5 — a reminder that a single bad batch is a local health matter, not a town in crisis.