In the winter edition of the location ranking “Germany’s cities in a business comparison”, Berlin once again maintains its third place in the overall ranking, ahead of Frankfurt am Main, Düsseldorf, Cologne and Stuttgart. First and second place go to Munich and Hamburg.
Results of selected sub-rankings
In the sub-ranking of top companies by location, Berlin once again took second place with 869 companies after Hamburg (1,084), relegating Munich (759) to third place. The largest employer at the location is Deutsche Bahn AG.
In the sub-rankings “Cities with the most global market leaders” and “Cities with the most foreign-owned companies”, the German capital maintained third place: Berlin is home to 27 of the 1,471 companies classified as German global market leaders and 369 foreign-owned companies.
The study is published twice a year and has been mapping the dynamic developments in the corporate landscape at location level since 2020. Among other things, so-called “top companies” as well as the largest family businesses and global market leaders are identified. In addition, individual ratings of location stakeholders on seven location factors are collected. The ratio of employees to the population and the number of universities located at the locations were newly analyzed for the evaluation. Deutsche Wirtschaft (DDW) analyzed 4,063 cities for this purpose.
DDW Location Ranking Winter 2025