KARAT - 50+1 - Open Air at Sommer am See

In 2025, Berlin cult rock band KARAT celebrated their 50th anniversary - and what a celebration it was. The milestone year delivered on every front: 75 concerts, a string of TV appearances from the Giovanni-Zarrella-Show to the Goldene Henne, a 90-minute documentary that has since been broadcast repeatedly in prime time, a jubilee cruise to Norway that sold out within days, and a brand-new fifteenth studio album, "Hohe Himmel", which immediately landed in the Top 20 of the official album charts.

All those festivities traced the full arc of the band's decades-long story: the early hits from the late seventies like "König der Welt" and "Über sieben Brücken" - the latter gave Peter Maffay the biggest hit of his career in a cover version - later classics such as "Schwanenkönig", "Der blaue Planet" and "Jede Stunde", and more recent songs like "Schlafendes Herz" and "Wir".

The big anniversary was a reminder that this band is woven into the fabric of German rock and pop history. KARAT made music history on both sides of the Iron Curtain - they are the only band from the former GDR to have collected gold records in West Germany before the Wall came down and to have appeared on "Wetten, dass..?". Over twelve million records sold, countless awards from the Goldene Europa to the Goldene Henne, and an energy that shows no sign of fading: KARAT are very much a band of the present.

So it comes as no surprise that Claudius Dreilich (vocals), Bernd Römer (guitar), Martin Becker (keyboards), Daniel Bätge (bass) and Heiko Jung (drums) are heading into the year after their landmark anniversary with full momentum.