14 of 54 completed reports took at least a year.
About 26%. Each square is one completed report with usable dates. 134 voluntary Citizify reports. Not representative of Berlin as a whole.
Someone getting citizenship in a few weeks does not tell you whether your own file is delayed. Our Berlin reports range from 26 to 609 days. Reading the notes helps explain why there is no single timetable you can safely borrow.
How long did the completed cases take?
54 completed reports · Application to citizenship certificate
19 reports finished in under 180 days. At the other end, 14 took at least 365 days. The median is 245 days; it is not a delivery date for your file.
Three things worth reading in the notes
A document request is not the finish line.
One pending report says payslips and a salary bank statement were requested after about two months. Another describes receiving a case number and continuing to wait. Keep the date of each step, but do not treat it as an approval date.
Permanent residence does not give you a reliable countdown.
Two completed reports mentioning permanent residence took 37 and 249 days. These individual experiences do not measure the effect of residence status, but they do not support one guaranteed timetable either.
The lawyer stories do not establish a shortcut.
One contributor describes hiring a lawyer after six months and later finishing without going to court. Another warns against litigation. Neither account tells us what would have happened without that choice; we cannot conclude that legal action speeds up or slows down a case.
What about the 76 records still marked pending?
76 pending reports · Time elapsed by 18 October, not time remaining
13 records have already reached at least 365 days. The longest elapsed wait is 647 days. Some contributors may have received a decision without updating their entry.
What you can do with this
- Compare like with like: read the reports whose submission dates sit near yours rather than only the overall median.
- Keep your submission confirmation, your case number and copies of every requested document in one place, with the dates you sent them.
- Follow the instructions in the letters you actually receive, not a procedure described online.
- Update your own entry when something changes. Keeping an entry current makes the comparison more useful for the next reader.
What the official pages say
Berlin's immigration office asks people not to send status enquiries and to submit updated documents only when they have been requested (contact page).
§ 75 VwGO sets the conditions for a court action when an authority has not decided; it is not an automatic guarantee of a reply or decision within three months.
This article is general information, not individual legal advice.
See the numbers for your Referat
| Referat | Completed reports | Median days |
|---|---|---|
| S1 | 2 | not shown |
| S2 | 12 | 272.5 |
| S3 | 19 | 249 |
| S4 | 15 | 178 |
| S5 | 2 | not shown |
| S6 | 4 | not shown |
S1, S5 and S6 have fewer than five completed reports, so we omit their medians. The other numbers are not a speed ranking.
How we counted: sources and limitations
The Berlin timeline held 134 community reports that day: 56 marked approved, 78 still pending. That is 134 reports, not 134 verified people — one account can hold several entries, for example for a family.
Two approved reports were set aside: one missing a date, one where the certificate date fell before the submission date. Two pending reports had no usable start date. That leaves 54 completed and 76 open cases, all recomputed from the dates people entered rather than from the stored total.
The snapshot was taken on 18 October 2026 from the publicly available Berlin reports on Citizify. Durations are differences between the submission and certificate calendar dates people entered; stored totals were ignored because some of them disagree with those dates. These are self-selected volunteer reports, not a representative sample of all Berlin applicants. Entries from the same account were retained because they may describe different family members; we cannot establish a unique-person count. No causal comparison by Referat, nationality or legal representation is possible here. The latest reports are on the Berlin city timeline, where you can add or update your own.
