Cologne- The home of ‘Crazy days’

Cologne is one of Germany’s most creative and culturally rich business hubs but did you know it was once home to the worlds tallest building, Cologne Cathedral?

The Cathedral took 600 year to complete and still dominates the skyline.

Eu de Cologne was invented here in 1709 and the city is host to Germanys biggest carnival for one week every year, attracting more than a million people.

The “Crazy days” take place between Fat Thursday and Ash Wednesday starting at 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month.

Cologne is a high‑demand flexible workspace market, driven by media, tech, logistics, and companies expanding into Western Germany. Its one of Germanys “Big 7” office markets, but structurally tighter and less volatile than Frankfurt or Berlin. Flex penetration is below average meaning there is a clean growth runway in Cologne.

As a whole Germany has about 1.1 million sq.ft of serviced office stock across some 600 locations. That accounts for just below 3% of market take up. There is around 780,000 sq.ft planned across Germany so we fully expect the serviced office market in Germany to continue to grow.

Global operators have options with excellent German operators like Design Offices, Contoro and Satellite offering premium options. Local and boutique options are mainly around Innenstadt & Medipark.

Demand is predominantly media, broadcasting and creative given Cologne is Germanys media capital. There is a strong presence of tech, Saas, digital and scale up firms with professional services, consulting, supply chain companies dominating the mix.

Like most market demand is being driven by the flight to quality and “hotelification”, strong demand from corporates, short supply of prime space in the CBD forcing many occupiers to serviced to maintain location and shrinking footprints and the growth in flexible, hybrid working in Cologne.