German Fetish Ball 2025: best year yet for Berlin’s fetish fest?

GERMAN FETISH BALL 2025: BEST YEAR YET FOR BERLIN’S FETISH FEST?

With the dust finally settling and impressions coming in thick and fast after the five-day German Fetish Ball 2025 Weekend, the general view seems to be that this year’s Berlin fetish fest may well have been the best yet in its two-decade history.

From the programme’s Kinky Cocktails launch party on Wednesday May 28 at new venue RIVO Spreeterrassen right through to the headlining Ball on Saturday 31 at its much-loved Spindler & Klatz riverside venue, everything this year seemed to be bigger and better than before.

Top image: German Fetish Ball 2025 featured five fashion shows from international designers including London-based Ada Zanditon Couture making its Berlin runway debut (model: Andreas Suter; photo: Heinrich von Schimmer)

Just a few of the countless great audience looks captured by the GFB’s official photographer in and around the Ball’s venue, Spindler & Klatt, on the banks of Berlin’s River Spree (photos: Heinrich von Schimmer)

For the first time there were two river cruises on bigger boats on Thursday 29, with that evening’s SonicBoom occupying a larger space than before in Matrix (and rumours that it could be even bigger next year). The German Fetish Ball itself benefited greatly from the new hall space at Spindler & Klatt, with its big stage, rear video screens and long catwalk providing a more immersive experience for guests and models/performers alike.

The Fetish Fair on Friday 30 and Saturday 31 was buzzing thanks to the attractive mix of traditional exhibitors and first-timers (such as London’s Charmskool). The only event we haven’t seen independent impressions of yet is Friday’s FetishGuerilla Revolution at KitKat. But the chances that this legendary night — the only event in the official schedule not hosted by GFB organiser Xklusiv — wasn’t a roaring success too seem incredibly remote!

Dutch model Lara Aimée’s Night Edge accessories label was another brand making its Berlin catwalk debut at this year’s GFB (photo: Heinrich von Schimmer)

So it does seem that the impact on the GFB from the double whammy of covid and Brexit (with its chilling effect on what had always previously been a significant level of UK participation) has now been consigned to the dustbin of history. If only the current room prices being charged by Berlin hotels could go the same way!

But what a joy to be able to put together a fetish blog about a big European event where sourcing images of those attending in latex or other fetish garb is not hampered by the limited abilities of fashion pundits and Google’s image search feature to distinguish latex from leather, plastic or sequins! With this Berlin event, the problem was not trying to find enough cool latex and fetish images to fill a decent sized blog page, but trying to decide which images not to use from the absolute plethora available!

Swiss label Wild Shine Asylum debuted its designer Thyade’s first latex collection at the Ball, including some historically-inspired costumes for your re-enactment fantasies (photo: Heinrich von Schimmer)

For the fantastic selection of photographs from which we’ve been able to choose for this initial look-back at German Fetish Ball 2025, we are immensely grateful to photographer Heinrich von Schimmer and his team. While his name may not be that familiar to Brits, Heinrich has been the GFB’s official photographer for many years, and is a veteran documentor of many other German and European fetish and alternative events too.

Unlike most fetish event photographers, Heinrich specialises in shooting with available light, ie without flash. This gives his event images a very distinctive look, with warmer, subtler tones than flash photography generally achieves.

For this article we’ve chosen just to feature images by Heinrich and his collaborators Siska and art.of.skalli from the Saturday night Ball itself. They cover the fashion shows, the individual performances and a small selection of the audience members who turned up in some incredibly elaborate and imaginative outfits.

Performances from aerialist duo monalaura, left, and contortionist Rosa Lisa, right, provided distracting interludes between fashion shows (photos: art.of.skalli & Heinrich von Schimmer)

If you follow the photographer links in our picture captions you can find everything his team shot at the Ball and also at this year’s SonicBoom party. There’s also a whole load of other event albums to explore there if you feel inclined. It’s a dirty job but somebody ’s got to do it, right?

One person you sadly won’t find included in these galleries (or anybody else’s GFB photography) is Jean Bardot, the legendary host of annual Minneapolis event Rubber Ball USA. Jean had been listed on the GFB website as the German Fetish Ball 2025 Mistress of Ceremonies right up to the kick-off of this year’s programme.

But on Friday May 30 some of you may have noticed a surprise announcement on Facebook by Ruby Alexia saying she’d be Mistress of Ceremonies at Saturday’s Ball. She and Arno Vön Detritus had already been booked for a joint DJ slot at KitKat the night before the Ball and, well, we don’t know exactly what happened — but we’ve been to enough KitKat nights in the past to know what can happen!

Another Berlin runway debut, this time from Barcelona-based model Myriel Monastic’s LX.NSTY latex label (photo: Heinrich von Schimmer)

Anyway, long story short, it turned out that Ruby couldn’t make the MCing gig on Saturday either. So at the last minute, Hamburg’s Inner Sanctum supremo Max Kuhl stepped into the role and made a great job of it by all accounts. Max being the consummate showman, this really doesn’t surprise us at all.

But in case you were wondering, that’s why the GFB found itself announcing three different Ball MCs on three successive days during this year’s event. Which might be some kind of a record! The next German Fetish Ball Weekend will be on May 13-17 2026. german-fetish-ball.de/en

Below: The 2025 Ball fashion shows climaxed with the return to Berlin of LA designer Alyssa Norman’s Blacklickorish Latex label, featuring some well-known British faces on the catwalk (models: Miriam Veil, Sweet Séverine; photo: Heinrich von Schimmer)