January 26, 2026
German authorities have offered a €1 million reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible for an arson attack on high-voltage power cables in south-western Berlin on January 3. The assault left about 45,000 households without electricity and heating during sub-zero temperatures and took more than four days to fully reconnect — the longest citywide blackout in Berlin since World War II.
Berlin’s Senator for Interior Affairs, Iris Spranger (SPD), described the incident as terrorism. Investigators suspect left-wing militants may be behind the sabotage, but no arrests have been made so far. The attack has prompted urgent questions about the security of critical infrastructure and the city’s crisis response capabilities.
The outage exposed vulnerabilities in power distribution and sparked political debate over protecting key assets such as power grids, pipelines and data cables. Germany’s Economy Minister Katherina Reiche, speaking as the North Sea Summit began in Hamburg, emphasized the need to expand and simultaneously secure infrastructure. Reiche noted that recent years — including Russia’s war in Ukraine — have highlighted growing threats to essential systems, and she welcomed NATO’s higher-level presence at the summit as a sign of the issue’s seriousness.
The blackout also intensified broader discussions on resilience ahead of the North Sea Summit, where European states pledged large investments in offshore wind and energy networking to reduce dependencies on fossil-fuel imports. The summit agreement foresees joint projects to deliver up to 100 gigawatts of offshore capacity and contemplates investments aimed at strengthening both energy supply and security.
Local officials and national figures from across Germany have called for stepped-up protective measures for critical infrastructure. The attack has underscored the potential human cost of such operations when they occur during extreme weather, and officials said the reward is intended to accelerate leads and bring those responsible to justice.