Fun fact · Our own analysis of OpenStreetMap data, not official statistics. How we measured it
Tennis courts
Tennis courts mapped in OpenStreetMap per 10,000 inhabitants, November 2026
Tennis is a western game: OpenStreetMap shows 5.1 tennis courts per 10,000 people in the West and 1.5 in the East. The gap survives a test against mapping effort: the West has 0.67 tennis courts for every football pitch, the East 0.18.
Inner-German border 1949–1990 ·16 states · November 2026
Former West
5.1 per 10k
excl. Berlin
Former East
1.5 per 10k
excl. Berlin
Berlin
2.1 per 10k
Germany
4.5 per 10k
The East stands at 29% of the West's level (November 2026).
By state
- Saarland6.9 per 10k
- Baden-Württemberg6.1 per 10k
- Bayern6.0 per 10k
- Rheinland-Pfalz5.9 per 10k
- Schleswig-Holstein5.0 per 10k
- Niedersachsen4.8 per 10k
- Nordrhein-Westfalen4.4 per 10k
- Hessen4.3 per 10k
- Hamburg3.4 per 10k
- Bremen3.2 per 10k
- Berlin2.1 per 10k
- Sachsen-Anhalt1.7 per 10k
- Mecklenburg-Vorpommern1.6 per 10k
- Thüringen1.6 per 10k
- Sachsen1.5 per 10k
- Brandenburg1.4 per 10k
November 2026
How we measured this
We counted every OpenStreetMap object (nodes, ways and relations) tagged leisure=pitch with sport=tennis inside each state’s boundary (admin_level 4, ISO 3166-2 code), via the Overpass API on 4 November 2026, and divided by the state’s population on 31 December 2025 (Destatis). Multi-sport values such as “tennis;basketball” count. As a check against differences in mapping effort we also counted football pitches (sport=soccer) the same way: tennis courts per football pitch compares two features that volunteers map together.
- A “pitch” is what mappers drew: usually one object per court, but some clubs are mapped as one polygon covering several courts, so the count understates courts and is best read as a relative measure.
- Indoor courts inside halls are often not mapped as pitches.
- OpenStreetMap is compiled by volunteers. Coverage of Germany is among the best in the world but not complete, and how thoroughly a feature type is mapped can differ between regions.
- Our counts are derived from OpenStreetMap and are released under the Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0: © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Notes & caveats
- Counts: 1,886 tennis courts in the East, 34,666 in the West, 779 in Berlin.
- Density-robust check: tennis courts per football pitch are 0.18 in the East, 0.67 in the West and 0.63 in Berlin (football pitches per 10,000 people: East 8.4, West 7.6). Sports grounds are mapped at least as densely in the East as in the West, so the per-head gap is not an artefact of mapping effort; we therefore show courts per 10,000 inhabitants as the main figure.
- Highest: Saarland (6.9 per 10,000); lowest: Brandenburg (1.4).
- Our calculation. East = the five eastern states without Berlin.
Show the table
| State | Side | November 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Saarland | west | 6.9 per 10k |
| Berlin | berlin | 2.1 per 10k |
| Brandenburg | east | 1.4 per 10k |
| Mecklenburg-Vorpommern | east | 1.6 per 10k |
| Sachsen | east | 1.5 per 10k |
| Sachsen-Anhalt | east | 1.7 per 10k |
| Thüringen | east | 1.6 per 10k |
| Schleswig-Holstein | west | 5.0 per 10k |
| Hamburg | west | 3.4 per 10k |
| Niedersachsen | west | 4.8 per 10k |
| Bremen | west | 3.2 per 10k |
| Nordrhein-Westfalen | west | 4.4 per 10k |
| Hessen | west | 4.3 per 10k |
| Rheinland-Pfalz | west | 5.9 per 10k |
| Baden-Württemberg | west | 6.1 per 10k |
| Bayern | west | 6.0 per 10k |