kitesurf, wingfoil and windsurf spots in Germany

Northern Europe's biggest board sports market

Few people picture Germany as a board sports destination, and they are wrong. The country has one of the oldest windsurfing communities on the continent, a school network that trains thousands of riders every year, and a gear culture that gave birth to some of the most influential kite and windsurf brands. People sail here seriously, methodically, and often in any weather.

Sylt has hosted one of the oldest stops of the Windsurfing World Cup for decades, and Fehmarn has become, generation after generation, the meeting point for the whole northern scene. Wing foiling found ideal ground here: plenty of sheltered water, very little depth, and riders already equipped for the cold.

Two seas, two ways of sailing

The North Sea is all about tides. The Wadden Sea, a World Heritage site, uncovers vast sand flats at low tide, and the huge beaches of Sylt or Sankt Peter-Ording change face twice a day. You get waves, current and endless space — and you need to read the tide table as closely as the forecast.

The Baltic, by contrast, has almost no tidal range. Its coast is cut into bays, lagoons — the Bodden — and peninsulas, offering flat, shallow water a few metres from a livelier sea. This is the coast of schools, fast progression and freestyle sessions, from Fehmarn all the way to Rügen.

And lakes, all the way to the Alps

Inland, Lake Constance, the Bavarian lakes and the lakes around Berlin offer a different kind of riding, more thermal and more local. Many strictly regulate kiting; windsurfing and wing foiling, on the other hand, are right at home, in mountain or forest settings with nothing seaside about them.