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New searchTen cinemas in Germany sell the whole evening rather than a seat: a doorman, a drink brought to your row, a room built around that. One company runs nine of them. Here is every one, what it actually gives you, and what it costs — which is the part that surprises people.
Almost every German chain now sells a wider chair with a footrest, and almost all of them use the same words to sell it. The difference is who does the walking. In a premium house someone takes your coat, someone brings the wine to your row, and the auditorium was rebuilt around that service. With a premium seat you still queue at the counter and carry your own tray; the chair is better and nothing else has changed.
Both are worth paying for. They are not the same purchase, and the marketing will not tell you which one you are making. This page separates them.
Ordered by the year each opened as a premium cinema. Nine belong to Premium Entertainment, the company Hans-Joachim Flebbe founded after leaving CinemaxX — the multiplex chain he had co-founded himself. The tenth is Kinopolis's.
The house that invented the format. Flebbe took over a CinemaxX cinema on Kurfürstendamm at the end of 2008, pulled out most of the seating and put 250 leather armchairs back in fourteen rows. The shell-shaped auditorium is Gerhard Fritsche's, built in 1952 and listed since. One thing to know before booking: projection is still 2K onto a 13.2-metre screen, the smallest picture of any house here. You are paying for the room, the row spacing and the person who brings the wine, not for the resolution.
Berlin's premiere cinema from 1957, and the Berlinale's competition venue until 1999. It went dark at the end of 2011 and came back on 27 November 2013 after a restoration that took over two years. Kino 1 is the largest auditorium in regular use anywhere in Berlin — close to 800 seats, 93 loudspeakers across 44 Atmos channels, 21 by 9 metres of screen, and a 70 mm projector that still gets threaded. Two of the seven halls are club cinemas furnished as libraries, each with its own bar.
Opened in November 2018 as the first cinema in HafenCity, and one of only two Astors that are new buildings rather than rescued ones. Three halls, 419 seats, Dolby Atmos in all of them and 4K laser in the two large rooms. The figure that explains the ticket price is the row spacing: 1.06 metres in the stalls, 1.45 in the Logen. There are 240 parking spaces underneath the building.
The Savoy opened in 1957 with Todd-AO and was advertised as the most modern cinema in Europe. Flebbe reopened it in 2013 and put a 70 mm projector back in two years later; it remains the only cinema in Hamburg that can run 70 mm, and was one of four in Germany to show The Hateful Eight that way. One hall, 16.35 by 6.85 metres, heavy stage curtains — and a programme built on English-language originals rather than on premieres, which makes it the odd one out here and the most useful address on the page if you do not speak German.
ARRI's own screening room on Türkenstraße, rebuilt and opened to the public on 6 December 2018. Three halls — 330 seats, 177, and a 65-seat club — inside the building of the camera manufacturer whose equipment shot a good deal of what plays in them. The only house on this page whose history is industrial rather than theatrical, Munich's best room for seeing a film in the original, and one of four premium houses that still thread analog 70 mm — the Astor hall ran Die Odyssee on it 95 times.
Opened in 1950 as the Residenz, Theater am Ring, listed in 1992 precisely because so little had been altered, closed in 2005, and for a while a television studio. Flebbe reopened it on 19 March 2012 as Cologne's first premium cinema. Two large halls and a small club cinema, patterned fabric on the walls, heavy curtains, silver screens for 3D. Sound is Dolby Digital rather than Atmos: the least equipped house on this page, and the one that leans hardest on its interior.
Opened on 24 October 2019 on the upper floors of the MyZeil shopping centre, which sounds worse than it is — you park in the building and take the escalator up. Five halls, Dolby 7.1 with Atmos in Kino 1, two of them library-style club cinemas. The same 1.06 and 1.45 metre row spacing as HafenCity, the same welcome cocktail, the same free cloakroom.
Germany's largest premium cinema, and the best story in German exhibition. Flebbe co-founded CinemaxX in 1989, and the country's first CinemaxX opened on Nikolaistraße in Hannover on 8 March 1991. He left the company in 2008, bought that same building back in 2012, and reopened it on 3 December 2014 as a premium house: ten halls, 2,200 leather seats, close to two metres of legroom. Kino 1 is one of Germany's four Dolby Cinema auditoriums, Kino 8 runs Atmos, and the house can still project 70 mm.
Reopened in October 2019 — the group's least glamorous address and its most quietly useful. Eight halls, the largest screen in Lower Saxony in Kino 8 with Atmos behind it, adjustable leather seats throughout and electric footrests in the Loge. Two things differ from the flagships: seat service does not start until 16:30, and the programme has twice won Lower Saxony's Programmfilmpreis, so it is not only blockbusters.
One hall, 242 seats, on Karlsplatz, and the only house here that is not Flebbe's: Kinopolis reopened it in 2012 as Munich's first premium cinema. It makes the same four promises as the Astors — free cloakroom, welcome drink, leather seats, service at your seat. What it adds is projection none of them have, a Barco RGB laser at up to 40,000 lumens in 4K and high frame rate, against Dolby Digital 7.1 for sound. It is also the most expensive premium cinema in the country and the cheapest: €19.90 for a standard seat at the weekend with €10 more for a Loge, and €9.90 for a matinee between noon and three from Monday to Thursday.
UCI rebuilt five cinemas so that every seat in the building is an electrically adjustable leather recliner. That is a real and expensive commitment, and it is why these sit in their own list rather than above: there is no doorman and no table service. The seat is the product. Each house has one iSense hall — 4K, a large screen, Dolby Atmos — and two of them have an IMAX.
UCI's flagship, opened on 14 November 2018 as UCI Luxe Mercedes Platz. Fourteen halls, 1,380 seats: an IMAX with laser at 22.3 by 13.5 metres, an iSense hall at 16.2 by 8.8, and twelve rooms of recliners. The IMAX is the exception — it keeps IMAX's own seating.
Six halls and around 850 recliners inside the Gropius Passagen, serving the south of the city. One iSense hall, no IMAX.
A 1999 multiplex in the Bahnhofspassagen, converted in 2018, with a bar looking out over the old town. The only cinema of its kind in Brandenburg.
The first UCI LUXE in Germany, and it is worth noticing where UCI chose to test the format: a town near the Dutch border rather than a capital. Six halls, 506 seats, every one a recliner. It also has a room set aside for guests who need care, which nothing else on this page mentions.
The newest, converted in 2025, and the only UCI LUXE outside Berlin with an IMAX — 21.3 by 11.65 metres, laser projection.
This is what most people in Germany can actually reach. Twelve CinemaxX towns have a premium row; only seven cities have a premium house at all. The foyer, the queue and the programme stay the multiplex's — what changes is the chair.
CinemaxX renamed its recliners LUX in January 2025 and placed ULTRA LUX above them: a wider seat and armrest, adjustable head and foot rests, a surface next to the armrest big enough for a plate, and a compartment for a coat or an umbrella. Twelve of the chain's thirty cinemas have them — the widest premium-seating footprint in the country.
A wider seat, generous legroom, an adjustable back, a footrest and in most halls a small integrated table. Thirteen of Kinopolis's eighteen houses sell them, and Aschaffenburg puts a further step above that in a KINOPOLIS LUX area. Note what the table is for: the snacks you carried in yourself, not a waiter.
Motorised recliners with wireless charging and USB in the armrest, plus two-person Premiumsofas. At the CUBIX on Alexanderplatz they are in Saal 9 and sold simply as “Premium” in the seat map.
20 beds · 1 hall · Leonberg
The strangest premium hall in Germany is in Leonberg outside Stuttgart: twenty electrically adjustable Hülsta double beds, leather at the head and foot, in the same cinema that holds the largest IMAX screen in the world. Blankets are at the counter. Nothing else in the country is attempting this.
Showtimes at the TraumpalastSeven. Berlin, Hamburg and Munich have two each; Cologne, Frankfurt, Hannover and Braunschweig have one. Counting UCI's LUXE houses adds Potsdam, Nordhorn and Bad Oeynhausen. Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Leipzig, Dresden, Bremen and Nuremberg have nothing in either category.
A premium cinema sells the whole visit: someone takes your coat, someone brings a drink to your row, and the auditorium was rebuilt around that. A premium seat is a better chair inside an ordinary multiplex — you still queue at the counter and carry your own tray. Both are worth paying for, but the words used to advertise them are nearly identical, so the seat map is the only reliable guide.
Not at that scale. Premium Entertainment, Hans-Joachim Flebbe's company, runs nine of the ten houses on this page — effectively the entire German chain-scale premium segment, against roughly forty Everyman sites and seventeen Curzons in Britain. The tenth, the Gloria Palast in Munich, belongs to Kinopolis.
The Savoy in Hamburg is the clearest case: its programme is built on English-language originals without subtitles. Everywhere else it varies week to week, so the version is listed on every screening we carry.
The Traumpalast in Leonberg near Stuttgart, which has twenty electrically adjustable double beds in one hall. It is the only cinema in Germany with a room like it.
Four: the Zoo Palast in Berlin, the Savoy in Hamburg, the Astor Grand Cinema in Hannover and the Astor Film Lounge im ARRI in Munich. Each runs it out of one hall — Kino 7 in Hannover, the Astor in Munich. The Savoy is the only cinema in Hamburg that can, and reinstalled its projector in 2015.
Every figure checked against the operator's own pages on 3 August 2026.
Ticket ranges are adult rates and include seat-category surcharges such as the Loge. Surcharges for running time, 3D, weekends and premium formats are not included.
