The German sports year has a hard stop rather than a slow fade. Bundesliga matchday 14 is played from 18 to 20 December, the league then breaks until 7 January and restarts with matchday 15 on 8 to 10 January. That final weekend is the one date in the calendar where a verdict on half a season is the natural thing to read, and this time there is a genuine question attached: Bayern and Dortmund go into it level on points.

The Break Is The Event

A winter break concentrates attention in a way a continuous season does not. Nothing is decided on matchday 14, but it is the last evidence anyone gets for three weeks, and the table that stands on 20 December is the one that gets argued about over the holidays. Before that, the national team closes its Nations League group: Serbia away on 13 November and the Netherlands at home on 16 November.

Where To Watch

Bundesliga rights in Germany are split between Sky and DAZN, with Sky holding the Saturday conference and DAZN most Sunday fixtures — which means the final matchday of the year needs two subscriptions to follow in full, or a careful look at which game is where. The Four Hills Tournament is the opposite case: it runs on ZDF and ARD free-to-air, which is a large part of why it is holiday viewing in the first place. Operator streaming, where it exists, is listed in the table at the foot of the page.

Two Tournaments Over The Holidays

The Vierschanzentournee reaches its 75th edition and opens at Oberstdorf on 28 December, then Garmisch on 31 December and 1 January, Innsbruck on 2 and 3 January and Bischofshofen on 5 and 6 January. For the first time women jump the same four hills for the Golden Eagle, which is the first genuinely new thing to say about the event in decades.

Handball arrives earlier. The Women’s EHF EURO runs from 3 to 20 December, with Germany in preliminary Group F in Bratislava against Sweden, Slovakia and Serbia. Preliminaries run to 9 December, the main round to 16 December, and the semi-finals and final are in Katowice on 18 and 20 December. The men’s World Championship then opens in Germany on 13 January, which makes this the one month where handball and football compete for the same German audience.

Two Names In The News This Week

Luis Díaz. The Colombian trained with the full Bayern squad on Thursday for the first time since his injury, which is the step that normally precedes a return to the bench rather than the pitch. No comeback date has been set. Dortmund have the opposite news: Nico Schlotterbeck remains out with a muscle problem and misses both Saturday’s league meeting with RB Leipzig and the Champions League return at Atalanta the following Wednesday.

Niklas Süle. The former Bayern and Dortmund defender, who retired in the summer of 2026, gave an unusually blunt interview about how his career ended — saying he had too often drunk three beers too many and eaten at McDonald’s, and that he had wondered whether he was still compatible with the industry at all. He describes the decision to stop as the right one.

What To Expect

December in Germany is front-loaded and then empty and then busy again. The handball tournament runs through the first three weeks, the Bundesliga stops on 20 December, and the ski jumping picks up on 28 December for a stretch that runs past New Year. The dead week is 21 to 27 December, and that is the one part of the German calendar where nothing domestic is scheduled at all.