Munich – September 07, 2026 -- Owners of older cars running on the R134a refrigerant could soon face pricier and harder-to-schedule air conditioning maintenance, according to Germany's ADAC motoring club. Tighter EU rules are further restricting the use of R134a, while no widely available, legally approved alternative exists yet for the existing vehicle fleet.
Cologne – September 07, 2026 -- German telecom provider congstar and the Gaming Ohne Grenzen initiative handed out the fourth annual Gaming ohne Grenzen Award at gamescom on August 26, expanding the ceremony to nine categories for the first time.
Three new prizes -- the Get Together Award, Best Feature, and Best Mobile Game -- joined the lineup this year, reflecting the growing range of accessibility tools built into modern games. Host Stefanie Langer led the ceremony at the Jugendforum NRW booth, with winners selected by a jury of gaming, inclusion, e-sports, and education experts, plus one community-voted prize.
The relaxed bookstore simulation Tiny Bookshop took the National category for its point-and-click controls and lack of time pressure, then repeated the win in the Community Choice Award, edging out Forza Horizon 6 and Rhythm Doctor in the public vote.
Berlin – September 07, 2026 -- RingConn will let visitors try its Gen 3 Smart Ring at IFA 2026 in Hall 14, Booth 121, from September 4 to September 8, with the device also featured at ShowStoppers.
The Gen 3 ring has already earned strong ratings from German outlets CHIP.de and connect.de for its health-tracking capabilities.
Gen 3's headline feature tracks changes in vascular strain over time. Once calibrated against externally measured blood pressure values, the ring's sensors monitor how vascular strain shifts across days and weeks. RingConn notes the product is not intended to diagnose, treat, or prevent disease and does not replace medical advice.
Berlin – September 07, 2026 -- ASUS has introduced its new ProArt lineup at IFA 2026, built around NVIDIA's RTX Spark platform to let creators and developers run heavy AI workloads directly on their laptops instead of the cloud.
The lineup includes the ProArt P16 and P14 laptops plus the GR1X mini PC, all powered by RTX Spark, which pairs a Blackwell RTX GPU with 6,144 CUDA cores and a 20-core NVIDIA Grace CPU. ASUS says the systems deliver up to 1 petaflop of AI performance and up to 128GB of unified memory.
RTX Spark can run 120-billion-parameter large language models, render 3D scenes larger than 90GB, and generate 4K AI video entirely on the device, according to ASUS. The company says this gives users full workflow customization and private local data handling without relying exclusively on cloud services.
Irvine, Calif. – September 07, 2026 -- Aurzen has unveiled the ZIP Pro, a tri-fold pocket projector the company calls the world's first Full HD device of its kind, and marked the launch with a display in Times Square ahead of IFA 2026.
The ZIP Pro unfolds to project an 80-inch Full HD screen and is designed for use in settings ranging from hotel rooms and campsite tents to the inside of a Tesla, according to Aurzen.
Aurzen says fitting Full HD performance into a pocket-sized device required solving a common projector design bottleneck: maximizing brightness without a bulky housing. The company built ZIP Pro on what it describes as a proprietary optical architecture engineered to balance volume, thermal dissipation, and light output within an ultra-compact frame.
Cologne – September 7, 2026 -- Roughly 170,000 children in North Rhine-Westphalia are starting school this year, and German broadcaster WDR is rolling out a package of free educational content through its long-running children's brand "Die Maus" to help them adjust.
Parents and teachers can access craft activities, puzzles, coloring pages, and ABC letter-learning films on the Maus website in German, Turkish, Polish, Ukrainian, Arabic, and Russian. A feature called "Maus-Schul-Weltreise" shows how children attend school in other countries, while a series of factual segments answers everyday questions about school life.
Hamburg -- The Elbphilharmonie Hamburg marks its tenth anniversary on January 11, 2027, and the concert hall has released figures showing its impact on the city's cultural life. Annual attendance at classical concerts in Hamburg has tripled since the venue opened.
A further 29.5 million people have visited the Plaza, the public viewing platform positioned 37 meters above the ground. Ten years after opening, the Grand Hall is currently running at 96 percent capacity.
Programming spans classical repertoire alongside jazz, non-European musical traditions, pop, electronic music and contemporary composition. What was once a construction project criticized during its build-out has become a fixture for international orchestras, artists and visitors.
Bad Homburg – September 07, 2026 -- Lilly Germany has launched a nationwide awareness campaign arguing that obesity is a chronic, treatable disease rather than a personal failing, rolling out across TV, social media, outdoor advertising and pharmacy displays starting September 1.
The centerpiece is a short film depicting a father calling his adult daughter, who lives with obesity, to apologize. He admits that for years he withheld the support she needed because he believed weight loss was simply a matter of discipline. Lindsay Zeckel, Vice President of Cardiometabolic Health at Lilly Deutschland, said the apology scene is meant to invite viewers to reconsider their own assumptions about obesity, adding that genuine support is only possible once the condition is recognized as a chronic disease.
September 07, 2026 – Mainz -- German broadcaster ZDF has revised its programming for the week of September 6 to 11, with the biggest shift coming on Sunday, September 6, when live coverage of the Saxony-Anhalt state election takes over the 7:25 p.m. slot. The change bumps the documentary series "Terra X: Weltstädte" from that evening's lineup, though the rest of the night's schedule from 8:20 p.m. onward proceeds as planned.
ZDF also flagged a casting correction for "9/11 - Die Geiseln des Terrors," airing Tuesday, September 8 at 8:15 p.m. The actress previously listed as "Kathrin Jelinek" is credited under the correct spelling, Katrin Jelinek. The fix carries over to the program's repeat broadcast early Wednesday, September 9 at 1:45 a.m.
Düsseldorf – September 07, 2026 -- German energy provider Grünwelt Energie is urging households to unplug idle electronics before long trips, a move it says cuts both power bills and storm-related damage risk.
Televisions, game consoles, computers and charging stations for large appliances continue to draw electricity in standby mode. Grünwelt Energie recommends disconnecting these fully before departure, which also protects the equipment from surge damage caused by summer thunderstorms.