The Gelbe Welle is the quality mark of the German Tourism Association (DTV) for moorings, marinas and canoe stations on Germany’s inland waterways. As of March 2026, 722 stations carry the mark, 277 of them as “Gelbe Welle Kanu”. Dalbi currently indexes 543 certified stations offline on the device — the dataset is being updated to the full 722.
Anyone searching for moorings in Germany lands quickly at the “Gelbe Welle” — and shortly after, at a PDF on the DTV website. The PDF is the only official, complete list of certified stations. It works at the desk. On a boat, at the dock, in the signal shadow behind a weir — it doesn’t. This post sets out what’s behind the mark, which stations carry it, where they are, and how to find them offline. Sources are named; numbers come from the current DTV PDF (status March 2026) and from the Dalbi dataset under ODbL.
What is the Gelbe Welle?
The Gelbe Welle is the official quality mark of the German Tourism Association (DTV) for moorings on inland waterways. It identifies stations that are equipped for recreational boating, audited regularly, and meet minimum criteria for sport-boat traffic, charter boats or canoe tours. The DTV has awarded the mark since 2004, in coordination with the federal waterways authority (WSV) and the water police.
Before 2004, no unified classification existed for water-side guest moorings in Germany. Marinas awarded stars by their own measures, municipal docks were not classified at all, and canoeists relied on regional paddling guides. The Gelbe Welle established the first nationwide framework — a comparable promise across federal state lines.
Dalbi has no commercial or contractual relationship with the German Tourism Association. The mark is used here nominatively (under § 23 of the German Trademark Act), to identify which stations carry it. The underlying data comes from OpenStreetMap and our own research in Potsdam, not from the DTV. More background on the relationship lives in the Gelbe Welle explainer on dalbi.app.
How do I recognise the mark on site?
The mark on location usually carries an additional pictogram strip indicating the actual amenities of the station — drinking water, shore power, waste disposal, toilets, showers, diesel or petrol, slipway. Which pictograms appear depends on the station; the mark itself only says the minimum criteria are met. The pictogram strip translates the promise into concrete amenities.
What does a mooring have to meet to carry the mark?
The DTV criteria are published on the quality-mark page. At the core, the mark requires:
- At least two designated guest berths (no purely club-only facility). For the “Gelbe Welle Kanu” variant this minimum does not apply — canoe-only stations can be certified even without two sport-boat berths.
- Clearly visible signage from the water
- Defined opening hours or a reachable contact person
- Minimum amenity standards (at minimum waste disposal; depending on station type also water, power, sanitary facilities)
- Accessibility for the registered boat spectrum (draft, length, height)
- A clean, well-maintained facility and safe mooring fixtures
Certification is valid for three years. After that, the DTV checks again whether the criteria are still met. Stations that fall out of the criteria grid between audits — operator changes without continued upkeep, construction works, dropped service hours — lose the mark until the next successful re-certification.
The application is made by the operator. There is a fee that scales with the station size. For municipalities with a single town dock the fee is modest; for larger marinas, proportionally higher. Listing is not automatic — without an application, no mark, even if the station meets all criteria in practice. That helps explain why some well-known moorings don’t appear in the DTV list.
The three sub-marks: Gelbe Welle, Gelbe Welle Kanu, Gelbe Welle Rest Stop
The quality mark comes in three variants distinguished by audience and typical amenities.
| Sub-mark | Audience | Typical amenities | Count 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gelbe Welle (general) | Motorboat, charter, yacht | Berth / dock / box, power, water, toilets, waste | 445 |
| Gelbe Welle Kanu | Canoe, kayak, SUP | Low entry, slipway or sand beach, picnic area, often overnight option | 277 |
| Gelbe Welle Rest Stop | Inland water tourists (motorised + paddle) | Day berth, basic services, no overnight claim | overlaps within the 445 / 277 |
The Kanu variant is the younger one — it closes a gap the general mark left open: kayak docks with a sand beach, low wooden landing or a ramp instead of a high boat dock are irrelevant to motorboat criteria, but central for canoeists. 277 of 722 stations — a good third — carry the Kanu mark. Anyone travelling by paddle has practically their own map in this segment.
Where the Kanu variant becomes visible in Dalbi, it runs as its own marker type alongside moorings and boat fuel stations. More on this split is in the three station types in Dalbi.
Where are the 722 stations? Distribution by federal state
The spatial distribution is uneven. Brandenburg, Bavaria and Lower Saxony together carry more than half of all stations. The city-states Berlin and Hamburg show up differently, southern area states and the Saarland are thin. The figures below are our own count from the publicly available DTV list “Standorte Gelbe Welle” (status March 2026) — the per-station details (names, addresses, waterways) live in the DTV PDF and are not reproduced here.
| Federal state | Certified | of which Kanu |
|---|---|---|
| Brandenburg | 204 | 9 |
| Bavaria | 109 | 98 |
| Lower Saxony | 104 | 51 |
| Mecklenburg-Vorpommern | 80 | 3 |
| Berlin | 76 | 9 |
| Schleswig-Holstein | 64 | 45 |
| Rheinland-Pfalz | 46 | 43 |
| North Rhine-Westphalia | 17 | 11 |
| Hesse | 6 | 5 |
| Saarland | 6 | 0 |
| Saxony-Anhalt | 4 | 0 |
| Baden-Württemberg | 2 | 2 |
| Hamburg | 2 | 0 |
| Saxony | 2 | 1 |
| Total | 722 | 277 |
A note on comparisons with other overviews: The per-state figures in the Dalbi app (stations by federal state) run higher in places — 208 in Brandenburg, 173 in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. These figures cover all three Dalbi categories (Gelbe Welle + 420 additional researched moorings + 139 boat fuel stations), not just the DTV-certified subset. In Brandenburg the Dalbi total of 208 sits only four stations above the DTV list — the DTV list is, in practice, Dalbi’s Brandenburg coverage. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern the gap is larger: 80 DTV stations against 173 in Dalbi overall, because the Mecklenburg lake district is especially densely captured in OpenStreetMap. Both columns are legitimate — they just measure different things.
Brandenburg: the Havel corridor
The 204 Brandenburg stations cluster on a handful of waterways. 65 lie along the Havel — nearly a third of the state on a single river course, from Berlin via Potsdam and Brandenburg an der Havel to Plaue and onward to Havelberg. 11 stations sit on the Dahme, 10 on the Spree, another 10 in the Storkow waters. Together, Havel, Spree and Dahme cover about 42 percent of Brandenburg’s stations — the Berlin-Brandenburg waterway corridor as one coherent charter region.
That concentration also makes a gap visible: in the Spreewald, famous for canoe tourism, only 9 certified stations appear. That isn’t a lack of infrastructure — the Spreewald paddling scene is dominated by commercial Kahn and canoe rental operators in Lübbenau, Lübben and Burg, who don’t actively pursue the sport-boat-oriented Gelbe Welle Kanu certification. The municipal water-touring rest stops exist, but stay outside the DTV scheme.
Bavaria: the unexpected canoe stronghold
The intuitive assumption — Mecklenburg-Vorpommern as Germany’s number-one canoe state — isn’t borne out by the data. MV has 80 certified stations, only 3 of them in the Kanu variant. The Mecklenburg lake district is charter-houseboat territory; the boat is motorised, the climb up via a classic dock.
Bavaria, in contrast, leads with 109 stations, 98 of them as Kanu variant. 98 of the nationwide 277 Gelbe Welle Kanu stations — more than a third — lie along the Main line between Aschaffenburg, Würzburg and Bamberg, the upper Danube near Regensburg, and a handful of smaller rivers. Anyone travelling by paddle who wants to orient by the Gelbe Welle heads south, not north.
Mosel: Rheinland-Pfalz almost entirely Kanu-coded
Rheinland-Pfalz has 46 certified stations, 43 of them with the Kanu mark. The concentration runs along the Mosel between Trier and Koblenz, with additional stations on the Lahn and the middle Rhine. Unlike Bavaria or Lower Saxony, the Kanu variant is essentially the default here — a consequence of the Mosel topography with small docks that are hard for sport boats but well-suited to kayaks. Anyone planning a Mosel trip should keep the Kanu variant in mind even if the boat is motorised; not every station is designed for a houseboat draft.
Northern Germany: Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein
Lower Saxony (104 stations, 51 of them Kanu) covers the Weser, the Aller, the Coastal Canal and parts of the Ems-Jade Canal. Schleswig-Holstein (64 / 45) clusters around the Eider, the Schlei and the connecting canals. In both states the canoe share is high — a hint that the northern lowland rivers fit the Kanu variant’s requirements better than the deep sport-boat harbours on the coast.
How do I find a Gelbe Welle mooring?
There are essentially three ways to a current and complete list. They have different strengths.
The DTV PDF (status March 2026)
The official, complete list lives as a PDF on the DTV website: Standorte Gelbe Welle. Status March 2026, 722 stations, grouped by federal state with address, postcode, waterway name and a marker for the Kanu variant. The PDF is the gold standard for completeness — and just as impractical as any other PDF with tables: not searchable on a phone, no map, no distance from your own position, no offline download for the walk onto the boat. Anyone planning at the desk and filtering in peace gets a long way with it.
Regional tourism portals
Several federal states maintain their own, more nicely presented overviews — usually with a map, often with photos, but always only for the region. TMV.de covers Mecklenburg-Vorpommern; bb:maritim covers Berlin-Brandenburg; wassertourismus-berlin.de focuses on the capital region. Useful if you already know the region; less useful when changing regions or needing a nationwide overview. The Bavarian equivalent is thinner; the southern stations correspondingly less visible in regional portals.
With the Dalbi app, offline
Dalbi currently indexes 543 of the certified stations and shows them on a map that works without signal. An update to the full March 2026 figures (722) is prepared and ships with the next dataset release. Until then, the included stations can be searched, filtered by federal state and station type, saved as favourites, and their route can be computed over the federal waterway network — all on the device, without any connection. The app is on the App Store; Google Play follows once the listing is approved.
A note: Dalbi is not an official DTV app and does not act as a representative of the association. The assignment of the Gelbe Welle to a station follows the nationally published DTV list; the data comes from OpenStreetMap (ODbL) and our own research. The full dataset lives at dalbi.app/data/gelbe-welle.json as an ODbL-licensed Derivative Database, publicly available.
Frequently asked questions
How many Gelbe Welle moorings are there in Germany?
As of March 2026, 722 stations, 277 of them with the “Gelbe Welle Kanu” sub-mark. The number grows slowly and steadily: the DTV awards the mark continuously and publishes the current list roughly once a year as a PDF.
What does an overnight stay at a Gelbe Welle mooring cost?
It depends on the operator — the mark says nothing about prices. Municipal docks are often free for a few hours and run between €5 and €15 for the night; classic marinas with shore power and sanitary facilities sit between €15 and €35, more in metropolitan areas. At sport-boat harbours with full amenities, boat length and season are the two biggest price factors.
What does the “K” or canoe symbol on the Gelbe Welle mean?
It marks the sub-mark “Gelbe Welle Kanu” — a station explicitly designed for canoe, kayak and SUP. In practice, that means a low entry instead of a high dock, a slipway or sand beach, often a picnic area, and in many cases an overnight option. 277 of the 722 stations carry the Kanu mark, with focus in Bavaria (98), Lower Saxony (51), Schleswig-Holstein (45) and Rheinland-Pfalz (43).
Who can apply for certification?
Any operator of a mooring on an inland waterway — marinas, municipalities with a town dock, water-sport clubs with public guest use, yacht harbours. The conditions are at least two guest berths and meeting the criteria catalogue. The application runs directly through the DTV.
What’s the difference from the Blue Flag or marina star ratings?
The Blue Flag is an international environmental mark for beaches and sport-boat harbours, awarded by the Foundation for Environmental Education — it says something about water quality and environmental management, not about the sport-equipment fit of the mooring. Star ratings by individual associations usually refer to sport-boat harbour quality by their own measure and are not nationally unified. The Gelbe Welle is the only nationally unified, DTV-awarded classification specifically for water-side guest moorings. More answers about the difference from apps like Navionics or Komoot live in the FAQ on dalbi.app.
Conclusion
The Gelbe Welle has been Germany’s only nationally unified quality mark for water-side guest moorings since 2004. 722 stations carry it in March 2026, 277 of them with the Kanu variant. The focal points are Brandenburg (Havel corridor), Bavaria (Main and Danube, especially for canoeists), Lower Saxony and along the Mosel. Anyone planning a trip has, with this, a reliable minimum statement on equipment and accessibility — no promise of comfort or price, but a clear foundation.
The official directory lives as a PDF at the DTV. Regional tourism portals cover individual federal states more handsomely. Anyone looking for a map-based, offline overview of all certified stations will find it in Dalbi — currently indexed with 543 stations, in preparation for the full March 2026 figures. The underlying dataset is openly available under ODbL.
Corrections, notes on misrecorded moorings, or suggestions for further posts in the logbook: gladly to hello@dalbi.app.
Further reading
- Marinas with restaurants — count from OpenStreetMap: where gastronomy sits within 300 m
Sources for this post: DTV page on the Gelbe Welle quality mark, DTV list “Standorte Gelbe Welle” as PDF (status March 2026), ELWIS — the federal electronic waterway information system, our own dataset at dalbi.app/data/gelbe-welle.json (ODbL v1.0). Location data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Rights to the list: the per-station details in the DTV PDF — station name, address, waterway, certification date — are a publication of the German Tourism Association and are not reproduced in this post. The per-state and per-waterway counts cited in the tables and spatial-distribution sections are our own counts from the publicly available DTV publication. Dalbi’s map data comes from OpenStreetMap (ODbL) and our own research; the Gelbe Welle mark in the app identifies OSM-mapped stations that appear on the DTV list, and does not replace it.