00 AM, designed to evaluate and refine the country’s public warning system.. The exercise involved the federal government (Bund), states (Länder) and municipalities, triggering alerts on the vast majority of smartphones and displaying warning messages on numerous public screens.
The annual nationwide alert, initiated in 2020, is conducted on the second Thursday of September, with a warning issued at 11:00 AM and a subsequent all-clear signal at 11:45 AM. Following technical issues and system overload in the initial year, the test was suspended in 2021 but resumed in 2022 and remains an annual practice.
While the exercise successfully reached a significant portion of the population through mobile devices, feedback indicates a need for improvement in media participation. Some television broadcasters did not transmit the warning messages as a continuous scrolling banner, as recommended by organizers at the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK).
The next nationwide alert is currently scheduled for September 10, 2026.