Our Year 2025—a retrospective

Dear students, dear colleagues and dear friends of the University of Jena,

we can look back on an eventful year in which important decisions were made for the future. I would like to share some of the highlights of 2025 at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and give you an outlook on what awaits us in the coming year.

With over 16,000 students from Thuringia and all over the world, the campus is very lively. Around 3,500 first-semester students, including 400 future teachers, started their studies with us in autumn. Our master’s degree programmes are in particularly high demand. We are therefore continuing to expand our master’s degree programmes with a view to the future: For example, a new international master’s in Quantum Science & Technology started last winter semester. We are thus investing in training for our key technologies of tomorrow—a guarantee that our students will be well equipped for the future.

I am particularly pleased that we have secured around 6 million euros from the Foundation for Innovation in University Teaching with the Universitas@Jena project, which we are using to make our excellent teaching even better. Our goal is to create innovative structures that enable modern and flexible study programmes, promote interdisciplinarity in teaching and studies and ensure transfer to society.

There were some very special highlights in research in 2025. One was the double success in the Excellence Strategy of the federal and state governments: Friedrich Schiller University was successful with two research clusters in the final round of the competition. Our Cluster of Excellence »Balance of the Microverse«, which has been funded since 2019, is entering the next funding phase. This means that we can further expand our internationally successful research into the fascinating interactions between microorganisms and their environment.

A second new cluster from the humanities and social sciences has been added: »Imaginamics—Practices and Dynamics of Social Imagination«. This cluster focuses on how social imaginaries emerge, change and shape our actions. With this, we are opening up a completely new chapter in the Excellence landscape and demonstrating the strength and breadth of research at Friedrich Schiller University Jena today. In fact, our cutting-edge research now ranges from bacterial communities to collaborative visions of the future—there could hardly better proof of Jena’s diverse strengths. With the two Clusters of Excellence, Friedrich Schiller University now meets all the requirements to apply for the title of University of Excellence. The full proposal has now been submitted—more on this in the outlook section. However, one thing is already clear: Friedrich Schiller University is now part of a small group of universities in Germany that want to make scientific history.

These successes are complemented by numerous other achievements, both in collaborative projects and in individual research. My sincere congratulations to our scientists!

I am particularly pleased that the University and the city of Jena have continued their collaboration in the OpenFORUM (MitmachFORUM) to promote dialogue between science and urban society in the coming year. We were able to inspire tens of thousands of people with science—at the Highlights of Physics and our MINT Festival here in Jena. These successes symbolize the spirit of cooperation, scientific exchange and future orientation that characterizes our university community.

We have also joined forces this year to drive innovation forward: Together with Jena University Hospital (JUH) and the University of Applied Sciences Jena, we launched the new transfer centre JENAiNNOVATION, which aims to translate scientific findings into concrete applications even faster and more systematically.

With all these successes behind us, we are looking forward to the coming year with great anticipation: in the summer of 2026, we are expecting an international delegation of reviewers in Jena to evaluate our Excellence proposal. Together with our partners, we will present our vision »Light. Life. Liberty.—Connecting People and Ideas«. The final decision in the competition for the title of University of Excellence will then be made at the beginning of October 2026.

In terms of construction, 2026 will be a year of new openings. The new »Inselplatz« campus, one of Thuringia's largest university construction projects, is taking its final shape. We have already moved into two buildings—the Computer Centre and the faculty building for Mathematics and Computer Science. By the end of 2026, the Psychology Tower and the modern Branch Library for Natural Sciences & pre-clinical Medicine are also scheduled to be completed.

In 2026, we will work with the Free State of Thuringia to draw up the new framework agreement. This is of utmost importance for securing the future of our University and will give us the necessary planning security for the coming years.

As you can see, 2026 will be anything but boring. There will be no shortage of opportunities and challenges for our University.

Finally, I would like to express my sincere thanks to everyone at Friedrich Schiller University who contributes to the success of our University with their heart and mind—both visibly and behind the scenes. Thank you very much for your commitment! Together we will achieve even more.

I wish you a Merry Christmas, a happy New Year and a brilliant 2026 for us all!

Prof. Dr Andreas Marx
University President