Hamburg's Ferienpass and Sportbund Feriensport: The Free Card, the Club Grants, and the Paid Camps in Between

Two Layers, Not One Brochure

If you’ve moved from Munich, forget what you knew about Feriensport there: a single city-published brochure listing roughly a dozen partner clubs’ holiday sports courses under one cover. Hamburg doesn’t work that way. What looks at first like one system, “the city’s holiday sports program”, is actually two loosely connected layers, plus a wide field of private commercial camps sitting alongside both.

The first layer is the Hamburger Ferienpass, a free discount card and directory that any child or teenager can use for almost anything during a school break: swimming pools, museums, zoos, workshops, city tours, travel packages, and, among all of that, plenty of sports camps. The second layer is the Hamburger Sportbund (HSB) and its youth division, Hamburger Sportjugend, whose actual job isn’t running a public-facing catalog at all, it’s quietly funding individual sports clubs’ own holiday programs so those clubs can charge less, or nothing, for a week of supervised sport. The two layers meet at exactly one point: some of the club camps that HSB helps fund end up listed for booking on the Ferienpass site itself, alongside fully private, fully commercial multisport camps that have nothing to do with HSB funding at all.

Getting this straight matters for one practical reason: if you only look at the Ferienpass site, you’ll never see HSB’s name, and if you only ask HSB, you won’t get a bookable list of camps. You need both.

The Hamburger Ferienpass: Free, for Ages 5 to 19, Since 1969

According to hamburg.de’s own overview, the Hamburger Ferienpass is issued by the Zentrum für Schul- und Jugendinformation (ZSJ), a unit of the city’s Behörde für Schule, Familie und Berufsbildung (BSFB), and has existed since 1969. Any child or young person attending school in Hamburg, roughly ages 5 to 19, qualifies, and the pass itself costs nothing.

Distribution starts each year in mid-May: schools hand every eligible student a flyer with the physical Ferienpass card attached. If that flyer never makes it home, or your family enrolls partway through the year, the same card is available at Jugendämter, Kundenzentren, public libraries (Bücherhallen), and Budni drugstore branches across the city, and a printable version can be downloaded directly from ferienpass-hamburg.de, which explicitly asks partner organizations to accept self-printed copies rather than turning families away.

According to Hamburg’s own press release announcing the 2026/2027 edition, presented by Education Senator Ksenija Bekeris at the i-Punkt Skateland skate hall (marking a 35-year partnership between the program and that venue, with skateboarding as this edition’s featured sport, and a fresh illustrated design by artist Manuel Kilger), the current card is valid from the start of the 2026 Sommerferien through the 2027 Pfingstferien. That’s a genuinely long runway: Hamburg’s 2026 Sommerferien ran 9 July through 19 August, and the same card then carries a family through the Herbstferien (19-30 October 2026), the Weihnachtsferien (starting 21 December 2026), and into the Pfingstferien in spring 2027, according to the city’s own Schulferien und Feiertage overview. Confirm the exact 2027 Pfingstferien window closer to the date, since different calendars round it slightly differently.

The card isn’t limited to sport. It also carries offers like a free junior membership with Deutsches Jugendherbergswerk (DJH), a “Stadtsafari durch Hamburg” city exploration activity, a youth-editorial workshop, and discounted multi-day travel packages, one of which has been advertised from as little as EUR 15 for a two-week trip to the Netherlands. Sport is simply one strand among many, not the card’s sole purpose.

Where Sports Actually Show Up Inside the Pass

The Ferienpass website doesn’t run its own camps; it hosts listings that individual providers, sports clubs and private companies alike, submit and maintain themselves, with entries filterable by time period, age group, and district. Some of those listed activities are genuinely free. Others are simply discounted for cardholders, and you have to bring the card (or your printed copy) to actually unlock the lower price.

A real, currently live example makes this concrete. kidz-in-motion’s Multisport-Tagescamp, held at VfL 93 Hamburg e.V.’s Borgweg-Stadion artificial-turf pitch in Stadtpark/Winterhude, is listed directly on ferienpass-hamburg.de. It runs Monday to Friday, 8:00 to 17:00, for children aged 5 to 13, mixing running games, throwing and catching, and trend sports like hockey, badminton, tag-rugby, basketball, dance, and yoga.

Photo by Bohdan Hyrovych on Pexels

kidz-in-motion isn’t the only name on the board. According to hamburg.de’s own directory of holiday camps, providers running similar week-long programs across the city include Die Werkkiste (building and craft projects), Kunstschule Krabax (art), a dedicated Parkour Feriencamp, HSV-Fußballcamp and a separate Ferien Fussball Camp (both football-focused), and Jugend Erholungswerk Hamburg e.V. (broader recreational programs), at locations spanning Rahlstedt, the Hamburger Stadtpark, and Rissen/Blankenese, among others. The same page prices this wider field at roughly EUR 59 to EUR 230 a week, with ages generally running 5 to 15, and it points families onward to ferienpass-hamburg.de for the fuller, constantly updated list rather than trying to keep its own page exhaustive.

The Hamburger Sportbund’s Real Job: Funding Clubs, Not Running a Catalog

This is the part of Hamburg’s system that’s easy to miss entirely, because it was never designed to be visible to families in the first place. According to Hamburger Sportjugend’s own funding page, the organization, the youth arm of the Hamburger Sportbund (HSB), funds holiday programs run during the Oster-, Pfingst-, Sommer-, and Herbstferien using two funding streams: grants from the Behörde für Inneres und Sport (the city’s Landessportamt) and donations from the Ingeborg-Gross-Stiftung, a foundation whose own site confirms it has long supported Hamburger Sportjugend specifically around youth sport, volunteer engagement, and equipment access for lower-income families.

This money doesn’t go to families, and it isn’t paid out through any application a parent fills in. It goes to individual Vereine (sports clubs) that are already HSB members and can show a documented child-protection concept, using HSB’s own “Richtlinien für Ferienprogramme” guidelines and an accompanying “Antrag Ferienprogramme” form. Funded programs are capped to participants up to 18 years old. A club that receives this funding then runs its own holiday sports week under its own name, at its own price (often free or nominal thanks to the subsidy), and a family registers with that club directly, the same way they would for any other Verein activity. Whether that specific club also lists its subsidized week on ferienpass-hamburg.de is entirely up to the club; some do, many likely don’t, which is exactly why asking a local sports club directly, “do you run anything during the Ferien, and is it HSB-funded?”, can turn up cheaper options than anything visible in a general online search.

Ferienanlage Schönhagen: The Away-Camp HSB Runs Itself

The one piece of this landscape that HSB genuinely operates on its own, rather than funding through a third party, sits far outside Hamburg entirely. Ferienanlage Schönhagen, on the Baltic Sea coast, is a 270-bed holiday and training facility that Hamburger Sportjugend owns and runs directly, offering beach volleyball, football pitches, table tennis, dance space, and martial-arts rooms, used for training camps, holiday programs, school trips, and seminars away from the city.

Booking Schönhagen doesn’t go through ferienpass-hamburg.de at all. Families and groups arrange it directly with Hamburger Sportjugend, either through the organization’s member portal or by a direct booking request (Schäferkampsallee 1, Hamburg; phone 040/419 08 123; service@hamburger-sportjugend.de). Treat it as a genuinely separate option worth raising with your child’s sports club or with Hamburger Sportjugend itself, since it won’t turn up while browsing sports listings on the Ferienpass site.

Comparing the Four Tracks

Step by Step

1. Get your child's Ferienpass first, even if you're not sure you'll use it. It's free, covers ages 5-19, and schools distribute it from mid-May; if you missed that window, pick one up at a Jugendamt, Kundenzentrum, Bücherhalle, or Budni store, or self-print one from ferienpass-hamburg.de.
2. Browse ferienpass-hamburg.de for sports listings by age, time period, and district. Treat any commercial camp you find there as booked directly with that provider, not with the city.
3. Separately, ask your child's sports club (or a club you're considering joining) whether it runs an HSB-funded Ferienprogramm. These aren't advertised on the Ferienpass site and can be considerably cheaper, since Hamburger Sportbund funding covers participants up to age 18.
4. If you want a Baltic-coast away-camp rather than a city day camp, ask Hamburger Sportjugend directly about Ferienanlage Schönhagen. It's booked through the organization itself, not through any public listing site.
5. Before paying full price for a commercial camp built around a health or fitness element, ask your Krankenkasse whether it qualifies for reimbursement. The kidz-in-motion example above gets at least EUR 75 back for children 6 and older because of a certified Präventionskurs; other providers may offer the same.
6. Register early for a specific week, not for the holiday in general. Individual providers publish and fill their own week-by-week schedules well ahead of each Ferien block, regardless of how long the Ferienpass itself stays valid.

Compliance Note

This page reflects publicly available information from hamburg.de’s official Ferienpass and Feriencamps pages, ferienpass-hamburg.de and one of its live individual listings, Hamburger Sportjugend’s own funding and Ferienanlage Schönhagen pages, the Ingeborg-Gross-Stiftung’s own site, and kidz-in-motion’s published 2026 program, current as of mid-2026. It is not official guidance. Prices, reimbursement terms, holiday dates (particularly the 2027 Pfingstferien window), and individual camp availability can and do change; confirm current details directly with ferienpass-hamburg.de, Hamburger Sportjugend, your Krankenkasse, or the specific provider before registering or budgeting.