From October 3, 2025, the successful ZDF crime series SOKO LEIPZIG will enter its 26th season. Chief Inspector Ina Zimmermann (Melanie Marschke) and her team investigate 25 new cases, produced by UFA Mitte. The new episodes are shown on Fridays at 9:15 p.m. on ZDF, available a week in advance on the ZDF web and app.
Back again: Melanie Marschke as Ina Zimmermann, Amy Mußul as Kim Nowak, Johannes Hendrik Langer as Moritz Brenner and Marco Girnth, who can be seen for the last time this season as Jan Maybach.

Katharina Rietz, Managing Director of UFA Mitte and producer: “25 years of SOKO LEIPZIG fill us with pride, joy and enormous gratitude! A huge round of applause is due to our numerous colleagues in front of and behind the camera for the outstanding quality of this series; to ZDF and our editors for the always inspiring and cooperative partnership, as well as to all viewers for their great and tireless trust in this format. We want to say thank you to all these people and celebrate SOKO LEIPZIG together with the upcoming season. With exciting cases, highly topical issues and with our great detectives, who do police work at its best and will take viewers into the most personal moments of their lives this season too.”

From fall 2024, Chief Inspector Ina Zimmermann (Melanie Marschke) and her SOKO LEIPZIG team will be working together for the 25th season. Together with her colleagues Jan Maybach (Marco Girnth), Kim Nowak (Amy Mußul) and Moritz Brenner (Johannes Hendrik Langer), they will work on 25 new cases. The first episode of the new season, produced by UFA Fiction, will be broadcast on September 27 at 9:15 pm on ZDF. The episode will be available in the ZDF Mediathek a week earlier.

Katharina Rietz, UFA Fiction producer: “The new season of SOKO LEIPZIG is exciting and more multifaceted than ever before – and you can already get a taste of it at the Leipzig Film Nights! Whether quiet tones, great dramas, action, real-time feeling or comedic moments – the new 25 episodes captivate with a distinct variety of stories and tones. They offer first-class thriller suspense, a fantastic show value and once again provide important thematic impulses. Our investigators are at the center of it all and are not only fighting crime in this season, but also facing major challenges – especially when a crime in the vicinity of the SOKO family has harsh consequences for everyone.”

The Leipzig team led by detectives Ina Zimmermann (Melanie Marschke), Jan Maybach (Marco Girnth), Kim Nowak (Amy Mußul) and Moritz Brenner (Johannes Hendrik Langer) investigate a total of 23 episodes. In the new season, the SOKOs delve into very different worlds. Their investigations lead them into the boxing milieu, a pole-dancing studio, undercover at a historical reenactment of the Battle of the Nations and to an “elf” community.

Henriette Lippold, Producer UFA Fiction: “With its variety of topics and narrative approaches, the 24th season shows our complex present. It is always a pleasure to work with the ZDF editorial team Ronja Reitzig, Jasmin Maeda and Kirsten Schönig and our cast to develop our SOKO detectives and to give them space for their needs and desires alongside their investigative work. This makes our series approachable and emotional.”

In a total of 28 episodes, the team of detectives Ina Zimmermann (Melanie Marschke), Jan Maybach (Marco Girnth), Kim Nowak (Amy Mußul) and Moritz Brenner (Johannes Hendrik Langer) investigate in the Saxon metropolis. The new season once again features exciting and emotional crime cases, such as a child abduction or a race against time to prevent a bomb explosion in a soccer stadium.

Katharina Rietz, producer at UFA Fiction: “The new season will be emotional for our team of investigators, both professionally and privately. We are once again venturing into human abysses and cases that get to the heart of the matter, but in which important social issues
also come to the fore. What I can promise: there will also be plenty of humor in this season. And as a highlight, our audience can look forward to three 90-minute specials over the turn of the year that have it all.”

Season trailer

The first offshoot of SOKO 5113 (later SOKO Munich) celebrated its premiere on ZDF on January 31, 2001 with the episode FLUCHT NACH FAHRPLAN. In addition to Melanie Marschke (Ina Zimmermann) and Marco Girnth (Jan Maybach), Andreas Schmidt-Schaller (Hajo Trautzschke) and Gabriel Merz (Miguel Alvarez) were also part of the first team of investigators. Later, Steffen Schroeder (Tom Kowalski) and Amy Mußul (Kim Nowak) joined the team, with long-time leading actor Steffen Schroeder making his last appearance as Chief Inspector Tom Kowalski on September 24, 2021. He was replaced by Johannes Hendrik Langer as Moritz Brenner on November 05, 2021 in the episode FÜR LUISE.

SOKO LEIPZIG is a production of UFA Mitte. The producer of the current season is Katharina Rietz, Tanya Momella Mallory is executive producer. SOKO LEIPZIG is edited by Ronja Reitzig and Kirsten Zielonka (ZDF).