A flu shot needs about two weeks before it protects you, and Berlin's flu wave does not arrive on the same date every winter. Step through the calendar to the week you could actually book, and the four real Berlin winters below show how much of each wave would have reached you after you were covered.
Data: weekly lab-confirmed influenza cases reported in Berlin, Robert Koch Institute, CC BY 4.0, read on 21 September 2026. Each winter counts reporting weeks 35 to 20. Lab-confirmed cases are only the people who were tested, so the real wave is larger, but its timing is what matters here. The 2020/21 and 2021/22 seasons are left out: the first had almost no flu under pandemic rules and the second peaked in May. Dates are for the 2026/27 winter. This is timing guidance, not medical advice.