Sports clubs
Experience community
In Heidelberg there are 123 sports clubs with more than 45,000 members. The clubs are open to all ages and usually offer regular, lively social events in addition to their core sporting activities. Virtually every conceivable sport, from aerobics to Zumba, is practiced somewhere in Heidelberg. With such a big selection, there is truly something from everyone – adults and children alike.
Offering such a wide selection of sports, training the instructors, buying new sports equipment, and carrying out refurbishments and extensions to club premises all cost money. Membership fees alone are not enough to cover the costs involved, so the valuable work of the city’s sports clubs is also supported by the City of Heidelberg’s sports promotion program. In 2019/20, the city provides around 2.4 million euros for sports promotion and 660,000 euros for further construction measures of the sports clubs.
Children naturally love exercise, so, to help combat obesity and the impaired motor skills that often go with it, in 1999 the City of Heidelberg launched the project 'Kinder in Bewegung' (Active Kids – KiB) which runs physical training sessions for small children aged between four and six. Every week several hundred children take part in the initiative.