Rules of participation

To complete as many journeys as possible by bike for both private and professional purposes in order to:

• promote cycling
• help protect the climate
• improve the quality of life in municipalities

and ultimately also have fun!

CITY CYCLING takes place every year on 21 consecutive days between 1 May and 30 September. Each municipality sets the dates for their local campaign individually.

Anyone who lives, works, belongs to a local club or attends school or university in a participating municipality.

• The basic requirement is that your local municipality (town, city, community, rural district) has officially registered for CITY CYCLING and is listed on city-cycling.org/municipalities or appears in the dropdown list of participating municipalities and the 21-day local campaign period has not yet ended. 
• You also need a bicycle, of course. Any vehicle classified as a bicycle in the German Road Traffic Licensing Regulations (StVZO) may be used; this includes balance bikes. The inclusion and participation of all people is very important to us, hence kilometres covered by wheelchair, handbike, footbike, etc. also count.
• If both conditions are met, you can sign up on city-cycling.org/sign-up, then either join an existing team or form your own new one. If you decide to form a new team, you’ll automatically be designated the team captain.
• You must belong to a team to participate in CITY CYCLING – after all, climate protection and cycling promotion require teamwork! Teams of just two people are allowed though. Alternatively, each municipality has an “open” team that you’re able join. If you’re the only active cyclist in a team when the seven-day grace period for entering kilometres after the campaign ends, you’ll automatically be moved to the municipality’s “open” team.
• You’re able to sign up to participate in CITY CYCLING and to either form your own team or join an existing one up until the last day in the local campaign.

• Enter every journey you make and every kilometre you cover by bike during the three-week campaign in your online cycle log or track them directly using the CITY CYCLING app. If you do not have internet access, simply submit your kilometre log to your local coordinator at the end of each week.
• It doesn’t matter where you cycle – after all, climate protection knows no town, city or state boundaries.
• Rides and kilometres covered by bike during (cycling) competitions or on a stationary bike are excluded however.
• You can also enter the journeys and kilometres for several cyclists in your account (e.g. for entire families or school classes). IMPORTANT: In this case, you must specify exactly how many people you are entering kilometres/journeys for under “Settings”.
• Decide for yourself how often you wish to enter your journeys and kilometres (after every time you cycle, daily or at the end of each CITY CYCLING week).
• Grace period: When the 21-day local campaign period ends, you have seven days to finish adding the journeys and kilometres you cycled during the campaign to your cycle log. No new entries or changes are possible after this time!

A journey is a route that starts in one place and ends in another, regardless of the number of stops that you make along the way. During circular trips, the start and finish can also be the same.

Here are a few examples to explain:

• Your cycle to work is one journey, even if you stop to drop your kids off at daycare or to get something from the bakery along the way or make any other minor detours. Your cycle home at the end of the day is then another journey – also regardless of the number of stops you make.
• Cycling to the shops is also just one journey, no matter how many shops you cycle to; cycling home again is another.
• Circular trips such as bike rides out into the countryside are considered one journey, even if the starting and ending point are the same. For multi-day cycling trips, the routes covered each day count as one journey each.
• Do you use several modes of transport to get to work? So, do you first cycle to the local railway station, then take the train to the railway station near your place of work and cycle to the office from there? Then this is also just one journey, as your destination is the office and the railway stations are merely stops along the way. Only the kilometres covered by bike count, of course – and not the kilometres you travelled by train.

• To make things even more exciting, you can also form subteams within your team and compete against each other. For example, a school team can set up a subteam for each class or a company for each department. We then call a team that has subteams the main team. The rides and kilometres cycled then count towards the total for the respective subteam. The subteams’ results can be compared in the login area. In the overall competition within your municipality, your main team competes as a unified team again with all of the journeys and kilometres collected by all of its subteams. Hence only the results of the main teams (and not of the subteams) are visible on the municipal subpage.
• Each cyclist can only belong to one single team in each municipality and can therefore also only have one single user account. If two municipalities participate, for example where you live and work, you can collect journeys and kilometres for both municipalities. You’ll need to set up two separate user accounts for this. Please remember that each kilometre/journey may only be entered for one municipality!

• Climate Alliance Services awards prizes within five population groups to the most active local parliaments and the municipalities with the most kilometres cycled. We also acknowledge the newcomer municipality in each population group to cycle the most kilometres. In addition, our “Golden Spoke” award honours particularly successful initiatives in participating municipalities.
• On the local level, the participating municipalities are encouraged to award prizes to the most active local teams.
• See city-cycling.org/results, the municipal subpage or CITY CYCLING app for the results for your municipality and the individual teams there.

Participation in the CITY CYCLING campaign is voluntary and at participants’ own risk. There shall be no recourse to legal action.

For more information on data protection, please see city-cycling.org/privacy-policy.

We’ve tried to keep the rules of participation as brief and clear as possible here. Hence we’ve answered many of the other questions that may arise elsewhere, namely in our FAQs. You’re able to filter directly by the rules of participation or to enter a specific search term there.

The local coordinators are responsible for preparing and implementing CITY CYCLING locally and are therefore also your first port of call should you have questions. You’ll find their contact details on the subpage for your municipality.