The University of Freiburg (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg) in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, was founded in 1457. It says it has around 24,500 students, eleven faculties and around 240 degree programmes. On 2 October 2026 it announced that it is again a University of Excellence under Germany’s Excellence Strategy, with funding from 1 January 2027.
Forestry and environmental sciences are taught in the Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources (UNR), which has 38 professorships in three institutes: Forest Sciences, Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Environmental Social Sciences and Geography. The faculty says forest sciences at Freiburg look back on a hundred-year tradition, and lists research focuses on natural resources, global change, livelihoods such as forest, water and soil, transformation towards sustainability, and natural hazards. Faculty professorships largely carry the Cluster of Excellence Future Forests: Adapting Complex Social-ecological Forest Systems to Global Change, funded for 2026 to 2032. The DFG-funded ConFoBi research training group studies biodiversity protection in managed Central European forests, and the Forest Research Institute Baden-Württemberg is a cooperating institution.