The Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin is one of Europe's largest university hospitals, affiliated with Humboldt University and Free University Berlin. With numerous Collaborative Research Centres (CRC) of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft it is one of Germany's most research-intensive medical institutions. From 2012 to 2020, it was ranked by Focus as the best of over 1000 hospitals in Germany. In 2019, 2020 and 2021 Newsweek ranked the Charité as sixth best hospital in the world and best in Europe. More than half of all German Nobel Prize winners in Physiology or Medicine, including Emil von Behring, Robert Koch and Paul Ehrlich, have worked at the Charité. Several politicians and diplomats have been treated at the Charité, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who underwent meniscus treatment at the Orthopaedic Department, Yulia Tymoshenko from Ukraine, and, more recently, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who had received treatment at the hospital due to his poisoning in August 2020.

In 2010/11 the medical schools of Humboldt University and Freie Universität Berlin were united under the roof of the Charité. The admission rate of the reorganized medical school was 3.9% for the 2019/2020 academic year. QS World University Rankings 2019 ranked the Charité Medical School as number one for medicine in Germany and ninth best in Europe.