Bild: Самая читаемая газета Германии

German tabloid published by Axel Springer AG

Bild (, ) or Bild Zeitung (, ) is a German tabloid newspaper published by Axel Springer SE. The paper is published from Monday to Saturday; on Sundays, its sister paper Bild am Sonntag ("Bild on Sunday") is published instead, which has a different style and its own editors. Bild is tabloid in style but broadsheet in size. It is the best selling European newspaper and has the sixteenth largest circulation worldwide. Bild has been described as "notorious for its mix of gossip, inflammatory language, and sensationalism" and as having a huge influence on German politicians. Its nearest English language stylistic and journalistic equivalent is often considered to be the British national newspaper The Sun, the second highest selling European tabloid newspaper.

Bild was founded by Axel Springer (1912–1985) in 1952. It mostly consisted of pictures (hence the name Bild, German for picture). Bild soon became the best selling tabloid, by a wide margin, not only in Germany, but in all of Europe, though essentially to German readers. Through most of its history, Bild was based in Hamburg. The paper moved its headquarters to Berlin in March 2008, stating that it was an essential base of operations for a national newspaper. It is printed nationwide with 32 localized editions. Special editions are printed in some favoured German holiday destinations abroad such as Spain, Italy, Turkey and Greece. Bild sold more than five million copies every day in the 1980s. In 1993 the paper had a circulation of slightly more than four million copies, making it the most read newspaper in the country. In the period of 1995–96 its circulation was 4,300,000 copies. In 2001 Bild was the most read newspaper in Europe, and also in Germany, with a circulation of 4,396,000 copies. Although it is still Germany's biggest paper, the circulation of Bild, along with many other papers, has been on the decline in recent years. By the end of 2005, the figure dropped to 3.8 million copies. Its daily circulation in 2010 was 3,548,000, making the paper the fifth in the list of the world's biggest selling newspapers. Bild is published in tabloid format. In 2018 on average 2.2 million copies of the paper were printed across Germany and 416,567 readers took advantage of the paid digital offer Bild plus. In terms of subscribers, it is the largest in Europe and the fifth largest worldwide. In 2019 Bild started a weekly politic newspaper, named Bild Politik, which ceased publications after a few months.

From the outset, the editorial drift was conservative and nationalist. In 1977 investigative journalist Günter Wallraff worked for four months as an editor for the Bild tabloid in Hanover, Despite its general support for Germany's conservative parties and especially former chancellor Helmut Kohl, its rhetoric, still populist in tone, is less fierce than it was thirty years ago. In 2004 Bild was publicly reprimanded twelve times by the (German Press Council).

During the COVID 19 pandemic, Bild editor Julian Reichelt accused Chinese leader Xi Jinping of surveillance and other human rights crimes in an editorial titled "What China owes us" on 20 April 2020. After the Chinese embassy to Germany said that the Bild editorial reproached "nationalism, prejudice, and hostility against China", Reichelt responded "You [Xi], your government and your scientists had to know long ago that coronavirus is highly infectious, but you left the world in the dark about it." During the 2020 Nagorno Karabakh conflict, Paul Ronzheimer, the deputy editor in chief and correspondent of Bild, tweeted that Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan, agreed to be interviewed by the newspaper, and that he suddenly changed his mind, specifying that the Azerbaijani side itself offered to conduct an interview with Aliyev. Then, aide to the Azerbaijani President, Hikmet Hajiyev, responded with a tweet, calling his statement unprofessional and stating that Aliyev preferred to give interviews to professionals rather than the yellow press.

Its motto, prominently displayed below the logo, is unabhängig, überparteilich ("independent, nonpartisan"). Another slogan used prominently in advertising is Bild dir deine Meinung!, which translates as "Form your own opinion!" (by reading Bild), a pun based on the fact that, in German, Bild is a homophone of the imperative form of the verb bilden and the noun Bild .

Bild is printed in Ahrensburg, Hanover, Berlin, Leipzig, Essen, Neu Isenburg, Esslingen, Munich, and Syke. Outside of Germany it is also printed in Madrid, Palma de Mallorca, Las Palmas, Milan, Athens, and in Antalya. The foreign locations cater mostly for German tourists and expatriates.

The Berlin offices have a 19 storey paternoster lift, whose continued operation was vigorously defended editorially by the newspaper.