In Germany, urban transport and mobility planning has a long and well-established tradition. Since the 1960s, many cities have developed strategic transport planning documents, originally focused on traffic management and infrastructure provision. Over time, these evolved into Verkehrsentwicklungspläne (VEPs), which remain the most common planning format used by German municipalities. Although these plans are generally not legally binding in themselves, they play an important role in shaping local investment priorities and guiding long-term mobility policy.

In recent years, German mobility planning has increasingly moved beyond a purely infrastructure-oriented approach. Contemporary VEPs more often combine different transport modes, links with surrounding municipalities, climate objectives, quality-of-life goals, and connections with other urban policy fields such as land use, air quality, and public space. For this reason, many current German mobility plans already include core SUMP features, even if they are not always formally labelled as SUMPs.

Compared with some other European countries, Germany is characterised less by the introduction of an entirely new planning model and more by the gradual adaptation of an existing planning tradition to the principles of sustainable urban mobility. In practice, this means that the German SUMP context is strongly rooted in long-standing municipal planning culture, while recent federal and regional initiatives have helped align this tradition more closely with the European SUMP approach.