The Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg is, with its 1,769,117 inhabitants, the second-largest city in Germany and the fourth-largest in the European Union, but it is the German city with the highest GDP with € 88.9 billion (€ 50,000 per capita). Hamburg is home to over 120,000 enterprises.

One of the biggest factors in Hamburg's steady economic success is the Port of Hamburg. Other than Rotterdam it is the biggest port in Europe with transshipments of 9.8 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) of cargo and 134 million tonnes of goods in 2007. On a worldwide scale it compares well to other ports since it is the 9th largest worldwide. Hamburg's port is considered as a sea port due to its ability to handle large ocean-going vessels, although it is situated 68 miles (110 km) up the Elbe.

Hamburg's economy is particularly successful in the areas of aerospace (the famous Airbus A380 is partly constructed here), media (four of Germany's largest publishing companies), music (e.g. Warner Bros. Records Germany), Internet businesses (e.g. AOL, Adobe Systems and Google Germany), ship construction and trade.