ZDF Magazin Royale

ZDF Magazin Royale succeeds the Neo Magazin Royale, which ran for six years on ZDFneo, and shortened the runtime from 45 to about 30 minutes. The American HBO show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver served as its model.

The show is produced by Unterhaltungsfernsehen Ehrenfeld UE GmbH, a company of ZDF subsidiary Gruppe 5, together with Peter Burtz, Jan Böhmermann's manager. Recordings took place at the Studio König until the end of 2021, before moving to the production company's own Studio Ehrenfeld in Cologne-Bickendorf in early 2022.

The theme tune was composed by Lorenz Rhode and quotes a motif from the first movement of Witold Lutosławski's Concerto for Orchestra (1954), referencing the original ZDF-Magazin (1969–1988) hosted by Gerhard Löwenthal, which had used the same piece as its title music.

In interviews before the first episode, Böhmermann quoted Gerhard Löwenthal's original mission statement that the show would 'relentlessly hunt for flaws in our democracy and take a fearless stance,' adding that the ambition was exactly the same, 'except that we're a bit funnier.'

The show launched its own tabloid-style magazine called Freizeit Magazin Royale, satirizing gossip publishers rather than celebrities; although Böhmermann announced a print run of 500,000, only 30,000 copies were initially printed and sold out quickly, prompting a reprint of 120,000 copies.

In March 2022 Böhmermann announced that Freizeit Magazin Royale had sold 130,061 copies total, generating a profit of €55,139.38 that was donated to 15 media education projects.

A 2022 episode about Arne Schönbohm, president of Germany's BSI cybersecurity agency, led to the so-called BSI-Affäre; Schönbohm was suspended from office by the Interior Minister, and years of legal disputes followed over allegedly false claims made in the segment.

For a 2022 episode, the show and FragDenStaat published leaked original NSU files from the Hessian domestic intelligence service on a dedicated website, after the files had originally been kept under a 120-year secrecy period that was later shortened to 30 years.

A satirical 2022 segment depicting the FDP as a 'new RAF' terrorist group used a mock wanted poster; Welt publisher Stefan Aust successfully obtained an injunction because the poster used an image of actor Volker Bruch portraying Aust in the film Der Baader Meinhof Komplex rather than a real photo of Aust.

A 2025 episode investigating right-wing populist YouTubers, produced with the newspaper Die Zeit, revealed partial identity details of the previously anonymous YouTuber behind the channel 'Clownswelt,' sparking controversy over whether the report constituted doxing; the channel's subscriber count subsequently rose to over 450,000.