Few studies have reported the association between greenspace and academic performance at school level. We examined associations between both residential and school greenspace and individual school grades in German adolescents. German and maths grades from the latest school certificate, residential and school greenspace, and covariates were available for 1351 10 and 15 years old Munich children and 1078 Wesel children from two German birth cohorts – GINIplus and LISA. Residential and school greenspace was assessed by the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), tree cover, and (in Munich only) proportion of agricultural land, forest, and urban green space in 500-m and 1000-m circular buffers. Longitudinal associations between each exposure-outcome pair were assessed by logistic mixed effects models with person and school as random intercepts and adjusted for potential confounders. No associations were observed between any of the greenspace variables and grades in Wesel children. Several statistically significant associations were observed with German and maths grades in Munich children, however associations were inconsistent across sensitivity analyses. There is no evidence of an association of higher greenspace at residence, school or combined with improved academic performance in German adolescents from the GINIplus and LISA longitudinal studies. Display omitted •School greenspace was positively correlated with academic performance in ecological studies.•Our individual-level analysis included both residential and school greenspace and their combination.•We used data on individual German and maths grades in 10- and 15-year-olds.•No beneficial associations were observed in either of the two areas, Munich and Wesel.•The link is plausible and more studies with individual data should explore it. Higher residential or school greenspace does not appear to improve academic performance in 10- and 15-years old children from two study areas in Germany.