Christian Lillinger was born in Lübben in 1984. At the age of 13 he begins to with playing the drums. In 2000, at the age of 16, he was already admitted to the Hochschule Carl Maria von Weber Dresden and studied there with Günter Baby Sommer and Michael Griener. In the year 2000 Lillinger is a prizewinner of the of the International Improvisation Competition Leipzig. From 2001 - 2003 Lillinger is a member of BUJAZZO under the direction of Peter Herbolzheimer.

Since 2002 there is an intensive cooperation in the trio GGL (Gruppe Graupe Lillinger). 2008 followed the foundation of Christian Lillinger's own band GRUND with which he intensively realizes his own compositions.
2011 Foundation of DELL-LILLINGER-WESTERGAARD, which is intensively engaged in multiperspectival-structural work. 2013 he received a composition scholarship from the city of Berlin. In 2014 he founded the quartet AMOK AMOR (Peter Evans: tr, Wanja Slavin: sax, Petter Eldh: b, Christian Lillinger: dr) and released Boomslang in 2015 and 2017 on the Swiss label INTAKT the album "We Know Not What We Do".

In 2016 he receives an eight-month artist residency from the Bartels Foundation residency at the Marktgräfle Hof in Basel. In the same year the documentary film "Gegen den Beat" by director Jan Bäumer appears on 3SAT. In 2016 he founded the piano trio PUNKT.VRT.PLASTIK with Kaja Draksler and Petter Eldh, whose debut album was released on Intakt Records in 2018.

In 2017, Christian Lillinger was awarded the SWR Jazz Prize. In 2018, he founded his own label PLAIST, which already has nine productions have to show.
In 2019 he was awarded the "Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik" for OPEN FORM FOR SOCIETY. In 2019, the world premiere of his project OPEN FORM FOR SOCIETY was at the Donaueschingen Music Days for New Music and the Berlin Jazz Days.

To date, Christian Lillinger can be heard on about 100 recordings, including 23 under
his own name. In 2021 he received the German Jazz Award in two categories "Artist of the Year" and "Drums / Percussion". Percussion" the German Jazz Award.