The Grunau 8, designed by Wolf Hirth and Edmund Schneider, was a wood and fabric tandem two-seat training glider with a strut-braced high wing, swept back at 5° and with 1.5° of dihedral, built around two raked spars.

Constant-chord inner sections occupied some 40% of the span, braced from the spars near the panel ends to the lower fuselage longerons by two parallel lift struts.

[1][2] The fuselage of the Grunau 8 had a deep-sided hexagonal cross section with a rounded nose and a continuous open, tandem cockpit with the rear seat under the wing, well behind its leading edge.

The wing was supported over the cockpits by six struts, two inverted Vs from the upper longerons to the spars and a pair of cross-bracing diagonals.

A sprung skid reached from the nose to under mid-chord with a pair of fixed wheels on a short axle above it towards its rear end, though the Grunau 8 sometimes flew without them.