Alternative for Germany
Alternative for Germany is a far-right, right-wing populist,
national conservative, and völkisch nationalist political party in Germany. It has 151 members of the Bundestag and 15 members of the European Parliament. It is the largest opposition party in the Bundestag and a member of the Europe of Sovereign Nations Group in the European Parliament.
Its name reflects its resistance to the mainstream policies of Angela Merkel and her slogan Alternativlosigkeit. Established in April 2013, AfD narrowly missed the 5% electoral threshold to sit in the Bundestag during the 2013 federal election. The party won seven seats in the 2014 European Parliament election in Germany as a member of the European Conservatives and Reformists. After securing representation in 14 of the 16 German state parliaments by October 2017, AfD won 94 seats in the 2017 federal election and became the third-largest party in the country, as well as the largest opposition party; its lead candidates were the co-vice chairman Alexander Gauland and Alice Weidel, the latter having served as the party group leader in the 19th Bundestag. In the 2021 federal election, AfD dropped to being the fifth-largest party in the 20th Bundestag. Following the 2025 federal election, it became the second-largest party and the largest opposition party in the 21st Bundestag.
AfD was founded by Gauland, Bernd Lucke, and former members of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany to oppose the policies of the eurozone as a right-wing and moderately Eurosceptic alternative to the centre-right but pro-European CDU. The party presented itself as an economically liberal, Eurosceptic, and conservative movement in its early years. AfD subsequently moved further to the right, and expanded its policies under successive leaderships to include opposition to immigration, Islam, and the European Union. Since 2015, with the beginning of the refugee crisis in Europe, AfD's ideology has been characterised by German nationalism, völkisch nationalism, right-wing populism, and national conservatism. It has a policy focus on opposing Islam, opposing immigration into Germany, especially Muslim immigration into Germany, welfare chauvinism, Euroscepticism, denial of human-caused global warming, and supporting closer relations with Russia.
Several state associations and other factions of AfD have been linked to or accused of harbouring connections with far-right nationalist and proscribed movements, such as Pegida, the Neue Rechte, and the Identitarian movement, and of employing historical revisionism, as well as xenophobic rhetoric. They have been observed by various state offices for the protection of the constitution since 2018. AfD's leadership has denied that the party is racist and has been internally divided on whether to endorse such groups. In January 2022, after a failed power struggle, party leader Jörg Meuthen resigned his party chairmanship with immediate effect and left AfD, stating that the party had moved far to the right with totalitarian traits and in large parts was no longer based on the liberal democratic basic order. Lucke had left the party in 2015 with a similar view. In 2023, the Young Alternative for Germany was officially categorized by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a confirmed extremist organisation. In 2025, the BfV officially classified AfD as a "confirmed right-wing extremist endeavor," which allows authorities to increase surveillance, and permits the use of informants and monitoring of communications.
AfD is strongest in the areas of the former communist German Democratic Republic, especially the states of Saxony and Thuringia, largely due to economic and integration issues that continue to persist post-reunification, in addition to the East German voters' perceived propensity for strongman rule. In the 2021 federal elections, AfD fell from third to fifth place overall but made gains in the eastern states. In the former East Berlin, it came in second after SPD with 20.5% of the vote; in the west, it came in fifth with 8.4% of the vote. In the 2025 German federal election, AfD received a record 20.8% of the vote and ended in second place behind CDU/CSU.
History
Background
In September 2012, Alexander Gauland, Bernd Lucke, and the journalist Konrad Adam founded the political group Electoral Alternative 2013 in Bad Nauheim, to oppose German federal policies concerning the eurozone crisis, and to confront German-supported bailouts for poorer southern European countries. Their manifesto was endorsed by several economists, journalists, and business leaders, and stated that the eurozone had proven to be "unsuitable" as a currency area and that southern European states were "sinking into poverty under the competitive pressure of the euro".Some candidates of what would become AfD sought election in Lower Saxony as part of the Electoral Alternative 2013 in alliance with the Free Voters, an association participating in local elections without specific federal or foreign policies, and received 1% of the vote. In February 2013, the group decided to found a new party to compete in the 2013 federal election; according to a leaked email from Lucke, the Free Voters leadership declined to join forces.
Founding
The party was founded on 6 February 2013. On 14 April 2013, the AfD announced its presence to the wider public when it held its first convention in Berlin, elected the party leadership, and adopted a party platform. Bernd Lucke, the entrepreneur Frauke Petry and Konrad Adam were elected as speakers. AfD's federal board also chose Alexander Gauland, Roland Klaus, and Patricia Casale as its three deputy speakers. The party elected the treasurer Norbert Stenzel and the three assessors Irina Smirnova, Beatrix Diefenbach, and Wolf-Joachim Schünemann. The economist Joachim Starbatty, along with,,, and, were elected to the party's scientific advisory board. Between 31 March and 12 May 2013 AfD founded affiliates in all 16 states of Germany in order to participate in the federal elections. On 15 June 2013 the Young Alternative for Germany was founded in Darmstadt as the AfD's youth organisation. During the British prime minister David Cameron's visit to Germany in April 2013, the British Conservative Party was reported to have contacted both AfD and the Free Voters to discuss possible cooperation, supported by the European Conservatives and Reformists group of the European Parliament. In June 2013 Bernd Lucke gave a question and answer session organized by the Conservative Party-allied Bruges Group think tank in Portcullis House, London. In a detailed report in the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in April 2013, the paper's Berlin-based political correspondent Majid Sattar revealed that the Social Democratic Party of Germany and CDU had conducted opposition research to blunt the growth and attraction of AfD.Advocating the abolition of the euro, AfD took a more radical stance than the Free Voters. The Pirate Party Germany opposed any coalition with AfD at their 2013 spring convention. The AfD's initial supporters were the same prominent economists, business leaders, and journalists who had supported the Electoral Alternative 2013, including former members of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, who had previously challenged the constitutionality of the German government's eurozone policies at the Federal Constitutional Court. AfD did not regard itself as a splinter party from the CDU, as its early membership also contained a former state leader from the Free Democratic Party and members of the Federation of Independent Voters, a pressure group of independents and small business owners.
Lucke's leadership (2013–2015)
On 22 September 2013 AfD won 4.7% of the votes in the 2013 federal election, just missing the 5% barrier to enter the Bundestag. The party won about 2 million party list votes and 810,000 constituency votes, which was 1.9% of the total of these votes cast across Germany.AfD did not participate in the 2013 Bavaria state election held on 15 September. The party gained parliamentary representation for the first time in the state parliament of Hesse, with the defection of Jochen Paulus from the Free Democratic Party to AfD in early May 2013; he was not re-elected and left office in January 2014. In the 2013 Hesse state election held on 22 September, the same day as the 2013 federal election, AfD failed to gain representation with just 4% of the vote.
File:Wahlplakat 2013 AfD 01.JPG|thumb|left|Former "Courage for the truth! The euro is dividing Europe!" tagline on election placard 2013
In early 2014, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ruled the proposed 3% vote hurdle for representation in the European elections unconstitutional, and the 2014 European Parliament election became the first run in Germany without a barrier for representation.
AfD held a party conference on 25 January 2014 in Aschaffenburg, northwest Bavaria. The conference chose the slogan Mut zu Deutschland to replace the former slogan Mut zur Wahrheit, which prompted disagreement among the federal board that the party could be seen as too anti-European. A compromise was reached by using the slogan "MUT ZU D*EU*TSCHLAND", with the "EU" in "DEUTSCHLAND" encircled by the 12 stars of the European flag. The conference elected the top six candidates for the European elections on 26 January 2014 and met again the following weekend to choose the remaining euro candidates. Candidates from 7th–28th place on the party list were selected in Berlin on 1 February. Party chairman Bernd Lucke was elected as lead candidate.
In February 2014, AfD officials said they had discussed alliances with the British anti-EU UK Independence Party, which Lucke and the federal board of AfD opposed, and also with the European Conservatives and Reformists group, to which Britain's Conservative Party belongs. In April 2014 Hans-Olaf Henkel, AfD's second candidate on the European election list, ruled out forming a group with UKIP. stating that he saw the Conservatives as the preferred partner in the European Parliament. On 10 May 2014 Lucke had been in talks with the Czech and Polish member parties of the ECR group.
In the 2014 European Parliament election on 25 May, AfD came in fifth place in Germany, with 7.1% of the national vote, and seven Members of the European parliament. On 12 June 2014, it was announced that AfD had been accepted into the ECR group in the European Parliament. The official vote result was not released to the public, but figures of 29 votes for and 26 against were reported by the membership. The inclusion of AfD in the ECR group was said to have caused mild tensions between the German chancellor Angela Merkel and the British prime minister David Cameron.
On 31 August AfD received 9.7% of the vote in the 2014 Saxony state election, winning 14 seats in the Landtag of Saxony. On 14 September, AfD obtained 10.6% of the vote in the 2014 Thuringian and 12.2% in the Brandenburg state election, winning 11 seats in both state parliaments.
On 15 February 2015 AfD won 6.1% of the vote in the Hamburg state election, gaining the mandate for eight seats in the Hamburg Parliament, winning their first seats in a western German state. On 10 May 2015, AfD secured in the 5.5% of the vote in the 2015 Bremen state election gaining representation in their fifth state parliament on a 50% turnout.