Alternative for Germany

A German right wing populist party, founded in 2013, now polling among the largest parties in the east.

Overview

The AfD began in 2013 as a Eurosceptic professors party opposing euro bailouts, riding the euro crisis to near the five percent threshold. The 2015 migration crisis transformed it into a right wing populist and increasingly nationalist force, expelling founders and radicalizing under figures like Bjorn Hocke. It entered all eastern state parliaments and became the second largest party in the Bundestag in 2025. Mainstream parties refuse cooperation under a firewall cordon sanitaire, and parts of the party face constitutional surveillance. Its rise marks the deepest rupture in the postwar German party system.