Our overview of the main manifestos and mayoral candidates…
You know it’s election time in Berlin when you step out of your house and the streetlights have been festooned with airbrushed portraits of grinning politicians offering utopian promises in the shape of pithy slogans.
Germany’s Wahlplakate tradition seems somewhat old-fashioned in the digital era but the political parties obviously still consider it an important way of reaching voters since there are around a quarter of a million of these things on the streets—a quite terrifying number of strangers to be confronted with each day since, let’s face it, many of us have no idea who most of these politicians are.
The reason there are so many different faces is that on September 20th, Berliners will be voting in two elections at the same time: the Abgeordnetenhaus (House of Representatives), for which voters have two votes—one for a constituency candidate and another for a party list—plus a separate BVV election, for which voters have a third vote for a party or voters’ association.
The placards, therefore, are presenting not only the lead candidates for each party but local district ones too, each one hoping to smile their way into the Berlin Senate. That’s also the reason you’ll see slogans that reference local politics—the SPD’s “Spielplatz ohne Spritze” (“playground without syringes”), for example—as well as bigger issues such as “Immobilienkonzerne enteignen” (“expropriate real estate corporations”) from Die Linke or “Kriminelle Migranten abschieben” (“deport criminal migrants”) from the AfD.
The worst ones are the vagueposts. Vagueposting is technically a social media term but is there a better way of describing vacuous slogans such as Volt’s “Unf*ck Berlin”, the risible “Berlin wird besser” (“Berlin is getting better”) by the CDU, and “Kein Versprechen. Ein Plan für Berlin” (“No empty promises. A plan for Berlin”) from The Greens?
It’s admittedly difficult not to feel frustrated by this bland sloganeering when our daily news headlines are dominated by urgent topics such as a burning Europe, the inexorable rise of the far right, the threat of AI to livelihoods, the climate and our minds, and two ongoing “wars” that Germany is deeply involved in politically and militarily—almost none of which is directly addressed by the placards.
While those are global and national issues that might seem irrelevant to local elections, I would argue that they very much affect our fair city: the far right AfD are literally on the doorstep, polling just behind Die Linke and CDU at the time of writing; the RKI has recently estimated around 12,000 heat-related deaths this summer throughout Germany; and arms factories are being built right in the middle of residential neighbourhoods.
Other big local issues that are being addressed somewhere in these campaigns include renewed plans to build on Tempelhof despite a 2014 referendum that clearly voted against it, the fatal security lapses at the recent CDU parade, ever-spiralling rents and a never-ending cost-of-living crisis.
Of course, the Wahlplakate aren’t the whole story in terms of what each party wants to achieve or change in the city, so below is a slightly deeper dive into their manifestos and their lead candidates, one of whom will subsequently be elected Governing Mayor by the new Abgeordnetenhaus
Note that the profiles are not meant to be exhaustive, nor am I aiming at any kind of pure objectivity. I am personally against a continuation of CDU rule and the AfD being in charge makes me want to puke. I am no fan of the SPD and Die Linke and Die Grüne are also far from perfect—but these are the choices.
If you want to read more about how the elections work, who can vote and other practical questions, the Berliner Morgenpost has a Wiki here.
Stefan Evers (CDU)
Stefan Evers, an openly gay lawyer married to a banker, is probably the best-known of the candidates due to his role as the State Finance Senator. A committed preacher of austerity, he was the man responsible for implementing the heavy budget cuts throughout the city, including significant reductions to culture. He’s now also Culture Senator due to the resignation of Sarah Wedl-Wilson over irregularities in the distribution of public funds for projects intended to combat antisemitism as well as Governing Mayor after his pal Kai Wegner was forced to withdraw his re-election bid due to the tennis-gate scandal. Notice a pattern here? Evers—who famously described squatters on Rigaer Strasse as a “nest of left-wing fascists” back in 2017—is keen to force recipients of Bürgergeld (welfare support) into community service, wants to build 21,400 apartments on Tempelhofer Feld, and his party is notoriously poor on climate, has been dismantling the welfare state, and has an immigration policy almost indistinguishable from the AfD’s. Indeed, some believe the CDU may compromise on the “firewall” and collaborate with the latter party if it wins them power.
Elif Eralp (Die Linke)
Elif Eralp, the daughter of Turkish socialists, was born in Munich, studied law in Hamburg and came to Berlin in 2010. She was a legal adviser to the Left parliamentary group at the Bundestag before becoming a party member in 2017. Her stated role model is New York’s socialist wunderkind Zohran Mamdani and the party has been working hard to build a similar brand of people-power policies. One of their central pledges is to honour the 2021 Deutsche Wohnen & Co. referendum and expropriate Big Landlords, as well as install local rent caps for public housing companies and create a dedicated state office for tenant protection. Die Linke also wants to stop arms exports and deliveries while still investing in defence, make public transport cheaper (including a proposed €9 social ticket for the BVG), and has rejected any further expansion of the A100 highway. Many Berliners will also be happy to hear that they plan to address the cost-of-living crisis and create more workers’ rights, partly through a luxury property tax. Following a recent federal party convention in Potsdam (June 2026), Die Linke also became the first mainstream political party in Germany to officially adopt the position—shared by the UN’s independent Commission of Inquiry and countless human-rights organisations and expert bodies—that Israel’s military conduct in Gaza constitutes a genocide, while simultaneously affirming the right to exist for both Israel and Palestine. Eralp herself has declined to join this position, however, so how that will look at state level remains to be seen.
Werner Graf (Greens)
The Greens are fielding a two-person “Spitzenkandidaten” team composed of former Environment Senator Bettina Jarasch and Werner Graf. Graf, a political scientist born in 1980 and a member of the party’s Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg chapter, is the mayoral candidate. He’s on the left of the party and advocates—as one would expect—for climate-friendly policies, including the ongoing energy transition in the shape of geothermal and renewable heating and regional green electricity subsidies. In Berlin, the party wants to plant more trees and create cooling spaces in public areas and playgrounds, and Graf is also down for tougher measures on housing and rental policy—though he has stopped short of advocating expropriation, opting instead to convert vacant offices and strengthen housing cooperatives. Graf and the Greens also want improved public transport, safer cycling infrastructure, and more funding for local community centers, grass-roots queer initiatives and youth spaces. The party has also been increasingly critical of Israel’s ongoing military actions, though few will forget Green politician Annalena Baerbock’s unstinting support for Netenyahu. A further problem is the political arithmetic: a coalition involving Die Linke would be difficult given the expropriation issue, pointing to a possible return to government alongside the CDU.
Steffen Krach (SPD)
Steffen Krach, formerly State Secretary for Higher Education and Research in the federal state of Berlin, is not as well known as former Governing Mayor (2022-2023) and alleged plagiarist Franziska Giffey. But he is co-chair of the SPD Berlin and has held administrative and party positions in both Berlin and Hanover in the past, so has a fair amount of experience. His politics, however, are distinctly centre-right and pro-business. He has described the concept of expropriation as “disastrous”, effectively ruling out a coalition with Die Linke, for whom implementing the 2021 referendum is a condition for entering government—though he has, bizarrely, advocated expropriating the Russian House. He is at least against building apartments on Tempelhofer Feld, preferring instead to campaign for a solar-powered surf wave, and believes the city can build 20,000 new apartments annually via private investment—something the city has signally failed to achieve thus far. Despite his party tanking in the polls and stern opposition from his own party’s more left-wing elements, he still thinks he can be the next mayor. This begs the question: has he been smoking Krach?
Kristin Brinker (AfD)
It’s genuinely galling to have to profile a Moscow-friendly far right party. The short version is: fuck, no. Do not vote for the extremism and intolerance this party represents. The fact that the domestic intelligence agency (BfV) classified the AfD as a confirmed right-wing extremist entity in 2025—a classification currently blocked by a court pending the main proceedings—and that all other German political parties have refused to work with them, should be enough to give anyone pause for thought. If that’s not enough, look at what’s happening under Trump’s watch in the U.S. for a taste of how things could look in Germany. Think that’s an exaggerated claim? Both J.D. Vance and Musk have been vocal supporters of the party, which has been the cause, according again to the BfV, of a huge spike in right wing extremism. They were behind the recent racist campaign that caused the Volksbühne’s summer pool to be closed down. As for Brinker, she was born in 1972 in Saxony-Anhalt—where the party may well win the upcoming state elections—and has been a die-hard AfD member since the party was founded in 2013. Trained as an architect, she moved to Berlin in the 1990s and is campaigning heavily for strengthened immigration policies, including reduced funding for asylum seekers; rigid opposition to progressive flags in schools and climate action; plus a social housing policy that favours those who have “lived here a long time”.