2026 Berlin state election

Wegner replacement

Wegner received heavy criticism for his lack of presence and poor communicative response to the 3 January 2026 arson attack on the Berlin power grid, especially after it was revealed he spent part of the day playing tennis with his partner Katharina Günther-Wünsch instead of handling the crisis. The scandal caused tension inside the coalition and opposition parties accused him of lying about his whereabouts that day. Der Tagesspiegel reported on 7 July, citing the Senate Chancellery, that Wegner had not made any official phone calls related to the blackout until 12:45 p.m., nearly seven hours after the attack; this contradicted his previous public statement that he first began coordinating a response around 8 a.m. After this, internal anger from his party intensified, and on 10 July Wegner stepped down as the CDU's lead candidate for this election. He refused to resign from office and remained the CDU's constituency candidate in his district of Spandau 5. However, he ruled out serving in the next Senate if the CDU end up in government.^[9] On the evening of 10 July, Finance Senator Stefan Evers was named as Wegner's replacement.^[10]

Bribery investigation into Krach

On 9 September, the Hanover public prosecutor's office executed three search warrants against properties related to SPD lead candidate Steffen Krach; police searched his apartment in Berlin, as well as SPD offices in Berlin and the Hanover Region government offices. Though the office declined to comment on an ongoing investigation, reporting from Der Tagesspiegel indicated it was on suspicion of bribery.^[11]

Krach told Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg in an interview that evening that he suspected this was the basis of the investigation. Krach, in his capacity of President of the Hanover Region from 2021 through the beginning of 2026, was chair of the supervisory board of its municipal hospitals and oversaw the sale of one of them to a private medical provider. He claimed that one of the two bidders – which he said was the one which lost – made a donation of €9,900 to the Berlin SPD during the process, just under the €10,000 threshold which requires the party to disclose the donor's identity. At this time (December 2025), Krach had been nominated as the Berlin lead candidate but had not yet left his Hanover post. Krach called the implication of accepting a bribe "completely baseless", said he immediately recognized the donation as unacceptable and returned it within 24 hours, and denied ever taking improper donations in a personal or professional capacity.^[12] As donations are normally handled only by party financial staff, he said he had specially instructed them to alert him to any coming from Hanover to avoid the appearance of impropriety, and later abstained from the board's decisive vote. The prosecutor's office had searched the provider's offices in May 2026 in a relation to an unspecified "corruption offense", and Krach said awareness of a previous investigation into the provider ultimately swayed the board's decision.^[11][12]

The Berlin state executive of the SPD held a crisis meeting on the afternoon of 9 September and pronounced their full confidence in Krach as lead candidate.^[11] Reporting from RBB later brought Krach's timeline into question: it obtained copies of the relevant receipts and communications which showed the donation was made on 29 December 2025 and returned on 9 January 2026. Krach was only told about the donation on 7 January. However, the Berlin party treasurer backed up his claim that he instructed the donation be returned immediately.^[12][13] Krach stated his intention to continue campaigning in a press conference on 10 September, and confirmed he had support from the SPD parliamentary group, state executive, and federal leader and Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil.^[13]

In the evening of 10 September, the Hanover public prosecutor's office spokeswoman confirmed to Der Spiegel that there were three active investigations into Krach: two for Vorteilsannahme – "acceptance of benefits", accepting a bribe but without a violation of duty to the public, which is the more severe Bestechlichkeit (corruption) – and one for entering into possible anti-competitive agreements in conjunction with the misappropriation of trade secrets. The spokeswoman said the investigations had started on 3 September and the search warrants had been issued on 7 September.^[14] In light of this, Der Tagesspiegel reported that the municipal supervisory authority of Lower Saxony – Krach is still technically in office as president of the Hanover region on unpaid leave – was evaluating opening disciplinary proceedings against him.^[15]

Polls and potential coalitions

In the two months before the election, the CDU, AfD, and the Left were all shown as the largest party in at least one poll. Recent election winners were also quite different: SPD had won the invalid 2021 Berlin state election, CDU the repeat 2023 Berlin state election, the Greens the local 2024 European_Parliament elections, and The Left prevailed in the local 2025 German federal election.

Polls in August suggested that five parties are in the 15% to 20% range, making a continuation of the CDU–SPD grand coalition or any other two-party coalition mathematically impossible. They predict a CDU–SPD–Green Kenya coalition could have a majority, but Green lead candidate Werner Graf has ruled out working with the CDU.^[16] A Left–Green–SPD coalition is thus the most likely coalition to command a majority. The same coalition, but led by the SPD (red–red–green coalition), governed Berlin from 2016 through 2023.^[17] The AfD is subject to a firewall policy as all other major parties refuse to work with it, and no other parties are predicted to pass the five-percent election threshold. The federal CDU has also passed a "resolution of incompatibility" prohibiting it or any lower-level party organ from working with The Left.

Left lead candidate Elif Eralp has publicly stated a red line condition of entering any coalition is beginning the expropriation of housing properties owned by large companies, which voters approved by a large margin in the non-binding 2021 Deutsche Wohnen & Co. enteignen referendum. (Article 15 of the Basic Law empowers the government to pass a law allowing it to take over land, natural resources, and means of production for the purposes of socialization with equitable compensation to the owner, though it has never been used before.^[18]) Krach responded that he would not agree to this condition and accused The Left of "drawing a red line here because they do not even want to govern and instead continue as maximum opposition". For his part, Graf said his party felt bound by the referendum and called on the two red parties to settle their differences and "draw green lines" instead.^[19]

Hypothetical direct election of mayor

West Berlin

East Berlin