Berlin, Septemberr 16th, 2026 (The Berlin Spectator) – Berlin heads back to the polls on September 20th, its sixth election day in five years, and this time the outcome could ripple far beyond city limits. Roughly 2.5 million residents will decide who runs Germany’s capital at a moment when the far-right AfD is riding high nationally and a potential win by Die Linke’s Elif Eralp is already drawing international attention as a possible German answer to Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in New York.
A Tight Three-Way Race
Polling puts the CDU and Die Linke essentially neck and neck, each hovering between 20 and 23 percent, with the AfD and the Greens close behind and the SPD trailing in fifth place at 10 to 15 percent. No two-party coalition would have enough seats to govern, not even a continuation of the current CDU-SPD alliance. That leaves two realistic paths forward, a CDU-Green-SPD coalition or a Linke-Green-SPD alliance, with the AfD widely expected to be frozen out of any government since every other party has ruled out working with it.
Why Berlin Is Voting Early Again
This is not a scheduled election. Berlin’s state parliament, the Abgeordnetenhaus, normally serves a five-year term, but the last vote in 2023 was itself a court-ordered rerun after the 2021 election, held alongside the federal vote, collapsed into chaos. Ballots ran out at some polling stations, were mixed up at others and long lines formed across the city. Both the state and district elections had to be completely redone in February 2023, with parts of the federal election following a year later. Because the five-year clock never reset, Berliners are now voting again after just three and a half years.
This time, 17 parties are competing for seats, about half as many as ran in the chaotic 2023 rerun, when 33 lists appeared on the ballot. Any party needs at least 5 percent of the vote to enter parliament. In a first for a Berlin state election, residents aged 16 and 17 can vote, a group making up roughly 2 percent of the electorate. They have already had that right in district elections, where EU citizens living in Berlin can vote as well.
Who’s Running the City Now
The CDU and SPD have governed together since 2023 under Mayor Kai Wegner, with the Greens, Die Linke and the AfD in opposition. Wegner will not be on the ballot this time. He dropped his bid for reelection in July after it emerged he had given a misleading account of how he handled a major power outage in January. Finance Senator Stefan Evers took over the CDU’s campaign on short notice.
Eralp and Evers Lead the Pack
At 45, Eralp could become Berlin’s first mayor from Die Linke, and the first with a migrant background. Born in Munich to parents who fled Turkey as socialists and union organizers, she trained as a lawyer, sat on her party’s Berlin executive from 2018 to 2023 and now serves as deputy leader of its parliamentary group. Her campaign message centers on stopping rent gouging and making the city affordable again, and she has pointed to Mamdani’s win in New York as evidence a leftist can win in a major capital too. She wants large housing companies dispossessed and a rent cap imposed on state-owned apartments. Married with two children, she has also had to fend off criticism over allegations that antisemitim and hostility towards Israel have taken hold in her party.
Evers, 46, only stepped into the race in mid-July once Wegner withdrew, and has worked to avoid looking like a mere placeholder. He has taken positions that cut against his own party’s grain at times, including a push to require asylum seekers to do community service and questioning whether free school lunches should remain universal for grades one through six. Since the AfD’s strong result in Saxony-Anhalt, he has leaned into a message of centrist stability, arguing that voters wary of political extremes need to back the CDU. A Paderborn native who studied law in Potsdam, Evers has served in the Abgeordnetenhaus since 2011, ran the state CDU’s successful 2023 campaign as general secretary and later pushed through billions of euros in budget cuts as finance senator that triggered significant public backlash. He entered a registered civil partnership with his husband in 2015.
The Rest of the Field
Green candidate Werner Graf, 45, hopes to become mayor by leading a campaign alongside co-parliamentary chief Bettina Jarasch, who topped the Green ticket in both 2021 and 2023. Raised in a working-class family in Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz, Graf chaired the Berlin Greens from 2016 to 2021 and has co-led the parliamentary group since 2022. Though associated with the party’s left wing through his base in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, he drew wide support even from the more centrist Realo faction at the recent party conference. He accuses the CDU-SPD government of stalling progress on transportation and climate policy, but has generally kept his campaign tone milder than some competitors, and remains friendly enough with the outgoing Wegner that a CDU coalition is not out of the question, even if he openly favors a left-leaning alliance instead.
SPD candidate Steffen Krach, 47, gave up a strong shot at reelection as directly elected regional president of Hannover to move to Berlin last summer and try to keep his party in power at home. He had already served as Berlin’s state secretary for science from 2014 to 2021 and now co-chairs the city’s SPD. He has campaigned as a candidate of reason while criticizing both governing parties, an awkward position given his own party’s role in the coalition. His campaign has been complicated by a Hannover prosecutors’ investigation into his time as regional president, reportedly tied to the redevelopment of a former clinic site, examining initial suspicion of accepting improper benefits in two cases. Investigators searched his office and Berlin apartment. Krach denies wrongdoing and has kept campaigning. He is married with three children.
AfD leader Kristin Brinker, 54, is making her third run as the party’s top candidate after taking just 9 percent in 2023, and now says she wants to become Berlin’s strongest party outright. Born in Bernburg, Saxony-Anhalt in 1972, she grew up in East Germany, moved to Berlin after reunification and earned a doctorate in architecture before working in real estate and entering politics. A party member since 2013 and Abgeordnetenhaus member since 2016, she has generally been seen as part of the AfD’s more liberal-conservative wing but shows little discomfort aligning with its hardline faction. She has called for a “remigration” program, a points system prioritizing housing for longtime Berlin residents, and more mixing of neighborhoods with large migrant populations, saying some no longer feel like Germany.
Housing Dominates the Debate
Nearly every party has made housing costs and availability its central pitch. Die Linke wants a public construction program, a new agency targeting illegal rent practices and the dispossession of major real estate firms. The SPD has floated a dedicated “rent police” to crack down on gouging. The CDU is pushing faster, higher-volume construction paired with stronger tenant protections, while the AfD wants housing access prioritized for long-term local residents.
Litter and neglect in public spaces became a secondary flashpoint, with the SPD and Die Linke both proposing free bulky-waste collection to clear old furniture and appliances off sidewalks. Candidates also sparred over expanding 30 km/h zones and bike lanes, transit and street safety, and, in the AfD’s case, an immediate halt to accepting asylum seekers in the city.
Casting a Ballot
Around 2,542 polling stations will operate from 8am to 6pm, roughly 10 percent more than in the 2023 rerun, backed by 1,572 additional mail-in ballot centers. Up to 40,000 poll workers will staff the election, each receiving up to 120 euros in compensation. Members of the public may watch the process at any polling place, both during voting hours and later that evening when ballots are counted in public and results are certified.
The National Stakes
Sunday’s vote falls on the same day as a state election in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and both results are expected to be read as a verdict on the federal government. A poor CDU showing in Berlin, especially one that puts a Linke politician in the mayor’s office, would add to weeks of internal criticism already aimed at Chancellor Friedrich Merz over his leadership style. A strong CDU result, on the other hand, would count as a badly needed win for his party. The mood is similarly shaky within coalition partner SPD, where neither co-leader Lars Klingbeil nor Bärbel Bas has escaped internal criticism either.
What Comes Next
Once elected, the new Abgeordnetenhaus must hold its first session within six weeks, per the state constitution, with the chamber’s oldest member presiding until a parliamentary president and two vice presidents are chosen. That constituent session is scheduled for October 29th. There is no deadline for electing a new mayor, who needs a majority of votes in parliament to win. A second round follows if no one reaches that threshold on the first attempt, and if that also fails, the position goes to whoever gets the most votes in a third round.
