Next German Federal Election

The next German federal election to elect the members of the 22nd Bundestag, following the recent 23 February 2025 election, will be held before 26 March 2029.

Background

Date assignment

The Basic Law and the Federal Election Act provide that regular federal elections must be held on a Sunday or on a national holiday no earlier than 46 and no later than 48 months after the start of a legislative session. The 21st Bundestag was constituted on March 25, 2025 and has therefore been in session for months. Accordingly, a scheduled federal election would have to take place on one of the following dates:
*28 January 2029
*4, 11, 18, 25 February 2029 or
*4, 11, 18, 25 March 2029

The exact date will be determined by the president of Germany in due course.

Federal elections can be held earlier, if the President of Germany dissolves the Bundestag and schedules a snap election, which is however only possible under two scenarios described by the Basic Law:
# Failed election of chancellor: If the Bundestag fails to elect a chancellor with an absolute majority of its members by the 15th day after the first ballot, the president is free to either appoint the candidate who received a plurality of votes on the last ballot as chancellor or to dissolve the Bundestag (in accordance with Article 63, Section 4 of the Basic Law).
# Lost motion of confidence by the chancellor: The chancellor has the right to submit a motion to the Bundestag for a vote of confidence in him. If this motion fails, the Chancellor has various options for action, including requesting the President to dissolve the Bundestag. The President is free to accept or reject this request (in accordance with Article 68 of the Basic Law).

In both cases, federal snap elections would have to take place on a Sunday or national holiday no later than 60 days after the dissolution.

No elections can be held during a state of defense; if this prolongs a legislative period, new elections must be held no later than six months after the end of the state of defense.

Electoral system

Germany uses the mixed-member proportional representation system, a system of proportional representation combined with elements of first-past-the-post voting. Every elector has two votes: a constituency vote (first vote) and a party list vote (second vote). Based solely on the first votes, 299 members are elected in single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post voting. The proportional distribution of seats among the parties is calculated on the basis of the second votes. The seats won by a party through the second votes are then distributed internally among the states, depending on how many second votes the party received in the individual states (the Sainte-Laguë method is used both for the distribution of seats between the parties and for the internal distribution of a party's seats among the states). In most cases, the number of constituencies won by a party in a given state does not exactly correspond to the number of seats to which the party is entitled in that state proportionally. This is balanced in two different ways:
*If a party wins fewer constituencies in a state than it is entitled to based on the second-vote result, the highest-placed candidates from the state list are elected accordingly to the additional seats.
*If a party wins more constituency seats in a state than its second votes would entitle it to, the principle of second vote coverage (''Zweitstimmendeckung'') applies. This means that only the correspondent number of constituency winners with the highest percentage of first votes receive a seat. Constituency winners who have not won a seat in this case are given priority over the candidates on the respective state list in the event that a member leaves parliament prematurely during the legislative session.

To qualify for any seats, however, a party must either win three single-member constituencies via first votes () or exceed a threshold of 5% of the second votes nationwide. This does not apply to independent constituency candidates, however: these always enter the Bundestag if they win their constituency, which hardly ever happens. There were three in 1949, with candidates that were related to parties.

Parties representing recognized national minorities (currently Danes, Frisians, Sorbs, and Romani people) are exempt from both the 5% national threshold and the basic mandate clause, but must still meet state-level qualifications. The only party that so far has been willing and able to benefit from this provision on the federal level is the South Schleswig Voters' Association, which represents the minorities of Danes and Frisians in Schleswig-Holstein and managed to win a seat in 1949, 2021, and 2025.

The electoral law described here was adopted in 2023 and was used for the first time in the 2025 election. At the time, the CDU/CSU-faction criticized in particular the new aspect of so-called second vote coverage, and intends to reform electoral law again so that all constituency winners are once again guaranteed a seat, as had been the case before 2023. It is therefore possible that this electoral law will be changed before the next election.

Political parties and leaders

Single party governments are unusual in Germany since ca. 2009, a recent exception was the First Söder cabinet (CSU) until 2018 in Bavaria, and since 2022 is the Rehlinger cabinet (SPD) in the Saarland. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is considered far-right by all other major parties, they have joined a "firewall" policy that rejects cooperation and even tries to get AfD declared as illegal. Thus, for the time being, two-party or three-party government coalitions on federal and state levels are formed by CDU/CSU and SPD with various degree of support from Greens, Left, FDP, BSW, FW.

The table below lists the parties represented in the 21st Bundestag.

Opinion polls

Notes

References

{{German elections

Future elections in Germany
2029