Germany's annual security audit delivered a stark headline: the country's far-right extremist scene is growing, and fast.
The numbers
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) counted about 58,700 far-right extremists in 2025, up from roughly 50,250 the year before — a rise of about 17 percent — with some 15,600 classified as oriented toward violence, according to the agency's report. Right-wing extremist violent crimes rose nearly 9 percent, to about 1,395. The agency also tallied roughly 42,200 left-wing extremists and about 28,600 in the Islamist milieu, but singled out the far right as the leading danger. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt called right-wing extremists "the greatest threat to our democracy" while also warning of rising left-wing violence.
What's driving it
The BfV pointed to online radicalization, especially among young people, as a primary driver, citing internet-organized youth networks that mobilized against LGBTQ events and staged real-world protests. Officials said extremists continue to exploit debates over migration as a recruitment tool. The report also highlighted serious plots, including a network accused of pursuing arson and bombing attacks on asylum facilities that was targeted by enforcement actions during the year.
The AfD question
The report lands amid an unresolved fight over the status of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. In May 2025, after a years-long review, the BfV formally designated the AfD a confirmed right-wing extremist organization, citing what it called an ethnicity-based conception of the nation at odds with the constitution, NPR reported — a label that would have eased surveillance of the party. The AfD sued, and a Cologne administrative court suspended the designation in early 2026 while the legal challenge proceeds, finding the conditions for the classification not met pending a final ruling. As a matter of German law, the party does not currently carry the official extremist label; the case remains before the courts.
A continental concern
Germany's findings echo a broader European unease about resurgent far-right movements, fueled by migration politics and online networks that radicalize faster than institutions can respond. The BfV's chief described defending democratic freedoms as a daily task against pressure from multiple directions. With the AfD now a major force in German politics and the extremism numbers climbing, the report frames a tension the country has not resolved: how a democracy polices the boundary between protected political dissent and a threat to the constitutional order itself.
