Once again this year, the Feminist Intervention collective (AK Fe.In) published an analysis of the attacks on and hostility toward CSDs during the most recent Pride season. According to the study, in 2025 only 45.2 percent of the total 243 analyzed CSD events proceeded without documented incidents.
As incidents, the authors counted not only right-wing rallies and hostility toward and assaults on CSDs, but also property damage, shitstorms, and intimidation in the lead-up. For their analysis, AK Fe.In drew on press releases, police reports, civil-society monitoring, information from victim-support centers and mobile outreach teams, documentation from antifascist journalists, and their own on-site observations.
“The new normal is queerphobic”
Although the large mobilization success by neo-Nazis did not materialize, disturbances to CSDs rose by around 15 percent compared with the previous year. The authors note: “Relying solely on the analysis of registered (extremist) right-wing demonstrations continues to give an incomplete and thus downplayed picture of the overall situation that CSD participants and organizers have come to accept as the new normal. […] It becomes clear, when synthesizing the many different sources […], that disturbances are more the rule than the exception. The impression is: almost every CSD has one or the other Hitler salute on the sidelines.” They describe this development as a “shift in normality.”
There were repeatedly “tense situations” during the arrivals and departures of participants; sometimes these occurred even when “the police had already begun their own departure.” Such experiences undercut the empowering experience of queer visibility and left participants marching home with the current social reality loud and roaring in their ears.
The Role of the AfD
The AfD was directly involved in mobilization or in counteractions at only six of the 243 CSDs in 2025. But the authors emphasize that this does not mean the party plays no significant role in fueling queer-hostile sentiment. For instance, the party supported queer-hostile “Pride Month” campaigns or pressured CSD organizers and participants through parliamentary inquiries and motions. The authors summarize it this way: “[Their] MPs, wherever they are represented in state or local parliaments (which is nearly nationwide), are vigorously working to block CSDs and Prides.”
The Look Ahead to the 2026 CSD Season
The latest decision by the city of Dresden—that the CSD is an “apolitical event”—makes clear that you don’t need neo-Nazi mobs actively threatening the CSD to create risk. Bureaucratic restrictions imposed by authorities can be enough to make organizing or running a CSD nearly impossible. AK Fe.In notes that a trend that has grown since 2024 is harassment by municipal or state administrations. Whether such developments will continue to intensify in 2026 remains to be seen.
The authors urge continued solidarity with CSDs in the upcoming Pride season: to support, protect, and attend them. “Small CSDs are gold dust and living resistance against right-wing space appropriation. We must repoliticize large CSDs as well: we need to not only acknowledge but expand the intersections and shared practices of antifascism, feminism, and queer Pride.” (ls)
