Germany’s Far Right AfD Invited To Join Munich Security Conference 2026.

Bonn; December 2025: The Munich Security Conference (MSC) has invited lawmakers from Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) to join its annual gathering of top international defence officials in February after shutting out the far-right party for the last two years.

Germany’s domestic intelligence service in May classed the AfD as a “confirmed rightwing extremist” force, although that designation is still under official review.

The reversal, which was confirmed by organisers, is believed to have come after the US Vice President, JD Vance, lambasted the AfD’s exclusion in a blistering speech at this year’s event in which he accused Germany of stifling free speech by sidelining the anti-migrant, pro-Kremlin party.

On February 14th 2025, JD Vance has launched a brutal ideological assault on Europe, accusing its leaders of suppressing free speech, failing to halt illegal migration and running in fear from voters’ true beliefs. In a chastising speech that had openly questioned whether current European values warranted defence by the US, he painted a picture of European politics infected by media censorship, cancelled elections and political correctness.

Arguing that the true threat to Europe stemmed not from external actors such as Russia or China, but Europe’s own internal retreat from some of its “most fundamental values”, he repeatedly questioned whether the US and Europe any longer had a shared agenda. “What I worry about is the threat from within”, Vance had then said.

Vance said of Donald Trump’s re-election: “There is a new sheriff in town”. He said: “Democracy will not survive if their people’s concerns are deemed invalid or even worse not worth being considered”.

In Germany, a firewall has long existed preventing mainstream parties from engaging with the far-right Alternative für Deutschland owing to its Nazi origins. But Vance said there was no room for such barriers. “People dismissing voters’ concerns, shutting down their media, protects nothing. It is the most sure fire way to destroy democracy”. He had described “old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation” to impose censorship.

Meanwhile today, a spokesperson for MSC declined to explain the new policy, saying only that the event, which has been held in the Bavarian capital since 1963, was run by a “private, independent foundation” and “under no obligation to anyone to issue invitations to its events”.

“It was decided to invite members of parliament from all parties represented in the Bundestag”, in particular members of the foreign affairs and defence committees, the spokesperson said. “The same principle applied before 2024”.

About 10 AfD MPs serve on the foreign affairs committee and another 09 on the defence committee.

Asked whether Vance’s criticism had played a role in the decision, the spokesperson said: “The MSC decides independently on invitations to its events”. The MSC brings together heads of state and government, foreign and defence ministers and top military brass from around the world for a weekend of public addresses and private consultations.

Vance raised hackles by meeting on the sidelines of the MSC with AfD’s co-leader Alice Weidel just days before Germany’s general election in February, after declining an offer to see the then chancellor, Olaf Scholz.

Weidel said she had not received an invitation to the 2026 MSC, although organisers noted the guest list was “not yet complete”. Her AfD has for years worked to build closer ties to Donald Trump’s Maga movement.

The previous no-AfD policy was adopted by the then MSC chair, Christoph Heusgen, a long time adviser of the former chancellor Angela Merkel. The event has since chosen a new leader, the ex-NATO Chief Jens Stoltenberg. But while Stoltenberg finishes his term as Norwegian finance minister, Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German ambassador to the US and to Britain and long time MSC leader, has taken the reins.

Before the MSC’s announcement, Alexander Hoffmann, the head of the parliamentary group of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party of the chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union, warned against inviting the AfD, noting several of its officials had close contacts with Russia and China. “Information also flows there and that’s why it would be a security risk”, he told reporters.

Kai Arzheimer, a political scientist at the University of Mainz, said Ischinger’s reasoning was unclear.

“Perhaps he genuinely believes that this will enable him to avoid further intervention by the US government”, he said. “A more pessimistic interpretation would be that this is another step towards normalising the party and that at least some institutions are anticipating the AfD’s participation in government”.

The political consultant Johannes Hillje said without an “official explanation” of the MSC’s new stance, “it looks like a capitulation to JD Vance and his criticism of the exclusion of the AfD”.

The AfD “is more extreme than other western rightwing populist parties, which is why the German state cannot treat it like any other party”, Hillje said. He said if AfD lawmakers were at the main conference, they should be excluded from “sensitive events” on the sidelines which could give them access to “confidential information” they could pass on to “contacts in Russia”.

However, Thorsten Benner, the director of the Global Public Policy Institute, a Berlin-based thinktank, noted the MSC routinely invited a “large Chinese delegation” without raising eyebrows and did not see a security threat in including the AfD MPs in the main conference.

“The MSC sees itself as a forum with a strong Republican presence. The bottom line for this forum is that it’s smarter not give Vance & the AfD the opportunity to present the party as victims”, he wrote on the social media platform Bluesky.

The MSC’s about-face comes amid a heated debate in Germany about how to contain the AfD as it grows in strength. The party took more than one in five votes at the last national election to become the leading opposition party in parliament.

The “firewall” barring mainstream parties from working with the AfD has ensured that the far right has been blocked from joining a government at the federal or state level. However, in 2026 there will be five regional elections across Germany, and the AfD has strong leads in the polls in two of them.

Team Maverick.