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The Munich Security Conference (MSC) has invited lawmakers from Alternative für Deutschland to join its annual gathering of top international defence officials in February after shutting out the far-right party for the last two years.
The reversal, which was confirmed by organisers, came 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.
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 nine 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.”
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 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.
The previous no-AfD policy was adopted by the then MSC chair, Christoph Heusgen, a longtime 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 longtime 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 the dpa news agency.
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 Guardian understands that the invitation extended to AfD MPs is for the main conference and not other “confidential formats” hosted by the MSC.
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.
Germany’s domestic intelligence service in May classed the AfD as a “confirmed rightwing extremist” force, although that designation is still under official review.
