List of political parties in Germany in the context of "Christian Democratic Union of Germany"

Alternative for Germany (German: Alternative für Deutschland, AfD, German pronunciation: [aːʔɛfˈdeː] ) is a far-right, right-wing populist, national conservative, and völkisch nationalist political party in Germany. It has 151 members of the Bundestag and 15 members of the European Parliament. It is the largest opposition party in the Bundestag and a member of the Europe of Sovereign Nations Group in the European Parliament.

Its name reflects its resistance to the mainstream policies of Angela Merkel and her slogan Alternativlosigkeit (lit. 'alternative-less-ness', a German version of "there is no alternative"). Established in April 2013, AfD narrowly missed the 5% electoral threshold to sit in the Bundestag during the 2013 federal election. The party won seven seats in the 2014 European Parliament election in Germany as a member of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). After securing representation in 14 of the 16 German state parliaments by October 2017, AfD won 94 seats in the 2017 federal election and became the third-largest party in the country, as well as the largest opposition party; its lead candidates were the co-vice chairman Alexander Gauland and Alice Weidel, the latter having served as the party group leader in the 19th Bundestag. In the 2021 federal election, AfD dropped to being the fifth-largest party in the 20th Bundestag. Following the 2025 federal election, it became the second-largest party and the largest opposition party in the 21st Bundestag.

CDU/CSU, unofficially the Union parties (German: Unionsparteien [uˈni̯oːnspaʁˌtaɪən]) or the Union, is a centre-right Christian democratic and conservative political alliance of two political parties in Germany: the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) and the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU).

The CSU contests elections only in Bavaria, while the CDU operates in the other 15 states of Germany. The CSU also reflects the particular concerns of the largely rural, Catholic south. While the two Christian Democratic parties are commonly described as sister parties, they have shared a common parliamentary group, the CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group, in the German Bundestag (German: CDU/CSU-Fraktion im Deutschen Bundestag) since the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949. According to German Federal Electoral Law, members of a parliamentary group which share the same basic political aims must not compete with one another in any federal state.

The Christian Social Union in Bavaria (German: Christlich-Soziale Union in Bayern, CSU) is a Christian democratic and conservative political party in Germany. Having a regionalist identity, the CSU operates only in Bavaria while its larger counterpart, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), operates in the other fifteen states of Germany. It differs from the CDU by being somewhat more conservative in social matters. Founded in 1945, the CSU is considered the de facto successor of the Weimar-era Catholic Bavarian People's Party.

At the federal level, the CSU forms a common faction in the Bundestag with the CDU which is frequently referred to as the Union Faction (die Unionsfraktion) or simply CDU/CSU. The CSU has had 44 seats in the Bundestag since the 2025 federal election, making it currently the sixth largest of the seven parties represented and the largest parliamentary faction as part of CDU/CSU with 208 seats. The CSU is a member of the European People's Party and the International Democracy Union.

The General German Workers' Association (German: Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiter-Verein, ADAV) was a German political party founded on 23 May 1863 in Leipzig, Kingdom of Saxony by Ferdinand Lassalle. It was the first organized mass working-class party in history.

The organization existed by this name until 1875, when it combined with the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP) to form the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany. This unified organization was renamed soon thereafter the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which presently remains in existence and dates its origins to the founding of the ADAV. Its Austrian part would become the SPÖ.

The Party of Democratic Socialism (German: Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus, PDS) was a left-wing populist political party in Germany active between 1989 and 2007. It was the legal successor to the communist Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), which ruled the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) as leading governing party of the National Front until 1989. From 1990 through to 2005, the PDS had been seen as the left-wing "party of the East". While it achieved minimal support in western Germany, it regularly won 15% to 25% of the vote in the eastern new states of Germany, entering coalition governments with the Social Democratic Party of Germany in the federal states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin.

In 2005, the PDS, renamed The Left Party.PDS (Die Linkspartei.PDS), entered an electoral alliance with the Western Germany-based Electoral Alternative for Labour and Social Justice (WASG) and won 8.7% of the vote in Germany's September 2005 federal elections (more than double the 4% share achieved by the PDS alone in the 2002 federal election). On 16 June 2007, the two groupings merged to form a new party called Die Linke (The Left). The party had many socially progressive policies, including support for legalisation of same-sex marriage and greater social welfare for immigrants.

The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – Reason and Justice (German: Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht – Vernunft und Gerechtigkeit; BSW) is a political party in Germany founded on 8 January 2024. It has been described as a left-wing to far-left party with populist and nationalist tendencies. The BSW is sceptical of green politics, criticises support for Ukraine in the Russo-Ukrainian War, criticises support for Israel in the war in Gaza and holds Eurosceptic and anti-American views on foreign policy. The party is considered "left-conservative" or "left-authoritarian", as it combines economically socialist values with cultural conservatism and social conservatism on social issues.

The party originated as a split from the party The Left (Die Linke). In September 2023, Sahra Wagenknecht, Amira Mohamed Ali, Christian Leye, Lukas Schön, and several other long time Left party members announced their intention to form a new party. It was subsequently joined by others including former Left party leader Klaus Ernst, Fabio De Masi, and former mayor of Düsseldorf Thomas Geisel. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance was officially founded in January 2024 with Wagenknecht and Mohamed Ali as its leaders. In February, they formed a group in the Bundestag.