Christopher Street Days | In defiance of the hate: The Pride season 2025

A few days before the last major Christopher Street Day (CSD) of this year's Pride season in Cottbus, a garbage container belonging to a local queer center was set on fire . It is strongly suspected that this was a targeted attack – an attempt to intimidate the LGBTQ+ community .

The events surrounding the Pride Parade in Cottbus are not yet mentioned in the Amadeu Antonio Foundation's (AAS) security report on right-wing extremist attacks on Pride events ; the recently published report covers the period from July to September 2025. Nevertheless, the authors provide a comprehensive overview of a particularly significant Pride season – because the previous year made it clear that a new generation of neo-Nazis is emerging in the protest against queer life. They call themselves groups like Deutsche Jugend Voran (DJV), Elblandrevolte, or Jung & Stark . How did this growing queerphobia affect Pride events in 2025?

Disruptions at almost every second CSD

According to the AAS report, almost every second Pride parade in 2025 was disrupted: Of the 245 planned Christopher Street Days (CSDs), at least 110 were disrupted, and half of the incidents could be attributed to right-wing extremists. In 2024, with 55 disruptions recorded at 180 CSDs, the figure was one in three.

According to the authors, queer events are disrupted particularly often in East Germany: incidents occurred at two out of three CSDs, compared to only one in three in West Germany.

However, in many places, the anti-queer mobilizations failed to reach the levels of the previous year. While almost 700 people from the far-right spectrum gathered in Bautzen in 2024, this year the number was only 450.

Fewer Nazis, more coordination

This trend was already apparent at the beginning of Pride season. The authors' collective Feminist Intervention commented in August : Even though the number of participants on the Nazi side is declining, something fundamental has changed: "Pride parades no longer seem self-evident."

Threats and attacks against organizers and participants, heckling on the sidelines, disruptions during arrival and departure: all of this is no longer the exception – but a new normal.

Furthermore, the far-right counter-mobilizations in 2025 were better coordinated than in the previous year. "For example, several far-right counter-demonstrations used not only the same slogans but also uniform shareable images for mobilization," the AAS report states. Far-right extremism researcher Joe Düker from the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (Cemas) attributes this, among other things, to "an increasing entanglement of the traditional far-right scene and the younger generation of neo-Nazis in Germany." As the AAS reports, a large proportion of the disturbances were attributable to local chapters of far-right parties such as the Third Way or The Homeland.

Many injured after attacks

It didn't stop at destroyed rainbow flags, insults, Hitler salutes or threats online.

In Göttingen, someone threw a firework at Christopher Street Day participants, injuring five. In Soest, three demonstrators were physically assaulted. An attack in Emden left two people injured.

A resident in Esslingen fired a soft air pistol into a crowd. In Berlin, police were able to prevent an attack on Christopher Street Day (CSD) participants. However, they could not stop Nazis from attacking two journalists with punches and kicks at Berlin's Ostkreuz station after the CSD in Bautzen. On their way back to Berlin, people had already sent out a distress call after being threatened on the train by several dozen apparently violent and intoxicated neo-Nazis.

After the Christopher Street Day parade in Bremen, a young man was threatened with a knife. Police found further weapons and ammunition at the home of a suspect in Wernigerode. The Pride parade in Gelsenkirchen had to be completely cancelled due to an "abstract threat situation".

Such incidents have a deterrent effect, far beyond those directly affected. This is confirmed by a survey conducted by the Agency for Enlightenment and Democracy during Pride events in Saxony: Approximately one in three respondents stated that they knew at least one person who no longer attends CSD events for security reasons, according to data the AAS cites from as yet unpublished sources.

Protection through solidarity funds and shared travel arrangements

Another finding of the survey: The behavior of security authorities, in particular, impacts the participants' sense of security. Together with the campaign organization Campact, the AAS launched the Rainbow Protection Fund in 2025 to enable Pride parade organizers to finance security personnel or awareness teams. According to the initiators, 49 Pride events were supported in this way with a total of €100,000. In smaller towns, the Rainbow Protection Fund was also used to pay moderators or DJs. The logic: The best protection against attacks is a large number of participants.

With the same idea in mind, groups like Pride Soli Ride and the Solidarity Alliance Against the Right in Berlin have been organizing joint trips to Pride events since last year. The initiative "Defending Pride," founded at the beginning of the year, wanted to go a step further. According to its own statements, "Defending Pride" not only organized several dozen joint trips to Pride parades, but also stated that it would ensure security during the events. To this end, the group held action training sessions in several cities.

The phenomenon of "defending CSD"

However, the CSD Defend initiative also faced fierce criticism, partly due to its close ties to Young Struggle (YS). This internationalist youth organization is accused of authoritarianism, a cadre structure, and antisemitism. Furthermore, critics argue that the CSD Defend initiative is more concerned with promoting its own members than with actually protecting CSD participants from attacks.

The extent to which these latter accusations are justified remains unclear. Several CSD organizers expressed generally positive views on their collaboration with CSD Verteidigen to the newspaper "nd". However, there are also conflicting reports. According to "Jungle World", the CSD Sachsen-Anhalt association, for example, complained about a lack of willingness to engage in dialogue and symbolic displays of power by the initiative .

More Pride parades than ever before

However, one thing is certain at the end of the 2025 Pride season: neither the Rainbow Protection Fund, self-organized protection efforts, nor the police could ensure that disruptions at Pride events decreased compared to the previous year. A failure? For the authors' collective Feminist Intervention, that's too simplistic. After all, there were significantly more Pride parades this season than in 2024. Many themes were more political, and many speeches were emphatically anti-fascist.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the right-wing attacks, Christopher Street Days across the country experienced an unprecedented level of solidarity. This was also evident in Cottbus: Following the alleged arson attack, the largest Cottbus Christopher Street Day ever was celebrated – despite two registered counter-demonstrations.