Feb 10, 2026, 3:31 p.mFeb 10, 2026, 3:31 p.m
Alice Weidel at an event organized by the AfD youth organization Generation Germany. (Archive image, November 2025)Image: keystone
The head of the right-wing populist German party AfD, Alice Weidel, is not traveling to the Munich Security Conference this year. Her spokesman said this upon request. Any meetings with US government representatives on the sidelines of the conference, which takes place from Friday to Sunday, are not planned.
Last year, the organizers of the conference did not invite AfD representatives. US Vice President JD Vance complained about this in his much-criticized speech in Munich and demonstratively met with Weidel on the sidelines in a hotel.
Frohnmaier not invited, but in Munich
According to his own statements, the foreign policy spokesman for the AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Markus Frohnmaier, is taking on a similar role this year. He did not receive an invitation to the conference. He would still go to Munich and meet with high-ranking US representatives, he told the German Press Agency.
“Conference participants are interested in exchanging ideas with me.” He did not name specific names, citing ongoing agreements. Frohnmaier has been intensifying his contacts with US Republican representatives for months and has recently traveled to the USA several times.
This also applies to his parliamentary group colleague Anna Rathert, who was one of three AfD politicians to receive an official invitation to the conference in Munich. For example, Frohnmaier and Rathert met Congresswoman and ardent Trump supporter Anna Paulina Luna in the USA in December.
In addition to Rathert, the defense policy spokesman for the AfD parliamentary group and former military officer Rüdiger Lucassen as well as the Baden-Württemberg AfD MP Heinrich Koch, also a defense politician, are officially invited to the security conference.
The Munich Security Conference is the world’s most important meeting of experts on security policy. At the last two meetings, the conference leader Christoph Heusgen, who has since left, decided not to invite the AfD anymore. The current chairman, Wolfgang Ischinger, is returning to previous practice. (sda/dpa)