Hundreds protest ahead of party conference of Germany's far-right AfD

Hundreds of protesters gathered in the north-eastern German town of Jüterborg, just outside Berlin, ahead of a regional party conference of the Berlin branch of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) on Saturday.

At the Jüterborg meeting, the anti-immigration party is set to draw up the list of candidates for the 2025 national election.

Protesters gathered at Jüterborg station in the morning and marched towards the conference venue, the Wiesenhalle, carrying banners reading "No room for the AfD. No room for right-wing agitation" and "Together against fascism."

Demonstrators also chanted slogans like "Jüterbog likes to be colourful, AfD shut up."

Rally organizers, an alliance of citizens' initiatives, unions, party youth organizations and far-left groups based in Berlin, put the number of participants at between 500 and 600, while police initially did not give an estimate.

The AfD was forced to move the members-only conference to Jüterborg, some 50 kilometres south of Berlin, after being unable to find a venue in the German capital, where opposition to the far-right party is much more pronounced than in the surrounding state of Brandenburg.

The regional branch plans to determine its candidates for the upcoming federal elections on September 28, 2025.

AfD lawmaker Beatrix von Storch is expected to run for the position of lead candidate, after she already led the party's Berlin branch in the previous elections in 2017 and 2021.

The AfD, founded in 2013 as a eurosceptic party that has since shifted its focus to immigration, currently seems well placed to garner its best result in national elections yet, after securing around 30% of the vote in recent elections to three state parliaments.

The AfD is currently being monitored for suspected extreme political activity by the federal domestic intelligence agency, and certain state-level AfD associations are rated as extremist by the relevant state intelligence agencies.