SHE has faced a tough few years, but standing centre stage in a pop-up stadium built and named in her honour, Shakira has well and truly nailed her big comeback.
Nearly quarter of a century after her debut UK hit Whenever Wherever, she is about to embark on a sold-out residency in Madrid.
Over 21 nights, she will perform for more than 600,000 fans after pulling off one of the most impressive career revivals ever.
The concerts are the finale to her 127-date Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour — the highest-grossing Latin tour of all time, and the fifth most lucrative female tour in history.
And Shakira herself is enjoying it just as much as her rapidly- expanding fan base.
In an exclusive chat, the Colombian superstar — who, despite her age-defying looks, turns 50 in February — said: “I feel more secure and more confident than ever; so much more than when I was in my 20s, which is something I never would have believed or expected.”
She added of her pop renaissance: “I’ve never been more in love with my career, so I’m grateful to still be able to do what I do and just know that people are connecting to that.”
This year has been a game-changer for Shakira. Her World Cup anthem with Burna Boy, Dai Dai, topped charts globally and became one of the biggest hits of 2026 so far.
The video has had more than 1billion views since May, contributing to her becoming the most-watched female artist on YouTube.
The same month, she performed to over 2million people in a single night on Copacabana Beach in Rio De Janeiro — one of the highest- attended concerts ever.
But in Dai Dai, she sings: “You’ve been this brave all along, what broke you once made you strong.”
It is a reflection of her last few years, when life was challenging.
Shakira’s 2017 album, El Dorado, was not received as well as expected, and five years later came her highly-publicised split from Spanish footballer Gerard Pique.
The couple, who never wed but have sons Milan, 13, and Sasha, 11, announced their separation after 11 years together in a public statement.
He was alleged to have moved on with another woman while they were together, although he has not spoken about the circumstances.
Things were made worse when Shakira was dragged into court by Spanish authorities over a tax dispute, in which she claimed she had not spent enough time in the country to pay the taxes they said she owed.
In 2023, she settled on one case of tax evasion, forking out €14.5million in unpaid taxes plus interest, a €7.3million fine and a €432,000 payment to waive a suspended three-year prison sentence.
At the time, things were looking bleak. But she started to turn it around, funnelling her anger into her music, which attracted a whole new generation of fans.
Then in May, a Spanish court ordered the country’s tax authority to refund €55million of taxes, ruling that the cash was improperly collected during the dispute.
Her epic, two-and-a-half hour concert tells the story of a wronged woman who comes out the other side.
At one point in the show, during song TQG,she is seen trying to reprogramme men’s behaviour.
Later, she is depicted as a lone wolf protecting her cubs, and then duets with her sons, who appear on screens for the track Acrostico.
The message is clear as she tells the crowd: “Love is beautiful. But self-love is more beautiful.”
The gig features a set of some 25 songs, more than a dozen extravagant costumes, fireworks, flamethrowers, twerking and Shakira on the drums and guitar.
It is a triumphant moment of celebration and, during her carnival-inspired, multi-coloured performance of Waka Waka (This Time For Africa), she beams from ear to ear.
Shakira hopes her concerts leave fans, especially women, optimistic about the world, as that’s certainly how she feels after the ordeal she has gone through in recent years.
She told me: “I hope women walk away feeling empowered and excited about what’s ahead of them, knowing that they are the ones who decide how to tell their story and what they want to take away from everything life throws at them.
“It’s been such a revelation to realise that the worst I ever imagined could happen . . . and that I can still find this level of happiness again.”
In Madrid, as well as the temporary stadium built in her honour, there is an entire 30-hectare village of attractions based on the Hips Don’t Lie singer.
And she’s bound to rake it in as there are high-profile sponsorships, including a museum about Shakira in partnership with Amazon.
A whole Disney area inspired by the star’s voice role in Zootropolis 2 is another key attraction, along with a library, in partnership with Penguin, promoting authors from South America.
During the residency, hotel bookings in Madrid are up 15 per cent from 2025, while Ryanair added 225,000 seats on flights to the hotspot ahead of the shows, which are generating hundreds of millions for the city’s economy.
Shakira, who has sold 100million records during her career, has now relocated from Spain to Miami with her sons to start afresh — and she is flying high.
She proved as much on the global stage when an estimated 1.5billion footie fans watched her perform at the inaugural World Cup halftime show in July.
And although she sang alongside acts including Madonna, BTS and Justin Bieber, it was Shakira who stole the spotlight.
Her success is a testament to her grit and temerity, with music insiders revealing she is hands-on with every detail of her career.
A source said: “Shakira has worked harder than anybody for this comeback — it’s taken blood, sweat and tears.
“There have been sleepless nights, relentless workouts and a back-breaking schedule, but she loves it and wants to prove to other women what is possible. She pulled an all-nighter with her band last Wednesday just to rehearse for the show in Madrid, not finishing until 8.30am.
“This is very serious to her. She wants to stay at the top for years to come.”
Shakira also teamed up with another in-demand pop star, Zara Larsson, earlier this summer for a remix of her song Eurosummer.
And last week, she released a collaboration called Agua with fellow Colombian star Maluma.
Now, all eyes are on what’s next for Shak, who has barely stopped in her quest to win back her superstardom.
As for a 13th studio album and future collaborations, she teased: “I’ve definitely chatted with a few people recently who would be really fun and unexpected, but I won’t ruin the surprises . . . ”
Although her tour is coming to an end, Shakira shows no signs of slowing down.
She has hinted that she wants to return to the UK, where she has not performed since 2018.
On the prospect of headlining Glastonbury, where she sang on the Pyramid Stage in 2010, she has said: “It’s such an iconic place to perform.
I’d love to go back to England and perform at Glastonbury.
“That would be like the cherry on top for this amazing year I’ve been having.”
As for a break? I wouldn’t count on it. She said: “I take days here and there to rest, but as long as I still have energy and inspiration, I love to stay working.”
SweetBunFactory
China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is preparing to enter the flash-memory chip market, expanding beyond its core DRAM business as a global memory shortage tightens supply and demand for AI-related infrastructure grows.
CXMT plans to establish a research and development
Venezuela has opened its energy and mining sectors to US interests. (PDVSA)
Lisbon, Portugal, September 17, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Continental Resources, a firm owned by billionaire and Trump donor Harold Hamm, struck a deal on Wednesday to exploit one of Venezuela’s largest oilfields.
Under the agreement with Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, Continental will receive a long-term concession with “100 percent working interest” for the 500 square-kilometer Ayacucho 2 block in Venezuela’s Orinoco Oil Belt. The block contains an estimated 30 billion barrels of extra-heavy crude.
“Continental was built to recognize great resource opportunities and have the conviction to pursue them,” Hamm told Fox News, vowing that the deal would take his company to an “entirely new level.”
For her part, Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez claimed that the agreement would “strengthen [Venezuelan] oil production” and “create opportunities for economic growth.”
Hamm and PDVSA Vice President Jovanny Martinez signed the contract in Houston on the sidelines of the G20 energy summit. Martínez and Oil Minister Paula Henao attended the conference to pitch investment opportunities in Venezuela’s oil and gas sector.
PDVSA had previously assigned the Ayacucho 2 block to Chinese private firm Anhui Guangda in 2025. However, no information on investments or output were publicly disclosed, while Venezuelan authorities have not justified rescinding the contract with Anhui.
US government-controlled corporation NABEP, which recently received long-term concessions to 17 major Venezuelan oilfields containing 65 billion barrels in reserves, will also take over projects formerly run by Chinese enterprises, including state-owned CNPC. Beijing has called for its investments and interests in Venezuela to be respected.
Hamm was one of the corporate executives present at the White House on January 9, when Trump announced that Washington would control Venezuela’s oil industry and called on Western majors to invest. Since the January 3 US attacks and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, the White House has managed the South American country’s crude export revenues.
The White House has also backed Venezuelan authorities’ pro-business overhaul of the energy sector while issuing sanctions exemptions to select US-aligned corporations. Chevron, Shell, and Eni are among the companies that have signed new contracts or renegotiated existing ones in recent months.
According to Bloomberg, ExxonMobil is in advanced talks to return to the Caribbean country after a litigious past. The energy giant is negotiating rights to four major oilfields in the Orinoco Oil Belt, two of which it previously owned before they were nationalized by former President Hugo Chávez.
In the 2000s, the Texas-based corporation refused to comply with reforms implemented to assert state sovereignty over the oil industry. ExxonMobil refused compensation offers and pursued international arbitration after its assets were nationalized. The company received an arbitration award significantly below its demands.
ExxonMobil was additionally denounced repeatedly by Caracas after it spearheaded offshore drilling projects in the territorial waters of the disputed Essequibo Strip.
On Wednesday, Venezuelan authorities likewise inked a 20-year agreement with Florida-based Denarius Holding Group, controlled by Turkish energy group Çan2 Termik. Denarius is taking over the Petrokariña project in Anzoátegui state, which contains 10 oilfields producing a variety of crude types.
In parallel to its oil opening, Venezuelan authorities have also fast-tracked reforms opening the country’s mining sector to multinational corporations.
On Wednesday, New York-based Heeney Capital and commodities trader Mercuria Energy received a 30-year concession to operate the Chocó 10 mine in Bolívar State. The project holds considerable gold deposits and was run by Rusoro Mining in the 2000s before being nationalized by the Chávez government.
Heeney and Mercuria pledged US $1 billion in initial investment in the Chocó project. The two firms had struck a previous agreement with Caracas to purchase and trade Venezuelan minerals and other commodities.
One of Heeney’s co-founders, Sean Pi, signed the deal at the presidential palace in May and praised Trump’s “leadership” in defending US access to mining resources abroad. Pi has endorsed legislative initiatives deregulating and streamlining mining projects to bolster the US supply of critical minerals.
Under the trading agreement, Heeney and Mercuria are reportedly preparing to ship 15,000 metric tons of Venezuelan aluminum to the US. The corporate partners are likewise seeking to take over VENALUM, Venezuela’s biggest aluminum smelter. Glencore, an Anglo-Swiss mining and trading multinational, is also interested in VENALUM, according to reports.
Venezuelan authorities have not commented on the negotiations for the aluminum smelter. In April, Rodríguez appointed a commission to evaluate privatization of “non-strategic” state assets.
The Trump administration has identified securing access to Venezuelan mineral riches as a key national interest and is reportedly preparing an executive order to boost US corporate participation in Venezuelan mining projects.
Edited by Lucas Koerner in Philadelphia, USA.
BERLIN: Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi said on Tuesday that he discussed selling oil to Europe during visits to France and Germany, as Baghdad seeks to diversify its export routes and reduce its reliance on the Strait of Hormuz.
During a press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin, Zaidi said “we want to expand and diversify our export routes”.
He added that “Iraq cannot remain hostage to a single corridor” as recent events have demonstrated, referring to the Strait of Hormuz, which has been blockaded by Iran during the Middle East war.
Zaidi said that he had discussed oil exports to Europe with Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron, whom he met in Paris on Monday.
Crude oil sales account for nearly 90 percent of Iraq’s revenue but its exports have been hurt by the outbreak of the Middle East war between Iran and the United States.
Before the war began in February, Iraq produced around four million barrels per day, and exported an average of 3.4 million bpd, mostly via Hormuz.
Most of its oil exports go to East Asia, with China and India its largest buyers.
Due to the disruption, Iraq began exporting crude using tanker trucks through Syria, as well as through a pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, although these routes can handle only a fraction of its usual sea-bound trade.
Zaidi said that Baghdad could “double its oil exports through the Mediterranean” to supply markets in Europe and the United States.
Zaidi, who hopes to increase Iraq’s oil production to 10 million barrels per day, said that “a large share, or nearly half, can go to European countries and the West”.
He said that Iraq and Germany were expected to reach “an understanding on the export of crude oil” while Baghdad would purchase German technology and equipment.
Merz said that the main focus for Iraqi-German cooperation is the economy.
“Many German companies are now active in Iraq. They are developing new solutions, for example for energy supply,” he said, adding that “the best example is an agreement on Iraq’s electricity supply, which we will sign today”.
Merz also expressed his concerns after Yemen’s Houthis cemented their control over the Bab al-Mandab waterway at the entrance to the Red Sea, a vital route for Saudi oil exports.
“This further exacerbates the situation on the energy markets, and also affects Germany,” he said.
RIYADH: Madinah region has strong potential to turn date palm waste into value-added products, leveraging its competitive advantage in the palm and date sector to create investment opportunities in the circular economy.
According to Al-Madinah Al-Munawarah Chamber’s economic bulletin, the region has about 26,000 farms and approximately 8.1 million date palms, representing nearly 21 percent of Saudi Arabia’s total.
Each palm generates between 20 and 23 kg of waste annually, bringing the region’s estimated annual total to between 162,000 and 186,000 tonnes, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
Products made from date palm waste include wood and composite boards, organic fertilizer, biochar, charcoal briquettes, biofuel pellets, natural fibers, insulation materials, date seed oil, wooden products and handicrafts.
These industries could create new production chains, from waste collection, sorting and processing to manufacturing and marketing. This would open investment opportunities, diversify the palm sector’s products and improve resource-use efficiency.
STOCKHOLM: Sweden began voting Sunday in a general election after a tight race that will see either the far-right enter government for the first time or the left-wing opposition reclaim power.
Opposition leader Magdalena Andersson of the Social Democrats was among the first to cast her ballot after polling stations opened at 8:00 am (0600 GMT).
Clad in a pale blue suit, the 59-year-old who in 2021-2022 became the first woman to serve as Sweden’s prime minister voted with her husband at a school in her home municipality of Nacka, south of Stockholm.
Opinion polls have long credited the four parties in her left-wing bloc with a comfortable lead over conservative Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s four-party alliance, which includes the far-right Sweden Democrats.
But the gap narrowed to a dead heat in the final days of the campaign.
“It is now up to the Swedish people to decide which direction our country should take. Should we have a government entirely dominated by the Sweden Democrats? Something that has never happened in Sweden before? Or should we have a government led by me, which will steer Sweden in a new spirit of cooperation?” Andersson told reporters after voting.
Her party, which governed the Scandinavian country for the better part of the 20th century and remains Sweden’s largest, has pledged to bolster the welfare state and help struggling households cope with rising costs.
‘Make Sweden great again’
Outgoing Prime Minister Kristersson has meanwhile vowed to focus on improving Swedes’ everyday lives now that his government’s clampdown on organised crime and immigration has begun to show results.
Deadly shootings and bombings by organised crime networks have decreased significantly in recent years, and asylum applications are at a record low.
“We want to use our new and far better preconditions to improve the lives of ordinary people… to make Sweden great again,” Kristersson told AFP before the vote, borrowing Donald Trump’s famous catchphrase.
His three-party minority coalition cut a deal in 2022 with the Sweden Democrats giving them influence over government policy, in particular on immigration and crime, in exchange for their support in parliament.
Over the past two decades, far-right leader Jimmie Akesson has steered the party with neo-Nazi roots into the mainstream.
It is now hoping to enter government. Kristersson has promised the far right key cabinet posts if the right-wing wins the election.
“I think it’s a very important election this year, and hopefully a lot of people will realise that we have to change course… so that everyone will feel included in society,” store manager Linda Eriksson, 48, told AFP as she voted at a polling station.
Ingrid Rudien, a 64-year-old assistant secretary, said she hoped the country “can unite together as a nation even though we may have a close result”.
‘We’ve already won!’
Akesson was confident of victory at a final election rally on Saturday in the Swedish capital.
“We’ve already won!” the 47-year-old said to thunderous applause in Stockholm’s Kungstradgarden Park.
“Sweden is becoming safer, better, and more Swedish,” he said, surrounded by blue and yellow campaign posters blaring “Make Sweden Sweden Again”.
Agneta Andersson, a 78-year-old pensioner attending the rally, told AFP she was voting for the far right.
“Like Jimmie, I want it to be like it was when I was young, in the old Sweden. I can’t cope with all this violence in society.”
Voting stations close at 8:00 pm (1800 GMT) when exit polls were to be published, with the first reliable results expected several hours later.
Some eight million people are eligible to vote in the election, in a country of 10.6 million where voter turnout regularly tops 80 percent.
Around half of voters have cast their ballots in advance.
If the right wing were to win the election, the formation of a new government would be fairly straightforward.
But as the four left-wing parties are splintered ideologically, tough negotiations would be needed to form a government even if they hold a majority.
The Trump administration is proposing a dramatic overhaul of the once-a-decade U.S. Census head count that could leave out millions of immigrants based on status and key racial and ethnic data, jeopardizing the allocation of resources and the country’s voting map.
The potential changes, announced Wednesday, would exclude undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers and anyone without permanent status. Certain demographic questions from the traditional questionnaire would also be eliminated.
It echoes Trump’s previous idea to add a citizenship question to the 2030 census.
The U.S. Census Bureau, in a post on the Federal Register website, argued “illegal aliens (among others) should not be included in the apportionment count, as they are not true inhabitants, members of the body politic, or persons with a ‘usual residence’ in the United States due to their lack of a sufficient tie and allegiance to the United States.”
The census also “should be colorblind and should not be distorted in any way by questions about immaterial personal characteristics, such as race,” the agency said. It also is considering nixing questions related to people who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community.
These changes would harm the quality of the data, said Beth Jarosz, a data researcher and vice president of the Association of Public Data Users. She called the proposals “unprecedented.”
“Not counting all of the people who reside here is actually where the real threat is,” Jarosz said. “If you think about all of the ways that census data are used.”
Census figures are traditionally used for an “apportionment count” to determine how many seats each state will have in the U.S. House of Representatives. That count also determines the number of votes in the Electoral College.
“You can imagine if we have undercounts or if we have people counted in the wrong place,” Jarosz said. “Then their political power or their political representation gets diluted.”
Historically, the decennial census has not sought to conduct a full count of people by citizenship status, she added. It may come up in the Census’ periodic American Community Survey.
Getting an accurate count of immigrants of various statuses is useful when assigning resources for public health emergencies or natural or human-made disasters.
“If you don’t have a count of everyone who’s there, you’re not going to have the resources you need,” Jarosz said. “And that puts everybody at risk.”
Race-related questions have been on the once-a-decade census since 1790. Starting in 2000, the U.S. census began allowing people to identify by more than one race. A 2015 Pew Research Center study found that multiracial people in the U.S. were growing at a rate three times faster than the general population. By 2020, 33.8 million people in the U.S. identified as being more than one race, according to the census.
Race and ethnicity data is essential for researchers who gauge discrimination, crime rates and wealth gaps in communities of color.
Manjusha Kulkarni is co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate and executive director of AAPI Equity Alliance, two advocacy groups that rely on census counts of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. The proposed changes would have tremendous impact on the populations they serve, she said.
“It also seeks to exclude important demographic data from millions that enables lawmakers, health care providers, public safety officials and community advocates — really anyone who cares about the health, safety and well-being of all Americans — from having the necessary data to keep us safe and healthy,” Kulkarni said via text message.
Dropping race and ethnicity data as well as some immigrants sends a message that these communities don’t matter, she added.
Collecting data for the 2030 Census with all these missing elements would be detrimental, Jarosz said.
“These changes are like trying to land an airplane when you are in thick fog and someone has thrown paint across the front window and your instruments are also not working,” she said.
Tang writes for the Associated Press.
The Trump administration is proposing a dramatic overhaul of the once-a-decade US Census head count that could leave out millions of immigrants based on status and key racial and ethnic data, jeopardizing the allocation of resources and the country’s voting map.
The potential changes, announced Wednesday, would exclude undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers and anyone without permanent status. Certain demographic questions from the traditional questionnaire would also be eliminated.
It echoes Trump’s previous idea to add a citizenship question to the 2030 census.
The US Census Bureau, in a post on the Federal Register website, argued “illegal aliens (among others) should not be included in the apportionment count, as they are not true inhabitants, members of the body politic, or persons with a ‘usual residence’ in the United States due to their lack of a sufficient tie and allegiance to the United States.”
The census also “should be colorblind and should not be distorted in any way by questions about immaterial personal characteristics, such as race,” the agency said. It also is considering nixing questions related to people who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community.
These changes would harm the quality of the data, said Beth Jarosz, a data researcher and vice president of the Association of Public Data Users. She called the proposals “unprecedented.”
“Not counting all of the people who reside here is actually where the real threat is,” Jarosz said. “If you think about all of the ways that census data are used.”
Census figures are traditionally used for an “apportionment count” to determine how many seats each state will have in the US House of Representatives. That count also determines the number of votes in the Electoral College.
“You can imagine if we have undercounts or if we have people counted in the wrong place,” Jarosz said. “Then their political power or their political representation gets diluted.”
Immigrants of every status have historically been counted
Historically, the decennial census has not sought to conduct a full count of people by citizenship status, she added. It may come up in the Census’ periodic American Community Survey.
Getting an accurate count of immigrants of various statuses is useful when assigning resources for public health emergencies or natural or man-made disasters.
“If you don’t have a count of everyone who’s there, you’re not going to have the resources you need,” Jarosz said. “And that puts everybody at risk.”
Why race and ethnicity census data matters
Race-related questions have been on the once-a-decade census since 1790. Starting in 2000, the US census began allowing people to identify by more than one race. A 2015 Pew Research Center study found that multiracial people in the US were growing at a rate three times faster than the general population. By 2020, 33.8 million people in the US identified as being more than one race, according to the census.
Race and ethnicity data is essential for researchers who gauge discrimination, crime rates and wealth gaps in communities of color.
Collecting data for the 2030 Census with all these missing elements would be detrimental, Jarosz said.
“These changes are like trying to land an airplane when you are in thick fog and someone has thrown paint across the front window and your instruments are also not working,” she said.
BERLIN — Leaders of an extremist, far-right party in Germany have quietly borrowed pages from President Trump’s playbook to cast doubt on the integrity of absentee voting — alleging without evidence that residents of nursing homes have had their ballots manipulated and calling for an end to postal voting.
The attack on mail ballots comes as Germany approaches a potentially historic state election that could shatter one of the taboos of its postwar political order by opening the door to a far-right government.
Politicians across the ideological spectrum, mindful that polls show Trump to be widely unpopular, don’t invoke his name.
But the specter of the American president nevertheless hangs over the election that could have reverberations across Europe if the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party — tacitly echoing Trump’s attacks on migrants, the media and the integrity of elections — pulls off an unprecedented political shock in postwar Germany.
In a country where the guilt of its Nazi past is never far from the surface, the AfD has unapologetically campaigned against what it portrays as the shackles of Germany’s history and won over many new supporters, in part by adopting Trump’s hard-line stance on migrants and his drumbeat of attacks on mainstream news outlets.
Trumpism and the MAGA movement have undoubtedly been an inspiration and model for many European radical right parties
— Lars Rensmann, political scientist
The AfD leader, Tino Chrupalla, surprised Germans recently with warnings of voter fraud in the Sunday election in Saxony-Anhalt state, telling a national television audience that some senior citizens in nursing homes had had their absentee ballots cast and signed for them without their knowledge.
This week, in neighboring Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state, the AfD candidate for governor, Leif-Erik Holm, declared, “Postal voting is more vulnerable to potential attempts of manipulation.”
Election officials and organizations representing nursing home caregivers have rejected the allegations and say there is no evidence of voter fraud.
The AfD, considered one of the most extreme far-right parties in Europe, has surged so far ahead in opinion polls that it could emerge as the dominant political force in Saxony-Anhalt and potentially lead a German state government for the first time, either with an absolute majority or with a junior coalition partner.
Trump has spent years attacking mail-in voting as vulnerable to fraud, despite scant evidence of widespread abuse. Trump himself has voted by mail in recent elections. His administration continues to fight court battles to limit voting by mail.
“Sowing distrust in political institutions is part of the strategy of right-wing populist parties,” said Marcel Lewandowsky, a political scientist at Martin Luther University in Halle, Germany.
“The ‘rigged election’ lie is a powerful narrative within the MAGA movement,” he added, “and serves as a crucial element that fosters a shared identity” with far-right parties in Europe. (Such messaging has also been employed by many rightist politicians in Latin America.)
An AfD victory in one of Germany’s 16 federal states would in one fell swoop obliterate a central tenet of the postwar order: that the far right must never return to power in the country responsible for the Holocaust and the devastation of Europe in World War II.
Many fear that taking power there could serve as a springboard for the ostracized party at the national level, where it is leading opinion polls with about 29% support, putting it far ahead of the other four parties with seats in the federal Parliament.
“Trumpism and the MAGA movement have undoubtedly been an inspiration and model for many European radical right parties,” said Lars Rensmann, a political scientist at the University of Passau who has studied the far right. “In many ways, Trump has been the successful model many European radical right parties try to follow while adopting it to European conditions.”
The AfD’s ascent has parallels across Europe, from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party to Britain’s Nigel Farage, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Herbert Kickl in Austria. In France, the far-right Rassemblement National is looking to the 2027 presidential race with its candidate, Marine Le Pen, having perhaps her strongest chance yet of winning after reaching the runoff in 2017 and 2022.
Meloni`s relationship with Trump has cooled during her nearly four years in power, due in part to the war in Iran, tariffs and security policies that have strained U.S. relations with Italy and all of Europe.
President Trump greets Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at a summit Egypt in 2025. Their once warm relationship has since cooled.
(Evan Vucci / Pool via Associated Press)
Yet there is no pan-European alliance of the far right, in part because these parties champion their own national interests.
“Some components of Trumpism can be shared and exported, such as hostility towards migration and ‘wokeism,’ but it is very clear that national interests that the far-right champion cannot be defended the same way as the American national interests,” said Giovanni Orsina, head of the political science department at LUISS University in Rome.
“If you put your nation first and do so aggressively, you have diverging national interests and so it’s not possible to have an international network of nationalists,” Orsina added.
But many far-right leaders are united in one sense. They admire not just Trump’s tactics, but the “boldness of his transgressions, dismantling liberal and civil norms by repeating things that were once deemed unacceptable for someone seeking public office,” said Rensmann.
“Trump is unpopular in Germany, even across the political right,” Lewandowsky said. “It would be risky for the AfD to embrace him openly, especially because he failed to keep his promise not to start any further wars and large segments of the public feel threatened by the United States under Trump.”
The AfD was created in 2013 as a small anti-euro party before morphing into an anti-migrant force that tapped into voter frustration over immigration and the strains many Germans perceive on housing, jobs and public services.
Despite being ostracized by mainstream parties and kept out of coalition cooperation, it has survived and thrived as a disruptive force.
In the last decade Germany has sheltered millions of refugees, mainly from Syria and other troubled countries in the Middle East. It provides housing, medical care and generous financial support to refugees that AfD politicians say serve as a magnet. Trump once accused former German Chancellor Angela Merkel of “ruining” her country by allowing in so many refugees.
“I think this could be a watershed moment for Europe,” Orsina said of the upcoming election.
An election poster touts the far-right Alternative for Germany party, AfD, right, in Berlin in 2025. It reads “Now AfD.”
(Michael Sohn / Associated Press)
He said the election in 2022 of Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party, which traces its origins to Italy’s postwar neo-fascist movement, sparked fears across Europe that, in hindsight, may have been exaggerated. But Germany is a different story when it comes to the far right.
“Some said she is a neo-fascist and a danger to democracy, but most people in Italy didn’t believe that,” he said. “Italy isn’t a better democracy after four years of Meloni but it isn’t any worse either. But Germany isn’t Italy. And Germany’s relationship with its past is a lot different.”
David Bebnowski, an author who has written books on far-right populism and who is a history instructor at the Free University in Berlin, said there is another important connection among far-right voters across Europe that the AfD is tapping into — a yearning for change in countries where establishment parties have struggled to respond to voter frustration.
Trump’s success as a force for disruption, he said, has provided a powerful example.
“You can’t really trace a grand MAGA strategy adopted by the far right, but you can see that they are, in part, very much in line with the ‘spirit of Trumpism,’” Bebnowski said. “What aligns them is a sense of disruption and optimism that they will be able to change the way politics are done in a way the other parties can’t.”
Kirschbaum is a special correspondent.
