Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) (The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – Reason and Justice) Party Building: Letter to Supporters, December 2025

Dear supporter(s),

The frequent and active help of our supporters was of decisive importance for BSW. Without you, we would never have been able to achieve our successes this year. We would like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for this great commitment! The first year of our young party has been challenging. We have created our first working structures, founded 15 regional associations so far and run four successful election campaigns. We have entered the European Parliament and three state parliaments and are now involved in two state governments.

We are very pleased with these developments and they testify to the great response to our young party. But they have also taken a lot of energy and tied up capacity. We had actually hoped to have some breathing space after the state elections so that we could finally focus on building up our party and recruiting members in a systematic and structured way. But then the traffic light coalition government (SPD/FDP/Greens) fell apart, so we now have to concentrate on our fifth and, for the time being, most important election campaign without a grace period.

We know that with our concept of careful and slow membership recruitment in the first year, we expected a lot from some of our supporters who were hoping for faster recruitment. We apologise for any disappointments in this regard and would like to ask for your understanding. Many young parties disintegrate in the first year of their existence due to disputes brought about by individuals and groups. We have done things differently, successfully weathered the first election contests and avoided the worst teething troubles of young parties. At the same time, however, the slow admission process meant that we were unable to pave the way for many honest and committed supporters to join the party quickly because we simply couldn’t get to know them in the short time available.

The concept of controlled growth was and remains the right one. However, we as the BSW leadership agree that we want to revise and modify the admission process after the general election in order to noticeably increase the number of admissions so that more committed supporters can become members next year.

We would like to sincerely thank you for your patience and understanding and hope that you can understand our approach.

We look forward to a successful parliamentary election campaign with you, because we are united by one important goal: Germany deserves better than a ‘business as usual’ policy with failed politicians like Scholz or Merz.

Best regards,

Sahra Wagenknecht, Amira Mohamed Ali and Christian Leye