Overview

• In Dortmund, CDU challenger Alexander Omar Kalouti defeated SPD incumbent Thomas Westphal, ending the party’s decades-long hold on the city.
• Cologne elected SPD’s Torsten Burmester, and the party says it now holds 13 mayoralties statewide despite setbacks elsewhere.
• Visiting Düsseldorf, Chancellor Friedrich Merz framed the results as an Auftrag for the federal government to deliver centrist, solutions-focused policy.
• The AfD failed to win any runoffs, losing in Duisburg, Gelsenkirchen and Hagen, while the Greens won Münster but lost Bonn and Aachen.
• Mülheim corrected its preliminary count to show CDU incumbent Marc Buchholz ahead of SPD’s Nadia Khalaf, pending election committee validation, as razor-thin margins in Siegen (10 votes) and Datteln (3 votes) could trigger recounts.