Overview
- Official results show Yilmaz took 54.1% to Gerrit Derkowski’s 45.9%, with turnout reported at 43.5%.
- Derkowski, a nonpartisan candidate backed by the CDU and FDP, had led the first round after a nine-person field narrowed the race.
- Yilmaz, 44, works at the Schleswig-Holstein interior ministry and co-leads the Greens in Kiel’s city council.
- He will succeed outgoing mayor Ulf Kämpfer of the SPD, who did not seek re-election and is moving into state politics as the party’s lead candidate for the 2027 Landtag vote.
- The Greens hold the largest faction in Kiel’s council, but the mayoralty had previously alternated between the SPD and CDU, with past Green leadership only in an acting capacity.