Demos in many cities: Youth protests have been largely peaceful so far

GenZ protests Thousands demonstrate for social justice As of: October 31, 2026 • 5:54 p.m

The announced “GenZ” protests began in the afternoon. In Hamburg and Cologne, the police took action against demonstrators because of, among other things, the use of pyrotechnics. Otherwise, the youth protests were peaceful.

The announced nationwide youth protests began in several cities in the afternoon. Thousands of people gathered in the afternoon in Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Mainz, Cologne, Munich, Nuremberg, Erfurt, Magdeburg, Dresden and Leipzig, among others.

In many places, a peaceful start to the protest was reported, but in some cases demonstrations were stopped because of violations of the ban on masking. According to the police, pyrotechnics were also set off on the sidelines of some protests.

The “GenZ regulates” initiative has called for protests in more than 30 German cities. She calls for more money for schools, addiction help and psychotherapy, measures to combat rising living costs, for social justice and more climate protection. They reject the initiative for compulsory military service, as well as an expansion of state surveillance.

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It is not yet possible to predict how many people nationwide came to the registered demonstrations. On the initiative's homepage, you could indicate with a simple click of the mouse that you wanted to take part, which more than 182,100 people had done by the time the protests began. However, the number of participants so far is significantly lower than expected.

Several thousand people gathered at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. The police gave the rbb the number of around 5,000 participants. The Berlin police say they have around 1,500 additional police officers in the city.

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According to the police, drones should also be used to monitor the protests - for example in Hamburg, where a demonstration with several thousand people marched through the city center in the afternoon, as NDR reported. Some demonstrators threw pyrotechnics and construction site barriers at police forces. The riot police are taking action against this with “immediate force,” the police posted on their WhatsApp channel.

During the demonstration, people dressed in black and some of them masked tore red and white plastic construction site barriers near Hamburg Central Station from their anchorages and threw them onto the street. Later, some plastic pieces were also set on fire. The police intervened, dispersed the crowd and sometimes used pepper spray against the demonstrators. The fire was finally extinguished using a water cannon.

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Several thousand people also gathered in Cologne. The number of participants so far is below the 15,000 registered, said a police spokeswoman in the early afternoon. According to information from WDR, the police decided to cancel the planned demonstration through the city at short notice due to pyrotechnics and masking by individual participants.

After the registered demonstration in Cologne was broken up, there were isolated riots. According to WDR, left-wing extremist and pro-Palestinian groups were mixed in with the peaceful demonstrators. Several hundred tried to get into the city center as a group, but were stopped by the police. Fireworks kept flying and there were clashes with the police. They dispersed the crowd with several hundred people and two water cannons.

After the demonstration ended, there were riots in Cologne.

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In Stuttgart, the police stopped a demonstration several times. Initially, the officials complained that participants were masked. “It can only continue without a mask,” it said on the police WhatsApp channel. "Even before the procession began, smoke pots were ignited and firecrackers could also be heard. That's not okay," a police spokeswoman said in a short video. "We appeal to you: be loud, but stay peaceful."

According to the police, there were initially more than 1,500 participants at a rally in Frankfurt near the European Central Bank (ECB), and in Mainz, according to the police, 1,200. Everything was going peacefully, said a police spokesman in Mainz. In Freiburg the police spoke of 2,500 participants. According to the MDR, several hundred people gathered for protests in Dresden, while in Leipzig there were initially just under 2,000.

According to police estimates, around 4,000 people gathered in front of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. The demonstration set off in the direction of the Siegestor. Before there we continue to Münchner Freiheit and back to Zwilling-Scholl-Platz. There have been no reports of any particular incidents to date.

"Gen Z takes care of it": Nationwide protests by young people tagesschau, Das Erste, October 31, 2026 • 5:00 p.m. Organizers call for peaceful protest For fear of riots, many retailers in the city centers and especially in luxury shopping streets in larger cities had barricaded their shop windows with wooden panels as a precaution. In some places the shops remained closed anyway because of Reformation Day.

Luxury brand stores in Frankfurt were also secured as a precautionary measure.

The organizers of “Gen Z regulates” have previously expressly called for peaceful protest. On their website they make it clear that they do not want extremist groups and anti-constitutional symbols at their demonstrations. They warn against glass and weapons as well as provocations towards the police and point out the ban on masking during demonstrations.

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The Green party leader in the Bundestag, Katharina Dröge, understands the anger of young people and is calling for more attention to their criticism. “Young people are rightly angry because the federal government does not take their concerns seriously enough and does not provide them with answers about how they can shape their future,” she told the dpa news agency.

The left also supports the protests. Party leader Luigi Pantisano said it was exactly the right time for protests, referred to the federal government's planned reforms in care and pensions and spoke of "social atrocities."

AfD leader Alice Weidel, however, warned against being taken over by extremists. There is a "real danger that the demonstrations, like in France, will be hijacked by violent people from the left-wing extremist and Islamist milieu," she explained.

This topic in the program: The First | daily news | October 31, 2026 | 1:45 p.m