n-counter: Research Trip to Eastern Germany

In early September, Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party is projected to score unprecedented wins in elections in Saxony-Anhalt. As populist right parties continue to rise in Germany and across Europe, journalists are confronted with questions about how to report on them while grappling with political polarization, audience fragmentation, platform algorithms, and disinformation.

In the wake of the Saxony-Anhalt election, eight selected journalists will visit three cities in the region:

• Magdeburg, where coalition negotiations are underway three weeks after the election

• Bitterfeld-Wolfen, a town whose post-reunification trajectory from industrial collapse to economic recovery tells a more complicated story than it might seem

• Halle, where civil society groups are responding to the election result in different ways

Taking place one week after state elections in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the trip invites journalists to look beyond coalition arithmetic and explore the sociopolitical context of Eastern Germany; the factors leading to unprecedented AfD support in the region; and what this means for the rest of the country and Europe.

Reporting independently for their home outlets, journalists will meet with local politicians, journalists, and civil society actors involved in the election. They will also have the opportunity to connect with fellow reporters from across Germany, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus. All travel and accommodation expenses in both Saxony-Anhalt and Berlin are fully covered.

We are looking for journalists who see connections between what is happening in Saxony-Anhalt and their own countries, whether that is the rise of the far right, post-communist transformation, or the difficulty of reporting on a place that is harder to understand from the outside than it looks.

We invite editors, journalists, and correspondents from Central/Eastern Europe (including Germany) to apply if they:

• have experience in foreign reporting;
• are interested in German (domestic) politics;
• have a strong command of English

Please note: the Research Trip is an integral part of the n-counter conference in Berlin, and participants will present some of their findings there.

Dates: Wednesday, 30 September – Sunday, 04 October 2026

Application deadline: 09 August 2026 (23:59 CET).

Should you have any questions, feel free to reach out: community@n-ost.org.

The Research Trip to Saxony-Anhalt is supported by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.