Germany news roundup: Summer 2026 second hottest of century, inflation rises to 2.9%, AfD election warning

Germany's DWD weather service says the summer was second only to 2003 in terms of average temperatures. It was also unusually dry. In Cologne, police are seeking a man who fired shots at a cafe storefront. DW has more.

Average summer temperature of 19.6 Celsius is second only to 2003 figures, Germany's DWD weather service says

Cologne police investigate early-morning shooting of empty cafe in south of city center

Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul is visiting Tunisia and Algeria

Hamburg's new, larger Sternbrücke rail bridge opens for business, replacing a predecessor from 1926

Chancellor Merz warns an AfD government would damage Saxony-Anhalt, with vote on Sunday

Welcome to our roundup of news and analysis from and concerning Germany on Monday, August 31.

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August inflation rate climbs to 2.9%, driven by 10.5% energy bump linked to Iran war

Germany's inflation rate rose slightly in August, reaching 2.9% year-on-year, versus 2.8% in July. That's above the national and eurozone target of 2%, if not by a particularly large margin.

The increases were driven almost entirely by rising energy prices, which were 10.5% more expensive on average in August than in the same month last year.

That's also a fairly sharp rise compared to July, when the energy inflation rate stood at 8.3%.

Inflation for food and drink sank once again, to 0.1% year-on-year. Inflation in the services sector was close to the national average, at 2.8%.

At present, the energy inflation stems in very large part from rising prices for oil and and gasoline — up by much more than the 10.5% average for the entire energy sector — amid the delivery problems in the Strait of Hormuz, not for gas and electricity.

However, as the Iran war drags on and countries use up their gas reserves, this could be liable to change.

Further inflationary pressure is likely in Germany in the coming months as a result of the drought and the hot summer and its impact on transportation, food production and industrial output.

PROFILE — Sven Schulze, the politician leading the fight against the far-right in Saxony-Anhalt

All political eyes in Germany, and indeed beyond, are turning to the small eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt this week, ahead of Sunday's state election in which the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is expected to perform strongly.

But who's currently leading the coalition government in Saxony-Anhalt, Christian Democrat Sven Schulze?

And what's his message on polling week, as he tries to stay in his job while facing not just the prospect of losing to radicals on the right of politics, but of perhaps needing support from those he might deem radicals on the left to avoid such a defeat?

Christoph Strack from our politics desk has the skivvy on the 47-year-old father of three, the youngest of Germany's state premiers, here.

Woman confesses to pretending son had cancer to raise money

A German woman on trial in Giessen, north of Frankfurt in Hesse, has confessed to pretending her young son had cancer to raise money online.

Her lawyer said in court that she accepted and admitted to the allegations "without any reservation" and regretted what had happened.

She's accused of obtaining a total of €358,000 (roughly $415,000 at current exchange rates) in donations between September 2021 and October 2024. The boy was aged 5 to 8 during this time period.

The woman is alleged to have come up with the idea after a dermatological examination revealed an issue that turned out to be benign and require no further treatment.

She then allegedly claimed that her son was suffering from malignant melanoma and urgently required expensive specialist treatment in the US, claims she also made to the media and online.

Prosecutor Kai Karges said that hundreds of individuals and charities responded to the calls, and said that the child also believed he had cancer.

The fraud was uncovered when the boy's pediatrician saw the calls for donations on social media and alerted child protection services. He has since been taken into care.

Update: Cologne police issue details on suspect in cafe shooting, nobody hurt

Just a quick follow-up on our top headline from the early morning today.

Cologne police are still seeking a man believed to have fired shots at a Turkish cafe in the south of the city center. They confirmed that nobody was injured in the shooting.

Police described the man as "baldheaded, roughly 1 meter 80 (5 foot 9 inches) tall," wearing "sports shoes, black trousers and a gray hooded jacket" at the time of the shooting. Investigators said residents saw the man fire the shots and flee on foot at around 7:40 a.m. that morning.

"Based on preliminary investigations, four projectiles penetrated the cafe's front windows," police said, adding that Cologne's criminal investigation department or Kriminalpolizei had taken over the case.

UK fuels 50% year-on-year growth in 2025 German foreign direct investment

According to a report from the German Economic Institute (IW) think tank, foreign direct investment (FDI) into Germany rose markedly in 2025, reaching just over €86 billion (just under $100 billion at today's exchange rate).

Investments from the UK were the largest driver of growth by far.

IW put the level of FDI from the UK at more than €26.3 billion, saying it was a year-on-year increase of 284%.

This made the UK the largest external contributor to projects in Germany, overtaking the US, as US investment dipped by 44% to around €11.75 billion.

Investment from the other 26 EU member states remained the largest source of input, at just over €44 billion combined, with the annual figure more or less stable compared to 2024.

"If you include the UK investments as well, then more than 80% of all foreign direct investments came from Europe. The numbers show: the closest and most reliable trade relations remain those with European neighbors."

Investment from China, Saudi Arabia and Chile also rose markedly in 2024, but barely totaled €3 billion combined.

The figures followed a below-average 2024, with the think tank saying that overall foreign direct investment had risen by 50% year-on-year.

FDI figures can be quite volatile annually, depending on what's been agreed and when, with individual large deals capable of skewing the stats quite markedly. Still, 2025's total was also roughly 11% higher than the multi-year median for the period between 2015 and 2024, the IW said.

Weather service: 2026 summer provisionally the 2nd hottest of the century

Based on provisional data, with the meterological period only ending this Monday, 2026's summer is the second hottest of the century in Germany.

Germany's DWD weather service said that its provisional average round-the-clock temperature for the season lay at 19.6 degrees Celsius (67.8 Fahrenheit).

"Based on provisional calculations, only the 'summer of the century' in 2003 appears to have been hotter, at 19.7 Celsius," the DWD said.

The average lies some 3.3 Celsius degree points above the reference average for the 1961-1990 period.

"What was without compare in 2026 was the frequency of the heat," the DWD wrote. On average, areas in Germany experienced around 22 "hot" days — with temperatures of 30 Celsius or higher — and five very hot days with highs of at least 35 Celsius.

This included the provisional German record high temperature of 41.8 Celsius, recorded in Möckern-Drewitz in Saxony-Anhalt on June 27. That same night, not far away in Kubschütz in Saxony, the mercury never dropped below 29.4 Celsius — "the highest overnight minimum temperature ever recorded in Germany."

Above all, the DWD said, the summer was too dry, with around 171 liters of rainfall per square meter over the summer. This compares to historical seasonal averages of 239 to 241 liters per square meter in Germany.

Unlike the astronomical summer, which ends on September 21, the DWD classifies Germany's meteorological summer as the June 1 - August 31 period.

First trains cross Hamburg's new Sternbrücke bridge

The new Sternbrücke bridge opened for business on Monday in the west of Hamburg, after the major rail line was closed for several weeks during the installation phase.

It replaces a 100-year-old bridge connecting the Sternschanze and Altona-Altstadt districts, linking the Hamburg main station with the Hamburg-Altona station for both local and long distance rail lines in the northern port city.

The first trains started crossing before dawn on Monday morning, a local service from Kiel being first in line, just ahead of an early-morning express train headed south to Basel in Switzerland.

"Everything has gone according to plan here," the project manager at Deutsche Bahn, Janna Widmaier, told local public radio station NDR 90.3 on Monday morning.

Some 900 trains will cross the bridge each day. The new bridge with four tracks weighs 3,700 metric tons and is considerably larger than its predecessor from 1926.

The bridge was transported roughly 500 meters from its construction site to its assembly position in July, painstaking precision work that attracted quite a crowd as the vast structure sometimes passed within just a few centimeters of houses and other roadside buildings.

The project had suffered a delay of roughly two weeks because of problems with the overhead electrical lines. Some of the streets below the new bridge are still closed off.

Foreign Minister Wadephul departs for North Africa

Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul flew out of Berlin bound for Tunis early on Monday, as he heads on a two-day trip to North Africa.

"We share core economic and security concerns with Tunisia and Algeria," Wadephul told reporters at the airport prior to takeoff. "Together we can make the Mediterranean into an area of strength between our two continents."

Wadephul is expected to speak with his opposite number Mohamed Nafti in Tunis, as well as representatives of German businesses on sites and of Tunisian start-ups.

"For our industry — above all the car industry — reliable delivery links with Tunisia are central nowadays," Wadephul said.

He noted that Germany had become Tunisia's third-largest export market, and said that around 7,500 Tunisians were studying at German higher education facilities.

Wadephul will move on to Algeria in the second leg of his journey. There he will also meet Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf, as well as being received by President Abdelmajid Tebboune, who visited Berlin this July.

The foreign minister called Algeria a "strategic partner in energy and also in security policy," saying it was already a key natural gas deliverer for the EU and that it had the potential to become an even more important partner given its aim of rapidly expanding its green hydrogen production and supply to Europe in the next roughly 15 years. The project is partly supported by Germany.

Merz warns AfD government would cause 'considerable problems' for Saxony-Anhalt

Chancellor Friedrich Merz warned in his summer interview with public broadcaster ARD that the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt could suffer if the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) win Sunday's state elections.

Polls vary, but all give the anti-migration AfD a vast lead over the other major parties, with something in the region of 40% of the vote. Merz's center right Christian Democrats (CDU) are next in line, far adrift with less than 25%.

It's not clear if the AfD will be able to secure a viable majority and govern, with this contingent both on how it fares on Sunday and on how many smaller parties fail to clear the 5% hurdle that guarantees parliamentary representation. But Merz said that an outright victory could be seriously damaging for the state.

"If that were to happen, .... then this state would encounter considerable problems," Merz said. "I cannot imagine that many international investors would be coming to groundbreaking ceremonies with an AfD state premier, to open new factories or settle new businesses in Saxony-Anhalt."

Merz said voters in the state would ultimately have to decide.

He also said he would be doing everything he could to try to swing undecided voters or encourage turnout in the last days of the campaign, planning two trips to the state this week. He noted that some 20% of voters were telling pollsters they had not yet made up their minds if they would vote or for whom.

Merz tried to sidestep a question about how to form a government that would keep the AfD out of office. As it stands, the third-largest party in the state looks set to be the socialist Left Party at around 13%.

The CDU and the Left have never allied in any federal or state-level coalition — but unless the pollsters are wildly mistaken or the mood swings considerably in a week, that could be necessary to have any chance of forming a larger bloc than the AfD's in the state parliament.

"We will look at that in the light of the election results," Merz said when asked how to set up a government keeping the AfD out of office. "We will do everything we can, to stop Saxony-Anhalt from falling to the radicals. And that applies both to the AfD and to the Left Party."

The interview aired on ARD on Sunday evening.