When Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier announced the decision that had already been made in the Kurhaus in Baden-Baden in the afternoon - after a never-ending series of speeches, image films and interviews - there was more relief than exuberant joy among the Munich delegation headed by Mayor Dominik Krause (Greens) and Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU).
The two politicians hugged each other briefly and patted each other on the shoulder, Krause confessed in front of the television microphone: “It was quite a thriller, we were worried all day.” And Söder admitted: "The people of Cologne made it really difficult for us. You made us tremble a lot." At the end of the application process, only the Cologne-Rhine-Ruhr region remained in the competition.
And the way things had recently developed, a close outcome was expected. On Friday evening there was a reception for the delegates from all DOSB member associations in the Baden-Baden Congress Center. The teams of the remaining applicants used the meeting to get one or two undecided sports associations on their side. The representatives of 42 Olympic sports associations were allowed to vote, and those who were considered supporters of the federal capital until Berlin's short-term withdrawal were particularly sought after. The morning after, however, no party could still be sure that it had enough votes on its side.
Bavaria's Prime Minister Söder had already gone up the stairs into the Benazet Hall a quarter of an hour before the meeting began, a few minutes ahead of his North Rhine-Westphalia Prime Minister colleague Hendrik Wüst (CSU), the rival in the fight for the Olympics (and possibly also for the successor to Friedrich Merz as Chancellor). Directly in front of Wüst and his entourage, Munich's mayor Krause slipped in and walked up the steps.
This fit with the entire national application process: Munich's Pro-Olympic fighters were the first at the beginning with their referendum on October 26, 2025. Now, exactly eleven months later, they were also the first to take the final stages.
In the week before the decision, the race had of course taken on an unexpected dynamic: due to the state elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the final report of the DOSB evaluation commission, Berlin's subsequent decision not to continue its candidacy, but above all the decisions of the remaining applicants Munich and Cologne for a sailing area. While Munich chose Kiel, its partner from 1972, Cologne brought the Mecklenburg city of Rostock-Warnemünde on board - and thus played a trump card.
Berlin had long before committed itself to Warnemünde and also included other places in the surrounding federal states in the “Berlin+” concept. After the withdrawal, some of the eligible delegates who would have voted for the federal capital tended to support their competitor Cologne-Rhine-Ruhr. At least that was how a speech by Berlin's governing mayor Kai Wegener (CDU) was to be interpreted; A contribution from Hamburg sports senator Christoph Holstein (SPD) also went in this direction. The representatives of the eliminated competitors were allowed to speak again before the vote.
Given the rejection of the Hamburg campaign by the local population, Holstein pointed out that sport “also teaches how to deal with defeat.” But that's not why we let him be: "The value of sport today also lies in holding together a society that is drifting apart."
This could certainly be understood as a plea for the Cologne-Rhine-Ruhr concept. North Rhine-Westphalia's Prime Minister Wüst and his SPD colleague Manuela Schwesig from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania have been very aggressive in recent days about the fact that the application there could offer a nationally unifying campaign with the addition of East German sports facilities: In addition to the sailing area in Warnemünde, they had also included the Saxon canoe park Markkleeberg in their sports facility portfolio.
"I think that we shouldn't just repeat the 1972 Olympic Games. We should show the Germany of today - reunified, strong and modern," argued Manuela Schwesig and praised the "East-West concept" of Cologne-Rhine-Ruhr. Bavaria's Prime Minister Markus Söder countered that the Munich application he supported adhered to the "one village concept" set out by the IOC - that is, the most compact Games possible in one place where the majority of athletes come together in an Olympic village.
Otherwise, Munich had always emphasized its sustainability: that most of the sports facilities from 1972 could be reused. And with its international appeal, it promoted sport, as was recently shown by the awarding of the 2031 World Athletics Championships to the city. On the other hand, it is also generally a tourist destination, as can be seen again at Oktoberfest. Trumps that obviously stood out to the delegates.
