In the autumn of 2026, German voters in Saxony-Anhalt and beyond are casting ballots that may deliver the far-right Alternative for Germany its first real taste of governing power — an outcome that would have been dismissed as fantasy a decade ago. The AfD's rise is not a sudden eruption but the slow accumulation of unanswered grievances: economic anxiety, immigration frustration, and a widening distance between citizens and the political establishment. What is being decided is not merely who governs a German state, but whether the boundaries that once contained far-right politics in Europe's