Active football fan scenes from all over Germany, including many ultras, mobilized and demonstrated together in Leipzig on Sunday. Among other things, it went against politicians’ plans for personalized tickets and stricter stadium bans. The Saxon Interior Minister wants to stay the course despite the headwind.
Under the motto “Football is safe”, several thousand supporters from various football clubs from all over Germany gathered in downtown Leipzig on Sunday afternoon (November 16th) to demonstrate against a specific topic at the upcoming Interior Ministers’ Conference (IMK) in Bremen at the beginning of December. Leipzig was deliberately chosen as the location for the demonstration because the German national team’s decisive group game in the World Cup qualification against Slovakia will take place there on Monday.
At the IMK in the Hanseatic city, in addition to combating domestic violence, safety is also high on the agenda. Security infrastructure and cybersecurity are two of the topic areas, the third is stadium security. Measures are to be decided that many active football fans see as repression. The politicians’ arguments are populism, the fan culture is at risk and the stadium experience will be further restricted, argue the fan scenes.
Demo train over half a kilometer long
According to an MDR reporter, the number of participants is in five figures. The police say there were around 8,000 people there, and according to the organizers there were 20,000 fans taking part. When it was set up, the demonstration train stretched from Leipzig Central Station to Richard-Wagner-Platz – a distance of over 500 meters. We had to keep moving forward to get all the fan scenes onto the street. The demonstration only started moving more than an hour late.
The various fan groups organized themselves into individual blocks. Led by the Ultras from Union Berlin, fan scenes from across Germany followed in Munich, Saarbrücken and Osnabrück. Numerous groups also came from Saxony (including Dynamo Dresden), Saxony-Anhalt (including Hallescher FC) and Thuringia (including Carl Zeiss Jena). The demo procession finally led around the Leipzig city center ring back to Richard-Wagner-Platz, where there was a final speech.
Ultras demonstrate together at a nationwide fan demo in Leipzig.
criticism of Stadium ban plans and personalized Tickets
Football supporters are particularly critical of a planned amendment to the guidelines for stadium bans. Accordingly, these should be monitored from a central location. And even in suspected cases, according to the plans, there should be the possibility of issuing a stadium ban. From the fans’ point of view, the end of the presumption of innocence. They also defend themselves against personalized tickets and possible AI-supported facial recognition. Another point of criticism is that the fans and clubs are not involved in the negotiations between the IMK and the associations and that these take place in a non-transparent manner.
“Today an unmistakable message is being sent out from Leipzig to the conference of interior ministers and the associations: end the negotiations behind closed doors, stop the plans and start an open and fact-based dialogue on stadium security with everyone involved. We and all fans across the country now expect the interior ministers to move towards fans and clubs after today,” explained Danny Graupner from the umbrella organization of Fanhilfen e. V. in a later published communication.
There was already a nationwide poster campaign in the stadiums last weekend. There you could read again and again: “Interior Ministers’ Conference 2025: Your own statistics show that stadiums are safe! Stop populism!”.
Fans of 1. FC Union with a message for the Interior Ministers’ Conference
Saxony’s Interior Minister Schuster is sticking to the course
The Saxon Interior Minister Armin Schuster is meanwhile insisting on stricter security measures in the stadiums. The CDU politician told MDR that they had to deal with the consequences of fan violence every weekend. When asked about the police statistics, which show declining numbers of injuries in stadiums, he also explained: “Who says that it’s a little or a lot when we have 50, 60, 70 people who are injured by pyrotechnics. In Saxony alone in one year.” It is unclear where Schuster got these numbers from. According to the Central Information Center for Sports Operations (ZIS), 95 people nationwide were injured by pyrotechnics in 2024/25.
Schuster also complained that far too large a police force had to be mobilized all the time. Often several hundred people were not enough. For sports like handball, however, you send a few stripes. Schuster, however, praised the “very good atmosphere for such a large demo. The meeting in Leipzig showed that things are peaceful in a great atmosphere. We would like that at the weekend too. And I believe that is possible. It has to be possible.”
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