Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner withdrew from the reelection race this fall. His decision to play tennis during the power outage in January was among missteps that has dented his reputation.
In the end, it was one little white lie too many: Kai Wegner, Mayor of the German capital Berlin and a member of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has decided not to run again in the upcoming Berlin state election in September. He made the announcement on Friday afternoon, insisting that he intends to remain in office until then: "I was elected as Mayor," he said, almost defiantly, at a press conference.
Since April 2023, Wegner has led a coalition of conservatives and center-left social democrats. He later drew negative headlines for his decision to play tennis during power outage across a sizeable stretch of the German capital at the start of the year.
On January 3, 2026, a power outage struck the southwestern part of Germany's largest city. The reason: Unknown perpetrators had carried out an arson attack on high-voltage cables.
This left some 45,000 households without electricity and heating during sub-zero temperatures. It took more than four days to reconnect all residents to the grid, making it the longest power outage in the city since World War II.
