G Do you believe in fortune telling? Probably not. As a critical taz reader, you know that everything is bad and getting worse: the Americans, the climate, the Nazis. But isn’t this supposed certainty just as unlikely as reading coffee grounds?
I didn’t believe in fortune telling either – until I realized I could see things clairvoyantly. If you don’t believe me, read what was in this column a year ago. In my “optimistic and realistic annual outlook“For the year 2025 it was said that Friedrich Merz would abolish the debt brake and the superegos Elon Musk and Donald Trump were at odds, at least temporarily. One or two things turned out differently, but the hit rate was still almost as good as that of the Chancellor in his search for the next faux pas.
Therefore, here is an outlook for 2026. Statistically it is now clear: two of the events will occur like this. Unfortunately I can’t reveal which ones for dramaturgical reasons.
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January: After the moderate success of the “autumn of reforms,” Chancellor Friedrich Merz is proclaiming the “winter of muddling through.” This fails due to bureaucratic hurdles such as the EU sausage regulation.
February: Speaking of sausages: Markus Söder turns his hobby into a profession and takes over a bratwurst stand in downtown Nuremberg (three in Weggla, 3 euros). Takes over the position as top Upper Bavarian Checker-Tobi. He manages to combat disillusionment with politics; the AfD ends up below the 5 percent threshold in the Bavarian local elections.
March: More and more Swabians are fleeing Berlin because of the high rents. Because of the crumbling automobile industry, factory floors are now available to rent cheaply in Stuttgart. Cem Özdemir, the Kreuzberg Swabian, celebrates his “remigration” to his federal state. The newcomers save his election result, Özdemir becomes prime minister.
April: Donald Trump visits Greenland for the first time. His interest in the giant island suddenly wanes: it is “very cold” and there is “a lot of snow”. That is “very, very boring” and “unfair”. He turns to the sunny Because to what only causes a shrug of the shoulders in Europe.
May: Huge surprise at the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna. Germany made it onto the podium for the first time in years and secured third place. It is helpful that all countries are boycotting each other – except Israel and host Austria.
July: Germany wins the World Cup with a dirty 1-0 win against the Caribbean island of Curaçao. All are blue. Leon Goretzka yells “Shit Trump” into the cameras at the victory celebration and is arrested by the FBI as a suspected member of Antifa East. “Party anti-fascism” is spreading in Germany, which is criticized by observers (taz).
In April, Trump lost interest in Greenland: It was very cold
September: Elif Eralp becomes Governing Mayor of Berlin, as the first leftist and first woman with a migration background. Because of an attack by Volcano Group 6 on the city’s telephone network, the results from the individual polling stations have to be collected by carrier pigeons. Gurrr.
October: Benjamin Netanyahu is voted out of office in Israel’s parliamentary elections.
November: Kai Wegner sets up his own business and sells ironically printed tennis socks. His best seller is a pair of socks with the inscription “Better to have tennis elbow than poor.”
December: No joke: two years after the equally surprising overthrow of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, the Iranian mullahs’ regime is finally collapsing.