Ronhof Sports Park in Fürth (January 24, 2026)
The disputes over the Interior Ministers’ Conference in December 2025 were just the start of a development that is now clearly reflected in the stands and around the stadiums. While the political debate officially revolved around security and violence prevention, the practice of state action shifted in the background. The question is not whether escalations will occur – but why.
Anyone who sees the increasing violent clashes between police units and fan scenes as merely the result of communication problems is misunderstanding their character. Repression is not an accident, but fulfills a function. It is not primarily directed against specific dangerous situations, but rather against a social practice that is only subject to state control to a limited extent.
This can be seen as an example from the actions of the Berlin police on January 17, 2026 at the game between Hertha BSC and Schalke 04 in the Olympic Stadium. The operation, in which police forces entered the east curve and indiscriminately attacked fans, does not mark an outlier. The context is crucial: The escalation did not originate from a dynamic situation, but was actively brought about despite noticeable retreats on the part of the fan scene. Irritant gas in the access tunnel, the use of batons in densely filled sections and injured people even in wheelchair areas are not a means of averting danger, but rather of enforcing control.
Why is the state taking such action here? The answer does not lie in an alleged increase in fan violence. The statistics from the Central Information Center for Sports Operations show the opposite. Violence is not increasing, but police intervention is. This contradiction is no coincidence. Escalation creates the images that can then be used to legitimize political measures. This is not about football in the narrower sense. Football is the field in which a general problem becomes apparent: the state encounters a social sphere that only fits into its ideas of order to a limited extent. Organized fan scenes are collective, emotional, opinionated. They function according to their own rules, have their own structures and evade the logic of isolation. That’s exactly what makes them suspicious. Repression begins at this point. It is intended to punish and discipline. This is also reflected in the fact that not only fans themselves are being targeted, but increasingly the structures that have previously had a de-escalating effect. The search of the Dortmund fan project on January 28th is a warning example of this.
Fan projects are not “fan bars,” but social-educational institutions whose effectiveness is based on trust and a clear separation from the police. If this limit is removed, prevention loses its basis. It is of course no coincidence that this separation is being questioned in a phase of heightened security debates. Fan projects, fan aid and self-organized curves contradict a security policy logic that only wants to manage conflicts. Their existence indicates that there are alternatives to police escalation. That’s exactly why they come under pressure.
The large number of consistent reports from a wide variety of fan scenes – from Dresden to Münster to Kaiserslautern – proves that these are not local grievances. The same pattern is evident everywhere: excessive police presence, provocations, early interventions and the willingness to use violence even in the absence of acute danger. This practice is an expression of a changed approach to fan culture.
The background is political. In times of social crises, growing inequality and increasing militarization externally, the need for order internally grows. German football is suitable as a field for experimentation because it is publicly, emotionally and institutionally accessible. Whoever enforces control here sends a signal beyond this space. Repression in the stadium is therefore part of a broader regulatory policy. It is directed against forms of collective self-organization that evade the logic of exploitation and discipline; against spaces that are only subject to state control to a limited extent. Football and its fan culture are not a special case, just a particularly visible field.
Anyone who reduces escalations solely to communication errors or individual operational management and problematic operational teams is missing the connection. The violence is part of a politics that reaches inwards in times of social and political crises. A state that can no longer adequately legitimize its social structure ideologically increasingly relies on coercion.
