Berlin’s Governing Mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) has come under intense criticism after it emerged that he was playing tennis during a major power outage, despite publicly claiming he had been working “day and night” in the office to manage the crisis.
The outage, which affected large parts of the city in January, left around 100.000 residents without electricity for extended periods, disrupting transport, businesses, and households.
The outage began on January 3, 2026, after suspected left-wing extremists set fire to a cable bridge in southwest Berlin, cutting electricity to up to 100,000 people for several days.
In a Welt TV interview four days later, the Christian Democrat Wegner claimed he had been actively managing the crisis from early morning.
He stated he start making the phone calls at 8:08 a.m.
“I spoke with the crisis teams, with Stromnetz Berlin. I especially also spoke with the federal government, with the Federal Chancellery, with the Federal Interior Ministry.”
However, records from the Berlin Senate Chancellery, released after a court order obtained by Tagesspiegel, show that Wegner made no official phone calls before 12:45 p.m. on the day of the outage.
Communication in the morning was limited to text messages.
His first documented official call was with Economics Senator Franziska Giffey at 12:45 p.m.
Making matters worse, it later surfaced that the Berlin mayor concealed an approximately one-hour tennis match on the first afternoon of the blackout.
He said he played tennis after many phone calls, and that he wanted to clear his head.
The contradiction has prompted strong criticism from opposition parties. Steffen Krach, leader of the SPD in Berlin, told Der Spiegel, “It is now black on white: Kai Wegner has seriously damaged the office of Governing Mayor and disqualified himself.”
Krach described Wegner’s handling of the truth as “shameful” and suggested that human decency would require him to step down.
Krach, who is also his party’s top candidate for the parliamentary elections in September, indirectly called on Wegner to resign. “Human decency would now require him to withdraw. But I fear that the people of Berlin will have to take over on September 20,” said the SPD politician.
Elif Eralp, mayoral candidate of the Left Party, said: “If you lie three times, you don’t vote for him.” The CDU politician had “deliberately falsified” his role in the crisis and thus “finally gambled away” his credibility as Governing Mayor.
The Greens’ top candidate Bettina Jarasch said that the head of the Senate had “lost all trust of Berliners, who can no longer rely on the truth of his statements”
Wegner later admitted to “communicative errors” in a March interview with Berlin outlet B.Z., apologising to Berliners, without going much into the specifics.
“Yes, I have made communicative mistakes and would like to apologize to all Berliners for this”, he said.
On the Right, Wegner also gets critisised for his repeated and public lies, but also for his lacking crisis management in the hour of need.
The Berlin AfD parliamentary group leader Kristin Brinker also declared: “Kai Wegner is not suitable for the office of governing mayor in terms of character.” After the “various already proven untruths” that the governing mayor had expressed about January 3, “this new finding can no longer be surprising.” She was particularly astonished “that Wegner told his own Senate Chancellery the untruth.”
