The parade at the center of Berlin’s gay Pride celebration on Saturday was a sunny blur of glitter and feathers, of rainbow flags and thumping techno beats. It was cocooned by walls of metal barricades and guarded by 2,200 police officers — up from 1,300 last year, as the city tried to curb a wave of violence against Berlin’s gay community.
Those precautions failed to prevent an attack late Saturday night, when an assailant plowed a rented van into a group of revelers leaving the celebration via a side street in the city’s central Tiergarten park, just outside the security perimeter. He attacked others with what appeared to be a machete, shocking those who thought the extra security measures might protect them.
“How did he even get into the Tiergarten?” asked Benjamin Bock, an attendee who said he had been at the site of the attack 10 minutes before it happened. “There were anti-car and anti-truck barriers everywhere. Thousands of police officers were on duty.”
One woman was killed, and 29 people were injured, the authorities said. The police shot and killed the main suspect on Sunday evening, ending a daylong national manhunt. Officials called the attack Islamist terrorism, and named the suspect as Abdul B., 21, omitting his surname in line with German privacy laws.
It was a sum-of-all-fears moment for Berlin’s L.G.B.T.Q. community and for city officials, who ramped up security at Pride events in recent years, and who had appeared to be making progress in their efforts to stem a surge of crime against the community.
Berlin started an effort in 2024 to combat violence and discrimination against its gay community. According to city statistics, “anti-queer” crimes more than tripled in the city between 2016 and 2025. Violent anti-queer crimes rose by half. Both violent and nonviolent offenses peaked in 2023 and have fallen since the city began its strategy, but both types of crimes remain historically elevated.
Much of that effort has focused on countering growing hostility from Germany’s far right; in Berlin, far-right ideology was the most frequently cited specific motivation for homophobic attacks in the city in 2025. But on Sunday, after the authorities said the perpetrator had attempted to join the Islamist terrorist group ISIS, community leaders said they were increasingly worried about threats from a wider range of political and religious motivations.
“We queer people in Berlin are feeling more and more unsafe,” Florian Winkler-Schwarz, managing director of the LSVD Association for Queer Diversity Berlin-Brandenburg, a civil rights group, said in an interview.
Mr. Winkler-Schwarz said the police presence and other safety measures at the celebration on Saturday “were enormously high.” But, he said, “I believe that you cannot guarantee 100 percent security for such a massive event.”
Alfonso Pantisano is the L.G.B.T.Q. affairs commissioner for Berlin’s state government, a position created as part of a strategy to combat violence and discrimination against the community. He attended the Christopher Street Day celebration with a police escort because of the threats he has received since taking the job. He stayed at the site deep into Sunday morning to help and comfort people who were evacuating after the attack.
“My heart is broken,” Mr. Pantisano said in an interview. “It’s making me wonder if, in this life that I have at the moment — and I’m 52 now — I will ever get to a point where I can say, as the queer community, finally, we are really safe.”
Many festivalgoers in Berlin grappled with similar fears in the wake of the attack.
Uwe Brzezek and his partner, Olav Kedziora, stood outside a church memorial service on Sunday afternoon, as rain fell, surrounded by dozens of mourners. Some carried Pride flags.
Mr. Brzezek and Mr. Kedziora attended Saturday’s Pride festivities but left hours before the attack.
“Yesterday, friends of mine dressed up for Pride,” Mr. Kedziora said. “But they changed back into regular clothes before taking the subway home. They were afraid of being harassed. You would have hoped that, at least on that day, it wouldn’t have been necessary.”
Mr. Brzezek said that when he moved to Berlin in the 1990s, “I never felt afraid. Now there are certain situations I avoid.”
Some said they feel particularly unsafe in areas with large numbers of migrants, including higher numbers of conservative Islamists.
The suspect was a German citizen of Lebanese background, living in an area with a large Arab community, and he had developed extremist views, authorities said.
“Diversity itself seems to be becoming a challenge,” Mr. Kedziora said. “Too many extremes are colliding. We have to learn how to live together.”
Some people at the memorial on Sunday said German leaders had contributed to a sense of insecurity. They singled out the far-right Alternative for Germany party, which has climbed in national polls with a platform that defines a family as a man and a woman with children. Others criticized Friedrich Merz, the chancellor, who defended a decision not to fly a Pride flag over the federal parliament building last year by saying Parliament was “not a circus tent.”
Mr. Merz and Berlin’s mayor, Kai Wegner, attended the memorial service on Sunday. Afterward, Mr. Wegner led a silent march from the church to the Brandenburg Gate. Several hundred people joined the march. Mr. Merz briefly spoke before the service, expressing outrage over the attacks and solidarity with the community. At a speech later in the evening, he elaborated.
“Violence doesn’t begin with an attack,” he said. “Violence begins with intolerance, with exclusion, with discrimination, with stupid remarks and bad jokes.”
The authorities said on Sunday that they would review security protocols to determine how the attacker was able to target people so close to the celebration.
Officials and attendees alike said the violence would not deter them from future celebrations.
“Yes, I was scared afterward,” Julia Preuss said on Sunday, standing a few meters from the parade where she had danced a day earlier. “But it won’t stop me from going to Pride again. Honestly: now more than ever.”
Handmade signs scattered across the pavement around her, surrounded by bouquets of flowers. “We are many,” one declared. Another said, simply, “Love wins.”
