Halfway through 2026: In 6 months’ time, New Year’s Eve will be over, and the fireworks will have started up again

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Now that the major heatwave has, for the time being, come to an end, is it really necessary to talk about New Year’s Eve and the fireworks? Yes, it is necessary! It will be just as necessary to talk about heat protection in early January 2027. If issues are only raised when they are pressing, then little to nothing gets done. So let’s talk about New Year’s Eve halfway through the year.

What is ‘Germany’s biggest petition’ actually up to? Yes, you read that correctly: the petition ‘Nationwide ban on fireworks, now!’ has, as things stand, reached 3,366,245 – in words: three million three hundred and sixty-six thousand two hundred and forty-five – signatures, making it arguably the most widely signed petition in Germany. This petition was launched by the Berlin Police Union following New Year’s Eve 2022/23 and had already attracted 1.4 million signatories by early 2025.

Why is nothing happening?

The petition is hosted on the private platform innn.it and is addressed to the Senator for the Interior in Berlin and the Federal Minister of the Interior; in plain language, this means that as long as they take no action after the petition has been handed over, everything will remain as it is.

At the end of December 2025, the GdP Berlin reported: “On 4 December, we handed over more than 2.2 million signatures to the Conference of Interior Ministers in Bremen. The result: the interior ministers want greater legal leeway so that towns and local authorities can more easily impose widespread fireworks bans at a local level. Now it’s Federal Minister of the Interior Alexander Dobrindt’s turn.”

It sounds exciting, but it isn’t – because the petition page currently states, in an entry from the start of the year: “We’ve hit 3 million signatures – Mr Dobrindt, please accept our petition!”

Yes, if the Federal Minister of the Interior does not accept the petition, then he does not have to deal with it.

What other options are there?

A Bundestag petition, if it reaches the quorum within the specified time, would at least result in it being considered by the Bundestag’s Petitions Committee. The requirements for a Bundestag petition are:

“It is important to note here that the petition must concern a matter of general interest, which is the case with the ban on fireworks. Following publication, the petition has a six-week period for people to sign it, and a quorum of 30,000 signatures must be reached.”

We have already covered this in great detail in January 2026.

When asked why the petition was launched on innn.it rather than on the epetitionen.bundestag.de website, Benjamin Jendro, speaking on behalf of the GdP Berlin, replied as follows in January 2025: “Because we realised that the process is very drawn-out. The fact is: once a certain quorum is reached there, the Petitions Committee has to deal with it. But what happens then? The Bundestag’s Petitions Committee passes it on to the relevant committees. So why not go straight to the Bundestag’s Committee on Internal Affairs and the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI)?”

That sounds better than it is, too; a year later, the Minister of the Interior is called upon to accept the petition. Whether action will then follow remains uncertain.

Conclusion: Despite a record number of signatures on the petition, nothing substantial has happened. It would still be possible to launch a Bundestag petition. If the current petitioners – GdP Berlin, Deutsche Umwelthilfe and CAMPACT, who have petitions running on private platforms – were to join forces and jointly call for such a petition, the quorum would probably be reached quickly.

This would lead to the matter being considered by the Petitions Committee and improve the chances of a firecracker-free New Year’s Eve from 2027/28 onwards. It is probably already too late for next New Year’s Eve.