The campaign period since has been shaken by a series of deadly attacks, a heated battle in parliament around the far-right AfD and unprecedented hostility from the United States.
Here is a look at the bombshell events that have made this an election campaign like no other.
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Spate of attacks
Five days after Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote in December, a man drove an SUV at high speed through a Christmas market crowd, killing six people and wounding hundreds in the eastern city of Magdeburg.
The carnage recalled jihadist attacks, but investigators soon learnt that the Saudi suspect arrested at the scene had voiced far-right and anti-Islam sentiments and was mentally disturbed.
Germans were shocked by another attack in early January when a man with a kitchen knife attacked a kindergarten group, killing a two-year-old boy and a man who tried to protect the toddlers.
Police arrested a 28-year-old Afghan man at the scene of the attack in the southern city of Aschaffenburg that further inflamed debate over immigration and security.
A third major attack followed just 10 days before the election, when a man ploughed a Mini Cooper car through a street rally in Munich.
Another Afghan man was arrested over the vehicle rampage that killed a two-year-old girl and her mother and injured dozens.
Even before the election campaign, many Germans had questioned ex-chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door policy for millions of refugees and migrants, which helped fuel the rise of the anti-immigration AfD.
But the latest attacks poured fuel on the fire and led conservative election frontrunner Friedrich Merz of the CDU-CSU alliance to call for a radical crackdown on immigration.
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'Firewall' cracks
The day after the Aschaffenburg attack, Merz vowed a "fundamental" overhaul of Germany's asylum rules, complaining that "offenders like the one from yesterday are running around freely in Germany".
Merz proposed a motion in parliament calling on the government to permanently police all borders and deny entry to all undocumented migrants, whether asylum seekers or not.
The motion was passed with the support of the far-right AfD, shattering post-war Germany's so-called "firewall" against any cooperation with extremist parties.
This caused a political earthquake, with Rolf Muetzenich, a senior MP from Scholz's Social Democrats, accusing Merz of opening the "gate of hell".
In the days that followed, tens of thousands took to the streets, with a rally in Munich drawing 250,000 people, while activists ransacked some local CDU party offices.
Merkel took the unusual step of breaking her silence and criticising Merz, who has insisted that, despite his controversial gamble, he would never work with the AfD or allow them into a coalition government.
Trump 2.0
Dramatic events since Trump's return to power have sparked rising alarm in Germany and Europe that the transatlantic alliance is in peril.
Trump has shocked Ukraine and its European allies by reaching out directly to Russia's President Vladimir Putin to end the war and by labelling President Volodymyr Zelensky a "dictator".
Warnings from Washington that it would shift its strategic focus away from Europe and to Asia have raised dire fears about Trump's commitment to the NATO alliance.
Team Trump -- which has long complained about Germany's policies on immigration, trade and defence spending -- has at times snubbed Scholz while openly backing the AfD.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk, Trump's new "efficiency" chief, has insulted Scholz and voiced strong support for the AfD on his X platform and in a livestream chat with its leader Alice Weidel.
US Vice President JD Vance followed up with a blistering speech at the Munich Security Conference where he berated EU leaders for ignoring voters' wishes and told Germany there is "no room for firewalls".
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