Who owns punk today? Two opposing camps are locked in a seemingly irreconcilable standoff—and the intensity of the conflict has been rising in German-speaking punk scenes as well. A guided tour through the subcultural battlefield.
First Things First: Get Punk Out of the Museum
Talk about punk in the 2020s and one thing is never far away: its museumification. Here’s another documentary about a band from the early 1980s. There’s yet another exhibition about a long-extinguished local punk scene from some city nobody had covered before (not an easy task anymore). And of course, during the opening speech, the curator can’t resist reminiscing about their own faded glory days in the sticky dust of a punk show—or pointing out the leather jacket they once covered in band logos.Punk hasn’t landed on the trash heap of history. It has landed in the display case. That impression only grows stronger when you look at today’s dominant youth cultures. The guitar—once absolutely essential to punk—barely matters anymore. Pop, trap, and hip-hop define the landscape. More broadly, the very concept of a touring rock band has been battered by the economics of the streaming era. The meager royalties paid out by platforms like Spotify leave far more room for solo artists than for four people hauling amps across the country in a van. Seen from the outside, it makes perfect sense that the guitar-driven dinosaur has found a comfortable home in museums across the Western world. But appearances can be deceiving.
The story of punk is far from over for newer generations. It may no longer dominate downtown streets or command immediate attention, but punk scenes are still very much alive. These days they exist in two versions: a classic model and an updated one. Continuities and fractures coexist, creating a field charged with tension. Contemporary punk is on fire. To understand why, we need to zoom in.
The Worst Thing Is Running Out of Beer
The cult song Forever Punk by the Hamburg band Die Goldenen Zitronen was meant as a joke. For many early punks, however, it was a genuine vow: preserve the raw emotions of youth and adolescence. Bottle them. Freeze them. Forever punk? Of course. As a result, multiple generations have grown older together alongside their chosen identity. At major punk festivals such as Rebellion in England, today’s lineup often looks remarkably similar to one from forty years ago. In 2026, headliners include Sham 69, Cock Sparrer, UK Subs, and Stiff Little Fingers. Neither the bands nor the audience appear particularly fresh anymore, but the flag is still flying.A revealing example from Germany’s traditional punk scene is the Bochum band Die Kassierer. Once treated as a joke in the 1980s and 1990s, they’ve evolved into one of the defining representatives of old-school punk in the modern era. Unsurprisingly, they now draw far larger crowds than they did back then. Their beer-soaked anthem The Worst Thing Is Running Out of Beer has become the unofficial hymn of punk survivors everywhere. Back in the 1990s, singer Wolfgang Wendland was literally escorted off the floor by security at Popkomm—the era’s premier music industry convention—after attempting, during a guerrilla performance, to defecate on the exhibition hall floor. That was punk in the tradition of provocateurs like the late G.G. Allin: Punk as disruption. Punk as irritation.
Wolfgang Wendland still provokes people today. Just not the music industry establishment or suburban squares anymore. Instead, his targets are younger punks. On Facebook, he regularly rails against Germany’s energy transition, warns that modern Germany is becoming “GDR 2.0,” and frequently takes aim at veganism and Fridays for Future. In his increasingly familiar outrage, Wendland sounds surprisingly similar to aging media personalities such as Dieter Hallervorden, Elke Heidenreich, or Thomas Gottschalk. Like them, he sees himself fighting in the middle of a culture war. The enemy has changed. Instead of rebelling against conservative stuffiness, the new mission is supposedly to resist left-wing restrictions. But wait—restrictions in punk? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? To understand the source of the outrage that Wendland so tirelessly shares with his followers, we need to examine the other side of the contemporary punk coin.
The End of Male Dominance
Alongside what might be called value-conservative pub-table punk, there is indeed a younger movement gathering under the punk banner. The bands have names like Akne Kid Joe, Pogendroblem, Deutsche Laichen, and Team Scheisse. Their interpretation of punk could hardly be more different. This scene places enormous emphasis on community and collective responsibility. The traditionally masculine image of the untamed punk outlaw has increasingly given way to visions centered on the well-being of the group as a whole. A crucial factor has been the dismantling of male dominance within the scene. The chorus of Sarah (A Woman, Also in a Band) by the Nuremberg group Akne Kid Joe puts it like this:Dear male colleagues, please make some room
And remember this sentence for the future:
The stages of this world belong to everyone
They were never macho habitats
And never reserved for men alone
Experiences of harassment and assault affecting women and FLINTA people (Female, Lesbian, Intersex, Nonbinary, Trans, and Agender) are no longer dismissed as secondary concerns, as they often were in earlier decades. Instead, they are publicly discussed and openly challenged. Germany’s influential punk magazine Plastic Bomb, for example, participates in PunkToo, a platform modeled after MeToo. One of the movement’s defining soundtracks is Touch Me Again by Petrol Girls. The song opens with the lines: “My domain, my temple and my territory, my pleasure,” and concludes with the repeatedly screamed mantra: “Touch me again / and I fucking kill you”
Awareness First
Protecting the rights and dignity of everyone involved stands at the center of the younger punk movement. Gender-inclusive language is standard. Tampons are available in men’s restrooms at many self-managed venues to accommodate trans men, and some spaces have moved entirely to all-gender bathrooms. To avoid triggering people who have experienced assault or harassment, many contemporary punk bands ask men not to remove their shirts during shows. The Cologne band Pogendroblem even devoted a widely discussed—and widely hated—song to the subject: “Keep Your Shirt On.”Keep your shirt on / Even if you don't know any better / No freedom / For new German male sweat Men are also encouraged not only to hold back in the pit but, at times, to step away from the front of the stage altogether, allowing others a clear view without having to fight for it. The Bremen band Team Scheisse doesn’t merely ask for FLINTA-only mosh pits during certain songs. Under the banner FLINTA-WINTA, they even established a concert series that excludes men entirely. Against this backdrop, conflict with old-school punk fans seems almost inevitable. The clashes erupt repeatedly, not just online but throughout the broader scene. After all, one of Die Kassierer’s most famous songs carries the openly sexist title: Get Your Tits Out, I Want to Jerk Off.
Not a Question
At major festivals, the different factions inevitably cross paths. Otherwise, they mostly remain in their own corners. The split is complete. What’s left are mutual provocations and endless hostility online. Then again, why should punk be any different from the rest of society? The culture war playing out across countless areas of public life this decade is reflected within punk as well—and, much like the larger conflict, its outcome remains uncertain. We’ll close with lyrics from the Cologne punk band BSK. Their song Opa Punk (Grandpa Punk) contains a surprisingly conciliatory core message: embrace change, examine yourself first, and remain open to learning. In 2026, that is hardly a self-evident solution. The song puts it this way:[Punk is] Not a question of age / Not a question of gender / It’s a question of attitude /Please don’t stay exactly the same