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Karl Nehammer (; born 18 October 1972) is an Austrian politician who served as the 28th chancellor of Austria from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), he previously was Minister of the Interior from 2020 to 2021, general secretary of the ÖVP from 2018 to 2020, as well as a member of the National Council from 2017 to 2020. Nehammer assumed the chancellorship as the successor of Alexander Schallenberg, who resigned in order to return to the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs. Nehammer announced his resignation as chancellor and ÖVP leader after unsuccessful coalition talks following the 2024 legislative election. He stepped down as chancellor on 10 January 2025.
From 2012, Nehammer completed a two-year university course in political communication at the University for Continuing Education Krems and graduated with a master's degree.
Nehammer is a member of the Catholic Austrian Students' Corporations Sonnberg Perchtoldsdorf within the Mittelschüler-Kartellverband.
In October 2015, Nehammer was appointed deputy general-secretary and federal organizational speaker of the Austrian Workers' Union (ÖAAB), the trade union association of the ÖVP. During the 2016 Austrian presidential election, he was appointed replacement manager for the ÖVP's Andreas Khol partway through the campaign, but was unable to save him from a historically poor result of 11%.
He succeeded August Wöginger as general-secretary of the ÖAAB in 2016 and held this position until January 2018. In November 2016, he was also elected regional chairman of the ÖAAB Vienna. Since April 2017, he has been district party chairman of the ÖVP in Vienna-Hietzing.
In the 2017 federal election, Nehammer was elected as a representative for Vienna. During the subsequent government formation, he was a member of the ÖVP negotiating team in the area of defence. He was elected as deputy chairman of the ÖVP parliamentary faction on 8 November and was appointed media spokesman. On 25 January 2018, he succeeded Elisabeth Köstinger and Stefan Steiner as general-secretary of the ÖVP. In September 2018, he also succeeded Efgani Dönmez as spokesman for integration and migration.
Nehammer ran in the 2019 federal election in fifth place in the ÖVP Vienna state list, and eleventh place on the ÖVP federal list. He was also one of the ÖVP's five assessors at the electoral authority during the election. In the course of the subsequent government formation, he negotiated in the areas of Europe, migration, integration, and security.
Nehammer led the government response following the 2020 Vienna attack. He described the attacker as an "Islamist terrorist" and a sympathiser of the Islamic State, and admitted that intelligence services under his jurisdiction had failed to communicate information that could have prevented the attack. Nehammer's wife and children received police protection as a result of death threats received after the attack.
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Nehammer visited the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on 9 April 2022, and then Moscow, where he met Russian president Vladimir Putin on 12 April 2022. Nehammer said he confronted Putin about Russia's war crimes in Ukraine and told him "it’s necessary to have international justice, the United Nations there." After the meeting, Nehammer warned that Putin was planning a new offensive in eastern Ukraine. Under Nehammer's leadership, Austria's government implemented a package of measures worth six billion euros ($6.3 billion) in 2022 aimed at cushioning the blow to households of the rising cost of living.Francois Murphy (14 June 2022), Austria announces 6 billion euro package to address cost-of-living crisis Reuters.
On 8 December 2022 Nehammer was the architect of the sole veto against Bulgaria's and Romania's admission in the Schengen Area on 1 January the following year. This caused an outrage in Romania, who drastically reduced bilateral relations with Austria as a result. As of November 2024, neither Bulgaria or Romania is fully part of the Schengen Area.
In an interview with the German newspaper Die Welt in September 2023, Nehammer called for the termination of full membership negotiations between the EU and Turkey and the development of a new concept within the relations between the EU and Turkey.
Nehammer expressed support for Israel during the Gaza war. In October 2023, he rejected calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, saying that "All the fantasies of truces, ceasefires, etc. have the effect of strengthening Hamas in its determination to continue its action and perpetuate this terrible terror." In January 2024, he criticized South Africa's genocide case against Israel. In the 2024 Austrian legislative election held on 29 September, the ÖVP placed second to the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), which gained a plurality of seats in the National Council. However, no party in parliament agreed to form a coalition with the FPÖ, which led to Nehammer being asked by President Van der Bellen to form a new government on 22 October.
On 4 January 2025, Nehammer said that he would step down as party leader and as chancellor, following the failure of the government coalition talks between his party, SPÖ, and NEOS after the 2024 legislative election.
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