Who was identified as the perpetrator of the 1980 Oktoberfest bombing?

Gundolf Köhler was identified as the perpetrator of the 1980 Oktoberfest bombing.

On 26 September 1980, a bomb exploded near the festival’s main entrance in Munich. The blast killed 13 people, including Köhler, and injured more than 200 others. Investigators linked the attack to Köhler, a geology student who had connections to far-right circles and the neo-Nazi Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann.

The case is historically complicated because the original investigation treated Köhler as a lone attacker, while witnesses and later researchers raised questions about possible accomplices. Germany reopened the investigation in 2014. In 2020, prosecutors concluded that Köhler acted from an identifiable far-right political motive, while saying that the involvement of other people could neither be proved nor definitively excluded.

Thus, Gundolf Köhler is the canonical answer to the question, but “identified as the perpetrator” should not be read as proof that every aspect of the conspiracy question is settled. The bombing remains one of Germany’s most significant far-right terrorist attacks.