In German politics, the term chancellor candidate (German: Kanzlerkandidat) refers to the "lead candidate" nominated by a political party to become chancellor, should their party secure a parliamentary majority in a German federal election. By naming a chancellor candidate, a party signals that its parliamentary group (Fraktion) intends to elect this individual as chancellor in the newly constituted Bundestag.

According to Article 63, Paragraph 1 of the Basic Law, the chancellor is elected by the Bundestag on the proposal of the president. This process is particularly relevant at the beginning of a new parliamentary term, as the incumbent chancellor’s term officially ends at that point, requiring the election of a new chancellor and the formation of a new government, including a cabinet. Since a majority in the Bundestag is crucial for electing the chancellor, the larger parties traditionally nominate a chancellor candidate before a federal election to indicate to voters whom they intend to support for the position.

Smaller parties typically refrain from nominating a chancellor candidate. Until 2002, only the CDU/CSU and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) put forward chancellor candidates. However, in the 2002 federal election, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) did so for the first time, and in 2021, Alliance 90/The Greens also nominated a chancellor candidate for the first time. In the 2025 German federal election, a chancellor candidate was nominated by Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) as well.

There is no regulated procedure for nominating a candidate for chancellor. In political practice, the major parties nominate their candidate for chancellor in the run-up to the federal election (up to a year in advance), often by voting at a party conference. The respective candidate for chancellor is the main figure of the party in the subsequent election campaign, even if they cannot be elected directly by the electorate; instead, their prospects of becoming chancellor are strengthened by the voters' vote, in that they vote for the candidate's party.

At the SPD party conference in Hanover in 1960, a German political party elected a candidate for chancellor for the first time. The candidate was the Governing Mayor of Berlin, Willy Brandt. The SPD strategist and long-time companion of Brandt, Egon Bahr, explained in retrospect that the then Bundestag member Klaus Schütz had brought this idea with him from the USA when he observed the election campaign of the Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy.

With the exception of Angela Merkel in 2021, the incumbent Chancellor has always run again in the next federal election in order to be able to continue in office with the support of the voters. Nevertheless, there may be a discussion within the Chancellor's party about whether the incumbent should run again, as in the run-up to the 1998 German federal election, when voices were raised within the CDU calling for a "generational change" from Chancellor Helmut Kohl, in office since 1982, to CDU/CSU parliamentary group leader Wolfgang Schäuble.

The decision on a candidate for chancellor – a position with great media impact – can lead to strong disputes within the opposition party, as was the case in the run-up to the 2013 German federal election, when three names in the SPD were being discussed as candidates for chancellor: party chairman Sigmar Gabriel, chairman of the SPD parliamentary group [de] Frank-Walter Steinmeier and former Federal Minister of Finance Peer Steinbrück.

The sister parties CDU and CSU nominate a joint candidate; so far the choice has fallen twice, in 1980 and 2002, on a candidate from the CSU (namely the respective party leaders Franz Josef Strauß and Edmund Stoiber). In the run-up to the 2002 German federal election, the term Chancellor question (or K-question for short) was coined to describe the decision between the two possible Union candidates for chancellor - CDU leader Angela Merkel and Edmund Stoiber. A candidate for chancellor who challenges an incumbent chancellor is usually the party or parliamentary group leader or head of government of one of the German states. At times when both major parties governed together at the federal level (grand coalition), federal ministers or the incumbent deputies of the chancellor usually stood as candidates for chancellor. An exception was Hans-Jochen Vogel, who at the time of his candidacy for chancellor in 1983 was only a member of the House of Representatives of (West) Berlin (but he had previously been a federal minister for many years). The candidate for chancellor is usually given first place on the state list by his home state association.