AfD leader believes far-right party will govern Germany from 2029

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The co-chief of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is optimistic that the anti-immigrant party will come out on top in the country's next general elections scheduled for 2029, according to remarks to supporters on Monday.

"We will get this ship back into shape," Tino Chrupalla told some several hundred attendees at a political event in the Bavarian town of Abensberg.

The AfD, which is Germany's biggest opposition party, won regional elections in the eastern state of Thuringia last year - marking the first time since the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II that a far-right party has won a statewide election in the country.

Opinion polls following February's parliamentary elections, which saw the AfD garner its best-ever result at national level, suggest that support for the party is continuing to grow.

Chrupalla, who leads the AfD together with Alice Weidel, said the party has the answers and ideas that citizens want to hear, vowing to paint the country blue - in a reference to the party colours.

He also took digs at Bavarian leader Markus Söder and Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who lead the conservative bloc that came out on top in February's vote.

Chrupalla described Söder as the "comic-in-chief," while saying Merz was a "true firebrand" who had broken every campaign promise ever made since taking office in May.

Both the AfD chief and the party's leader in the Bavarian state parliament, Katrin Ebner-Steiner, called for large-scale deportations of criminal migrants and those without a right to stay.

All those who are in Germany illegally, Ebner-Steiner said, "will be removed from the country by the hundreds of thousands."

"We will deport, deport, deport until the runways in Munich are glowing."