Anyone who wants to attend the annual highlight of the ball season in the Vienna State Opera on Thursday evening should have the necessary means. This year's entry to the Opera Ball costs 385 euros, with no guaranteed seating or standing room. The Frankfurt sausages, which are obligatory at the celebratory “Staatswalze”, are available for 16 euros per pair.

Just like every year, the now 91-year-old builder Richard “Mörtel” Lugner dictates the headlines in the run-up to the ball.

The question of who the elderly Casanova will bring to his side this year has long been answered: Priscilla Presley, Elvis' former wife, won the race this time.

Up to 31 percent for the FPÖ

She joins the more or less prominent gallery of Lugner's royally paid ball companions, behind Sophia Loren, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian.

In the government box, Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen will position himself alongside Federal Chancellor Karl Nehammer to the sound of the national anthem. Whether this duo can still be admired side by side at the 2025 Opera Ball depends first and foremost on Van der Bellen himself. The elections to the National Council will take place in autumn at the latest, and possibly much earlier. It is then up to the head of state to decide to whom he will give the government mandate.

At the moment everything suggests that the right-wing populist FPÖ under Herbert Kickl will win the election. Demoscopes predict between 28 and up to 31 percent of the votes for the Freedom Party. Nehammer's conservative ÖVP and the SPÖ, which Andreas Babler has trimmed towards a clear left-wing course, follow at a considerable distance.

The central question is: Will Van der Bellen actually make his prematurely disclosed mind games come true – and prevent a would-be Chancellor Kickl from being sworn in? Will he put the authority of his office into the balance and try to launch a coalition without the FPÖ without taking the will of the voters into account? The only thing that seems certain at the moment is that the now 80-year-old will have to make future-oriented decisions.

“Mummy in the Hofburg”

Derided by Kickl as a "mummy in the Hofburg" and as "senile," Austria's head of state must try not to take hasty steps out of personal hurt. The two politicians' common history includes that Van der Bellen removed the then Interior Minister Kickl from office after the Ibiza video was published in 2019 - something the current FPÖ leader has not gotten over to this day.

Meanwhile, the self-proclaimed future “People’s Chancellor” of the FPÖ sees the day of revenge approaching. For the former speechwriter Jörg Haiders, moving into the Chancellery on Ballhausplatz would be the crowning achievement of a political career that took place behind the scenes for a long time.

Spotlight on Ash Wednesday

But now Kickl is looking for – and finds – the spotlight.

His next big stage is the Political Ash Wednesday in Ried, Upper Austria. There, in eight days, the liberal verbal powerhouse will once again take the opportunity to settle scores with the political competition. Kickl is sure to attract the attention of the President, who was vilified as a “mummy” in the same place a year ago.

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Best regards,

Walter Mayr (correspondent for Austria and Southeast Europe, DER SPIEGEL)

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