Tens of thousands of people gathered in Hamburg on Sunday ahead of a march through the inner city to demonstrate opposition to right-wing extremism in Germany.
The organizers said that more than 50,000 people to marched under the slogan "We are the firewall – together against right-wing extremism." Police said they would issue its estimate of the crowd's size after the rally ends.
The demonstration was the third of its kind in Hamburg since the start of the year, and cities across Germany have seen regular marches since it emerged that members of the far right had met to discuss mass deportations of millions of people living in Germany.
The Hamburg hip-hop electronic band Deichkind played at the protest and chanted "We don't want any Nazis and no AfD" in their final song.
The Hamburg demonstrations on Sunday were just one of at least 12 protest events planned in as many German cities all over the country, including in the capital Berlin and in south-eastern city of Dresden, where several thousand people gathered for a large rally against the right.
A spokeswoman for the organizers said around 20,000 people attended. The police initially did not name the number of participants.
Speakers included prominent German climate activist Luisa Neubauer from the Fridays for Future movement. "You don’t have democracy. You live democracy," Neubauer said, calling for people to stand up against indifference.
People also took to the streets in other East German cities near Dresden on Sunday - for example in Zwickau, Bautzen, Görlitz and Meissen.
Protests erupted across Germany after investigative journalists reported on a meeting by extremists in Potsdam, near Berlin, in November.
At the meeting, members of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the ultra-conservative Values Union (WerteUnion) discussed plans to deport millions of people who had migrated to Germany.
The wave of protests come ahead of elections in eastern states this year in which the AfD is predicted to do well.
