Berlin, Germany – Warm temperatures and clear blue skies greeted voters across Germany as tens of millions of voters headed to polling stations on Sunday to determine the country’s next government and the chancellor who will lead it.

The election is the first since the county reunified in 1990 that Angela Merkel will not run in as a candidate. After 16 years in the chancellery, the woman who became the defining European leader of her era will step aside once a new government is formed.