To what extent does right-wing terrorism affect citizens’ political attitudes? In this paper, we theorize that citizens update their political preferences in support of radical right parties after right-wing terrorist attacks and test this hypothesis in two steps. First, we present a time-series study focusing on the public support for the radical right party “Alternative for Germany” between 2013 and 2019. Second, we employ a quasi-experimental research design that examines the effect of right-wing terrorism on citizens’ attitudes towards immigrants. Both studies confirm that right-wing terrorism increases public support for radical right parties and their programmatic core positions. Supplementary analyses indicate that this effect is in particular driven by former voters of mainstream parties. This paper sheds new light on the drivers of radical right party support around the globe and contributes to the long-standing debate on the consequences of terrorist attacks from a new perspective.