In January 2021, Laschet was elected leader of the CDU, winning 52.8% of delegates votes against Friedrich Merz in the second round of the contest.

It was confirmed on 20 April 2021 that he would be the CDU/CSU candidate for Chancellor of Germany at the 2021 German federal election, after rival Markus Söder conceded.

[8] Like many others in the tri-border area the Laschets had relatives across the national boundaries, who lived in Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and Neutral Moresnet.

From 1995 to 1999, while also serving as a member of parliament, he was CEO of the Catholic publishing company Einhard-Verlag, which had previously been led by his father-in-law Heinrich Malangré.

On 4 December 2012, he was elected as one of five deputy chairpersons of the national CDU party, serving alongside Volker Bouffier, Julia Klöckner, Thomas Strobl and Ursula von der Leyen.

Polls subsequently showed that voters rated Laschet's management of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany's most populous state poorly.

[28] However, the strong intra-party divisions that were also evident in the vote could have led to a joint CDU/CSU chancellorship candidacy for Markus Söder, the president of the smaller Bavarian sister party, the CSU.

[30] Söder opted for a wait-and-see strategy, finally announcing at a press conference in Munich on 19 April 2021 that he would not delay the nomination of his candidate for chancellor as the federal elections approached, and that he and his party, the CSU, would therefore accept the decision of the CDU's "big sister" executive board meeting, which began that day, as binding on both him and his party, the CSU.

[31] Asked why he did not step aside from his own candidacy for chancellor, as polls had shown that he had significantly worse chances than the CSU president, Laschet said he remembered it well, that during the campaign for the 2017 North Rhine-Westphalian state parliamentary elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, when he was given similarly low odds by pollsters against the then incumbent SPD state premier Hannelore Kraft, he still won the election.

[33] Already at the party congress in Rhineland-Palatinate in May 2021, Laschet called for the Greens to be the main political opponent in the upcoming election campaign.

As his party's candidate to succeed Merkel in the national elections, Laschet was initially seen as having made an uncertain start to his campaign[34] and faced calls to chart a more right-wing course to win back voters disenchanted by the incumbent coalition government.

In the programme, they stated that combating the pandemic, climate change and defending prosperity and freedom are global challenges, and that their goal is to create a Germany open to the world, which strives for both modernisation and green policies.

[36] While visiting Erftstadt, a flood-hit town, Laschet was caught laughing on camera and came under fire later despite his apology that 'It was stupid and shouldn't have happened and I regret it'.

In the 2021 German federal election on 26 September, Laschet had to compete for the post of Chancellor against Olaf Scholz of the SPD.

[41] After the election, Laschet resigned as Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia on 25 October 2021 in order to resume his membership of the Bundestag.

[43] He remained a member of the Bundestag after being re-elected on the North Rhine-Westphalia party list and sat on multiple subcommittees.

"[56] In October 2011, he signed George Soros' open letter calling for more European Union involvement in the single currency turmoil.

[61][62][63] Ahead of a parliamentary vote in June 2017, Laschet expressed his opposition against Germany's introduction of same-sex marriage,[64] going so far as to say it would be unconstitutional.

[65] During the 2021 German federal election Laschet gave a different position in a town hall, where he claimed he would have voted in favour of same-sex marriage.

"The state government is there to ensure that the law that applies is enforced," he said during a talk show on German public broadcaster WDR.

Despite these revelations, Laschet supported Angela Merkel's policy, which in leaked cables was revealed to be to "sit out" the pressure from the German public and Bundestag.

[71][72] Laschet has voiced support for Nord Stream 2 and for a closer relationship with China and is against excluding Huawei from Germany's 5G network.

However, Germany's Federal Office for Information Security has supported Laschet's position, saying that comprehensive investigations into Huawei's hardware and software have produced no evidence of wrongdoing and that an exclusion is unjustified.

It is the terrorist groups al-Nusra and al-Qaida, financed from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who are introducing Sharia courts and fighting Syria's religious diversity".

[77] Laschet described the chaotic withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan and Fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021 as the "biggest debacle that NATO has suffered since its founding".

[78] In November 2023, Laschet criticized the German federal government for not voting against United Nations General Assembly Resolution ES-10/21.

[79] In December 2023, Laschet criticized the invocation of article 99 of the UN Charta due to the 2023 Gaza humanitarian crisis by Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres, as this would apply double standards and has the potential to discredit the UN: "Dieser Artikel wurde nicht gezogen, als 500.000 Menschen in Syrien ums Leben kamen, nicht als Russland die Ukraine angriff oder bei Hunderttausenden zivilen Opfern im Jemenkrieg.

His wife belongs to a prominent Aachen family of French-speaking Walloon origin and is the niece of CDU politician and lord mayor of Aachen Kurt Malangré; the Malangré family moved from Haine-Saint-Pierre in Belgium to Stolberg to establish a glass production business in the second half of the 19th century.