Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel (né Schäfer; born 1 October 1969) is a former German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has been serving as member of the management board of GIZ since 2019.

He lost his bid for the office of Minister-President of Hesse in the January 2009 Hessian state election, where he had challenged incumbent Roland Koch (CDU).

However, the SPD fared poorly in the subsequent 2009 special election, which allowed the CDU's Roland Koch to remain in office.

[5] In the negotiations to form a Grand Coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU together with the Bavarian CSU) and the SPD following the 2013 federal elections, Schäfer-Gümbel was part of the SPD delegation in the working group on energy policy, led by Peter Altmaier and Hannelore Kraft.

[6] In March 2019, Schäfer-Gümbel announced that he would resign from active politics by the end of the year and instead join the management board of German development agency GIZ.