The rise of populism in Europe is characterized by an intense recourse to emotions. Although this is recognized as a self-evident fact, political leaders in the media too often – and banally – identify it as a mere disqualified way of doing politics. However, the resistance and proliferation of populist phenomena in different countries urges to go deeper in analyzing the roots of this entanglement. The scholarship is increasingly dealing with the complexity that relates populism and emotions and progressively attempts to disentangle this relationship from moral judgements in order to be able to proper assess the political relevance and effectiveness of emotions in politics even when associated with extremist ideas. In order to contribute to this effort, the roundtable engages with a theoretical framework that relates emotions elicited by populist parties and politicians in relation to the sociopolitical processes of identification substantiated with the discursive creation of political, social and cultural opponents. Through the analysis of case studies, the round table will relate with a number of challenges and evidences emerging in Germany, Portugal and Italy.