This chapter draws on the concept of affective atmospheres that is currently circulating in a growing number of academic disciplines to theorize how democracy and democratic education take hold and circulate in classrooms and schools. The chapter asks under which circumstances affective atmospheres are experienced or even ‘engineered’, encompassing affective and material features that (de)legitimate democracy, democratic education and populism. The aim is to render the concept of atmosphere tractable through a line of theorizing that recognizes the affective force of democracy and populism and asks how democratic education may respond by paying careful attention to democracy as affectively produced and transmitted. The chapter also examines what it would take to reinvigorate the affective atmospheres of democratic education in schools in light of the rise of right-wing populist affectivity.