Most public universities charge no tuition for bachelor's programmes, only a semester contribution such as €189.80 at Heidelberg; non-EU students pay fees in Baden-Württemberg (€1,500 per semester) and at TU Munich. In the 2025/26 winter semester 422 institutions offered 22,426 programmes, 2,383 of them in English. See how to apply, what a student residence costs (€318 a month on average) and how much you can work.
Most programmes are taught in German. Universities usually require a level equivalent to the DSH-2 exam. The University of Bonn, for example, accepts these as equivalent:
You take the DSH at a university in Germany, while TestDaF is offered at more than 500 test centres in 100 countries, also in a digital version. If your programme is taught entirely in English, you usually don't need to prove your German.
In the 2025/26 winter semester there were 2,383 programmes taught in English (10.6% of all programmes), but most of them at master's level: 1,944 compared with 439 at bachelor's level. For these you will usually need IELTS or TOEFL. You can search for them in the DAAD International Programmes database.
Sources: European Commission – Study in Europe (education.ec.europa.eu/study-in-europe), Eurostat, official national study and residence portals and authorities, Eurodesk, enic-naric.net, studentnews.eu. As of September 2026.
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