English-Taught Degrees in Germany: Bachelor's & Master's

It is a Wednesday afternoon in Aachen, a few hundred metres from the Dutch border, and a master’s seminar in mechanical engineering is wrapping up at RWTH. The lecturer is German, two of the students beside you are German, and not a word of the last ninety minutes has been in German. The slides, the discussion, the problem set due Friday — all of it is in English. The student to your left flew in from Lagos, the one to your right from São Paulo; between them they speak no German at all, and they are enrolled in one of the best engineering faculties in Europe, paying a semester fee of roughly €300 and no tuition. This is the part of German higher education that breaks the stereotype most people arrive with: you do not need German to get a German degree.

Here is the bottom line. Germany now lists more than 2,000 fully English-taught degree programmes, the great majority at master’s level, according to the DAAD International Programmes database and study-in-germany.de. They are taught, examined and supervised end to end in English, they cost €0 in tuition at public universities in 15 of the 16 federal states (you pay only a €150–€350 semester fee), and you enter on a TOEFL iBT 88+ or IELTS 6.5+ score rather than a German certificate. The catch is not money or language; it is that the catalogue is uneven — deep at master’s level and in STEM and business, thinner at bachelor’s level and outside those fields — so this route rewards knowing exactly where to look.

This guide is the focused companion to our complete guide to studying in Germany — read that for the full picture on visas, the Sperrkonto, living costs, scholarships and careers, which apply to every route. Here I stay on one question: what does English-taught study in Germany actually look like, which universities and fields hold the programmes, what it costs, what English score gets you in, and how to decide between an English track and a German one.

English-Taught Study in Germany, Key Data 2025/2026

Source: DAAD International Programmes database; study-in-germany.de; QS World University Rankings 2026.

What “English-taught” really means in the German system

German higher education is, by default, a German-language system, and for most of its history a non-German speaker had a few hundred programmes to choose from at most. What changed is deliberate: over the past two decades German universities, prodded by the DAAD and the federal government, built a parallel layer of named programmes that teach entirely in English, specifically to attract international students into a country with a structural shortage of skilled graduates. The result is the 2,000-plus figure you see quoted everywhere — but it describes a set of programmes, not English-speaking universities.

That distinction matters in practice. You are not choosing an “English university” the way you would in the UK or, increasingly, the Netherlands; you are choosing one English-medium programme attached to a university that otherwise teaches in German. Your degree is delivered in English end to end, but the campus, the administration, the student bar and the city around you run in German. The coursework asks nothing of your German; daily life asks a great deal. That gap is the single most underrated fact about this route, and we come back to it below.

The offering is also lopsided by level and field, which is the thing to internalise before you start searching. It is deep at master’s level and shallow at bachelor’s. It is deep in engineering, computer science, the natural sciences, mathematics, economics and business — fields where English is already the international working language — and thin in law, education, most of the humanities and anything that touches German professional licensing. So before you fall in love with the idea of “studying in Germany in English,” establish two things: is your field on the English list, and at what level. For most applicants the honest answer is that the master’s door is wide open and the bachelor’s door is ajar.

Where the English programmes actually are

If you treat the 2,000-plus number as a single pool you will drown in it. The useful move is to go straight to the universities that run large, established English catalogues, because that is where the depth, the reputation and the job pipeline concentrate. The table below curates the strongest English-taught universities by what they are known for and what their English offering looks like; treat the QS rank as a rough map of overall reputation, not a ranking of English programmes specifically.

TU Munich (QS #22, the best university in the EU) is the natural first stop: it runs dozens of English-taught master’s tracks across computer science, engineering, data science, management and the natural sciences, and a handful of English bachelor’s, and it applies through its own portal rather than uni-assist. RWTH Aachen, the largest technical university in the country, and KIT in Karlsruhe — “Germany’s MIT” — are the two great engineering powers, both with extensive English master’s catalogues feeding directly into German industry. Heidelberg, the oldest university in Germany, anchors the English offering in the life sciences and runs international master’s tied to the EMBL and DKFZ research institutes. Mannheim is the country’s leading business and economics school and one of the most English-friendly, with English-taught master’s in management, economics and data science. The three big Berlin universities — the Free University, Humboldt and the Technical University of Berlin — carry broad English catalogues across the sciences, social sciences and engineering, and TU Berlin runs an unusually large English bachelor’s offering for a German technical university. For the rare student who wants a full US-style English bachelor’s, the private route exists: Constructor University in Bremen and Frankfurt School of Finance & Management teach entirely in English and charge real tuition.

Two parallel tracks round out the picture. Germany’s Universities of Applied Sciences (Fachhochschulen / HAW) run a growing set of English-taught, practice-oriented degrees with built-in internships — strong, employable options in engineering, IT and international business, and often easier to enter than the research universities. And the handful of private English-language universities above are the rare cases where a German degree is not free, trading the €0 public-tuition model for small classes and a guaranteed all-English environment.

The master’s-heavy reality — and how to use it

The most important structural fact about this route is worth stating plainly: the English-taught offering is concentrated at master’s level. There are good reasons. Master’s degrees are shorter, more specialised and more international by nature, so building them in English is straightforward and the global demand is deep; bachelor’s degrees are longer, more general and historically the heartland of German-language teaching. The numbers reflect it — the great majority of the 2,000-plus English programmes are master’s, with English bachelor’s a smaller, if growing, set weighted toward international business, engineering and the social sciences.

That shape has a clear strategic implication, and it is one we recommend to families often. If you do not speak German, a German master’s in English is one of the best-value postgraduate qualifications anywhere: a world-class, EU-recognised degree, taught entirely in English, for €0 in tuition plus living costs, with an 18-month job-seeker permit on the other side. So the sequencing move that works is to take your bachelor’s at home or in another English-medium system, then come to Germany for a free, English-taught master’s in your specialism. Because the master’s choice is so much wider, you can usually find your exact field in English somewhere in the German system — the constraint shifts from “does it exist in English” to “which university and which city.”

If you are set on an English bachelor’s in Germany, it is doable but narrower, and the search is different. Look first at TU Berlin and the technical universities for English BSc engineering tracks, at Mannheim and the business schools for international business, and at the private universities (Constructor Bremen, Frankfurt School, Bard College Berlin) for full English liberal-arts or finance bachelor’s. Expect to either accept a smaller menu at a public university or pay private tuition for the all-English environment. For a like-for-like sense of the alternatives if the bachelor’s choice feels too thin, our Netherlands guide covers the other big continental system with a deep English-taught bachelor’s catalogue.

Cost — English-taught is (almost always) still free

The single best thing about studying in Germany in English is that it does not cost extra. The €0-tuition model applies to English-taught and German-taught programmes alike at public universities, for EU and non-EU students, in 15 of the 16 federal states. What you pay is the Semesterbeitrag, a €150–€350 administrative contribution that usually bundles a regional transport pass; in North Rhine-Westphalia, home to RWTH Aachen and several large English-friendly universities, that semester fee covers public transport across a region of 18 million people. The only public exception is Baden-Württemberg, which charges non-EU students €1,500 per semester (about €3,000 a year) — so an English-taught master’s at KIT, Heidelberg, Freiburg, Tübingen or Stuttgart carries that fee for non-EU students, while EU students still pay nothing.

The exceptions where an English degree is genuinely not free are worth naming precisely. Private English-language universities — Constructor University Bremen, Frankfurt School, CBS Cologne, Bard College Berlin — charge full international-style tuition of roughly €18,000–€30,000 a year, because they run small US-style programmes outside the public system. Some executive or MBA programmes at public universities also carry fees. Everywhere else, the cost of an English-taught German degree is your living expenses and almost nothing more.

English-Taught Costs at a Glance

Tuition only, 2025/26. Add living costs of roughly €11,000–€16,000/year, covered in full in the main Germany guide.

Source: study-in-germany.de; DAAD; official university fee pages, 2025/26. Confirm the exact figure on the programme page for your intake year.

The English requirement — what score you actually need

Every English-taught programme runs admission on an English certificate, and being precise about the threshold saves a wasted application cycle. The standard ask is TOEFL iBT 88+ or IELTS Academic 6.5+. The most competitive engineering and business tracks — at TUM, RWTH and Mannheim in particular — sit higher, commonly TOEFL 100+ or IELTS 7.0+. Some programmes also accept Cambridge C1 Advanced or the Duolingo English Test, but the accepted list varies by university, so read the language requirement on the specific programme page rather than assuming.

There is one common exemption: if your previous degree was taught entirely in English at a recognised institution, many German universities waive the test. This is generous but not universal, and the proof they want — a medium-of-instruction letter, a transcript notation — differs by university. Confirm it in writing per programme before you skip the exam.

If you are preparing for the TOEFL, structured practice against a realistic scoring engine matters more than raw hours. Our TOEFL app runs full-length practice sections with AI-graded speaking and writing — the closest thing to a mock iBT you can do from home. In our advising experience, most students need eight to fourteen weeks of focused work to move from a 70-ish baseline into the 100+ band that Germany’s most competitive English programmes increasingly expect. If you are still choosing between the two big English tests, our TOEFL versus IELTS guide compares them for European admissions.

A few English-taught programmes — especially at technical universities — also reward or require the TestAS, a standardised academic aptitude test taken in English that can offset a weaker school grade. It is not the same as an English test; it measures reasoning, not language. Our TestAS guide explains when it is worth taking and how the subject modules work.

Getting in — the English-taught admissions route

The mechanics are the same as the wider German system, with one search step in front. Start in the DAAD International Programmes database, filter for English as the language of instruction, and read each programme page for fees, deadlines and entry requirements. From there, most international applicants apply through uni-assist, which verifies your documents, runs them through the Anabin recognition database and forwards them to your chosen universities; the fee is €75 for the first university and €30 for each additional one. A handful of universities — TUM among them — take applications directly through their own portals, so check the programme page for the route.

The file you submit is standard: a school-leaving certificate translated into German or English by a sworn translator, transcripts, your English certificate, a CV and, where required, a motivation letter. Deadlines are usually 15 July for the October (winter) intake and 15 January for the April (summer) intake, though individual programmes close earlier — always check.

The part worth understanding well is the Numerus Clausus (NC), because it is where English-taught programmes have a quiet advantage. The NC is a grade cutoff that applies to oversubscribed subjects — medicine, psychology, the most competitive German-language programmes — and it resets every intake based on demand. But a large share of English-taught engineering, science and humanities master’s are zulassungsfrei: no NC at all, admitting anyone who meets the formal requirements. They are not competing against the entire domestic applicant pool. That makes a strong, NC-free English-taught master’s one of the most accessible routes into a world-class German degree for an international applicant — the same degree, the same job market and the same post-study permit, without staking everything on a number that drifts every semester.

From the College Council desk. The mistake we most often correct is treating “study in Germany in English” as one decision. It is two: level and field. We have families fixate on an English bachelor’s in a subject where Germany offers four programmes nationwide, when the same student would have thirty English master’s options in the identical field two years later. Decide whether you are coming for a bachelor’s or a master’s first; it changes the entire shortlist.

English-Taught vs the German-Taught Route

The genuine choice most applicants face is not which English programme but English-taught or learn German. The honest comparison:

Source: DAAD; study-in-germany.de; official university language requirements, 2025/26.

The way the decision usually resolves: if your field is well represented in English — engineering, computer science, the sciences, economics, business — and especially if you want a master’s, take the English route. It is dramatically faster to qualify for, the fees are the same €0, and you get an identical degree and an identical Blue Card pathway. If your subject is taught only in German (law, education, much of the humanities, and anything tied to German professional licensing), or you intend to build a life and career in Germany long-term, the German-taught route is worth the 12–18 months it takes to reach C1 — it opens the whole system and integrates you far faster. The students who get the most out of Germany, in our experience, study in English where their field allows but learn German seriously alongside it, so that by graduation the language is no longer the thing standing between them and a job.

How College Council helps

English-taught study in Germany is exactly the kind of thing that is hard to research from the outside: the offering is deep at master’s and thin at bachelor’s, the same university charges €0 for an English degree in one state and €1,500 a semester in another, and the 2,000-plus programmes are scattered across a database that does not tell you which are zulassungsfrei or which actually have a strong reputation in your field. Those are the details we map out with families, drawing on the same university data that powers this guide — every German university is in our Atlas, with location, programmes and admission data, alongside tens of thousands more worldwide. Start by creating a free College Council account and running your profile through our chances tool to see which English-taught German programmes — and which alternatives across Europe — actually fit you.

On the testing side, every English-taught route into Germany runs on a strong TOEFL or IELTS score, and many of our families apply to Germany alongside the US or the UK, where the SAT matters. Our TOEFL app delivers full TOEFL iBT practice tests with AI-graded speaking and writing feedback, and our SAT app runs the full digital SAT with adaptive practice, so you can prepare once and apply broadly — see is the SAT worth it for international students for where it actually helps. If a German-language track is also on your list, our TestAS guide covers the aptitude test some programmes reward.

Frequently Asked Questions

Summary — is an English-taught German degree right for you?

English-taught study in Germany is a real, world-class, and remarkably cheap option, with one structural quirk to plan around: the catalogue is deep at master’s level and in STEM and business, and thinner at bachelor’s level and outside those fields. If your subject is well represented in English, you get a globally top-ranked, EU-recognised degree taught entirely in English for €0 in tuition (private universities aside), plus living costs of €11,000–€16,000 a year — and an 18-month job-seeker permit waiting at the end. Many of those English tracks are zulassungsfrei, which makes them more accessible than the headline NC subjects, not less.

Decide your level first — bachelor’s or master’s — because it dictates the entire shortlist. Then weigh the English route against committing the 12–18 months it takes to study in German, which opens the whole system. For most international students in engineering, computer science, the sciences or business, the English master’s is the obvious play; for a long-term life in Germany, learning the language alongside it pays off fast.

Next Steps

1. Decide bachelor’s or master’s — the English catalogue is deep at master’s and thinner at bachelor’s; your level sets the shortlist.
2. Search the DAAD database — filter for English-taught programmes in your field, and note which are zulassungsfrei (no NC) versus NC-gated.
3. Build a balanced shortlist — create a free College Council account and run your profile through our chances tool.
4. Book your English test early — most English programmes want TOEFL iBT 88+ or IELTS 6.5+; prepare in our TOEFL app and compare exams in our TOEFL versus IELTS guide.
5. Plan the money and the visa — public English degrees are free, but non-EU students still need the Sperrkonto and the student visa; the main Germany guide walks through both.

Read Also

• Studying in Germany: complete guide for international students — the full picture: universities, costs, visa, scholarships and careers
• TestAS 2026: the exam for German universities explained — the aptitude test some English-taught programmes reward
• TU Munich: detailed guide for international applicants — the EU’s top university and its English catalogue
• Studying in the Netherlands: complete guide — the other big continental system with deep English-taught bachelor’s
• TOEFL 2026 versus IELTS for European universities — picking the English test German programmes accept

Sources and Methodology

The programme counts, fields and fee tiers are drawn from official German-government and DAAD sources and cross-checked against College Council’s Atlas dataset of German higher-education institutions. The English-taught offering is large and evolving — programme lists, fees and language thresholds change between intake years — so we lead with the verified field clusters, levels and fee tiers rather than per-programme specifics, and we recommend confirming the exact figure on the relevant programme page before applying. University strengths and ranks reference the QS World University Rankings 2026.

1. DAAD — International Programmes in Germany database (2,000+ fully English-taught degree programmes; filterable by language of instruction, level and field)
2. study-in-germany.de — Official portal for international students (English-taught offering concentrated at master’s level; €0 public tuition; semester fee €150–€350; Baden-Württemberg €1,500/semester for non-EU)
3. QS / TopUniversities — QS World University Rankings 2026 (TUM #22, LMU #58, Heidelberg #80, FU Berlin #88, KIT #98, RWTH Aachen #105, HU Berlin #130, TU Berlin #145)
4. DAAD — Financing your studies / blocked account (Sperrkonto €11,904 / €992 per month for the non-EU student visa)
5. uni-assist — application processing and fees (€75 first university, €30 each additional; document verification and Anabin recognition)
6. Make it in Germany — Prospects after graduation (18-month job-seeker residence permit; EU Blue Card thresholds €45,934 shortage / €50,700 standard, 2026)
7. College Council — Atlas higher-education dataset (German HEI identity, location and programme data; Wikidata-keyed canonical records) and internal advising experience with international applicant families