Nothing in tuition for Bachelor's programmes and for most Master's programmes, because North Rhine-Westphalia funds the university as a public institution. A small number of Master's programmes are the exception: specialised or continuing-education-style programmes such as International Media Studies or Global Health charge tuition fees, set per programme, so the fee status has to be checked at the individual programme level rather than assumed from the university's general "tuition-free" status.

What every student pays is the semester contribution, and it is not a fee for teaching. For winter 2026/27 it is 363.07 EUR per semester, of which more than half funds the Deutschlandsemesterticket, the ticket that covers public transport across the whole country. The amount is set each semester by student representatives, so it changes.

No tuition does not mean no proof of funds. For the student visa you still need to show about 11,904 EUR for the year, usually in a blocked account, and that money has to be transferred months before the semester starts.

These are the deadlines that apply to applicants from outside the EU. For Bachelor's, State Examination and church degree programmes, non-EU/EEA applicants apply within the same window as EU applicants, which is unusual: at many universities the non-EU deadline falls earlier. Master's degree programmes have no uniform deadline at all; each department sets and publishes its own, so check the specific programme page rather than assuming a university-wide date.

Deadlines apply equally to restricted-admission (numerus clausus) and open-admission Bachelor's programmes. The Faculty of Arts publishes its own set of Master's deadlines separately from other faculties.

Applications from International Students

University of Bonn runs 86 degree programmes taught fully or partly in English, out of more than 200 degree programmes in total, spanning subject areas from computer science, mathematics and the natural sciences to agricultural sciences, theology, humanities and area studies. Most of them are Master's programmes; only a small number of Bachelor's programmes, such as English Studies, are taught in English. You can study the English-taught programmes without German, though everyday German still helps with housing, part-time work and the authorities.

There is no single central score table for the English-taught programmes themselves, because requirements are set per department and vary widely, from IELTS 5.5 up to 7.0 depending on the programme. The one central rule that does apply university-wide covers German-taught Bachelor's programmes that also require English proof (such as Molecular Biomedicine, Economics and Computer Science, or Geography): there, IELTS Academic 5.5 and TOEFL iBT 72 are the stated minimums, TOEFL ITP is not accepted, and only the single test-date TOEFL score counts, not a MyBest Score composite. Applicants whose secondary education or Bachelor's degree was taught entirely in English can ask their school or university to certify that instead of sitting a test, and University of Bonn does not restrict this waiver to a fixed list of English-speaking countries the way some universities do.

The exact score is set per programme, so check your programme page before booking a test.

Work backwards from the lecture start rather than the semester start. The winter semester formally begins on 1 October, but lectures begin later, and you want to be in Bonn a few weeks before that for city registration, a bank account and a room.

University of Bonn does not publish exact future lecture dates on its own semester-dates page; it names the general pattern and refers to the North Rhine-Westphalia state ministry calendar for the specific year.

Founded in 1818 as the Rhein-Universität, with roots back to a prince-elector's academy from 1777, University of Bonn is a public research university and a German "University of Excellence," home to eight Clusters of Excellence, more than any other German university. Its strengths span mathematics, economics, natural sciences, medicine and the humanities, and it has produced eleven Nobel laureates and five Fields medallists among its faculty and alumni.

The university has no single centralised campus: its faculties are spread across the historic city centre, Poppelsdorf, Endenich and the Venusberg medical campus. As the former West German capital, Bonn sits well within Germany's international networks, with the University of the United Nations and several UN institutions based in the city, and Cologne only about 25 kilometres away.