Nothing in tuition, for Bachelor's and Master's students, EU and non-EU alike, because Paderborn University is a public university funded by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, like almost every public university in Germany.

What every student pays is the semester contribution, and it is not a fee for teaching. For winter 2026/27 it is 351.15 EUR, and the largest part of that figure is the Deutschlandticket for public transport across the whole of Germany, with smaller shares going to the Studierendenwerk and the general student body.

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.

Paderborn does not publish separate deadlines for EU and non-EU applicants. The dates below are the ones published for international applicants generally, and they fall earlier than the 15 July date many students expect for a winter intake. Which of the two routes applies, uni-assist or Paderborn's own preliminary examination, depends on the specific degree programme rather than on nationality.

Paderborn splits applicants across two portals rather than routing everyone the same way. Programmes on the university's uni-assist-courses list go through uni-assist and its processing fee (about 75 EUR for the first application, 30 EUR for each further one); every other programme is applied for directly through Paderborn's own PAUL portal, with a preliminary examination of your school and university certificates in place of a uni-assist fee.

Paderborn teaches 10 degree programmes fully in English, out of more than 70 in total, concentrated in computer science, electrical engineering and materials science, with a smaller number in business and area studies. Most of the English-taught catalogue sits at Master's level, so a Bachelor applicant will need German for almost the entire programme list. The English-taught programmes can be studied without German, though everyday German still helps with housing, part-time work and the authorities.

IELTS Academic, TOEFL iBT and the Cambridge certificates are all accepted, and the exact score is set per programme, from IELTS 6.0 in some Master's programmes up to 7.0 for the Master's in English and American Studies. An English-taught Bachelor's degree from your home country is not automatically accepted as a waiver; it only counts if it was earned in Australia, the UK, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand or the USA. Certificates must not be older than two years at the time of application. 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 start on 12 October 2026, and international students should plan to arrive some weeks earlier for city registration, a bank account and a room, especially given the Studierendenwerk waiting list.

Paderborn is a small university city of about 150,000 people, with Studierendenwerk Paderborn supporting around 25,000 students across its member institutions, so housing tends to be cheaper than in Cologne or Bochum. Studierendenwerk halls places run a waiting list at the start of the winter semester, so international students should apply for halls the day they are admitted and search WG-Gesucht in parallel.

The monthly payout from your blocked account is transferred to a German current account, which you open after you arrive.

A mid-sized public research university founded in 1972 and built around information technology from the start, still describing itself as "the university of the information society." Its five faculties are strongest in computer science, electrical engineering and mathematics, home to the Heinz Nixdorf Institute and one of only nine national High-Performance Computing centres in Germany.

The campus sits at the edge of the city centre in a compact university town in eastern Westphalia, about 50 minutes from Dortmund, which keeps local companies and internships within easy reach and makes Paderborn a quieter, more affordable alternative to the larger Rhine-Ruhr cities.