Tuition is free for Bachelor's and consecutive Master's programmes at University of Erfurt, for EU and non-EU students alike, because Thuringia charges no general tuition fees at its public universities. The one exception is the professional Master of Public Policy at the Willy Brandt School, which is partly financed by its own tuition fee and is not covered by the tuition-free status of the rest of the university.

What every other student pays is the semester contribution, and it is not a fee for teaching. Most of it is the Deutschlandsemesterticket, which covers public transport across the whole country. The amount is set each semester, so it changes: 357.80 EUR per semester for winter 2026/27, of which 226.80 EUR is the Deutschlandsemesterticket.

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 for applicants from outside the EU, and they fall earlier than some of the dates published on the university's general pages for individual programmes. Non-EU Bachelor and Master applicants apply through the same online portal, with admission-limited programmes closing earlier than open-admission ones.

The Master's programme Global Communication: Politics and Society has its own earlier deadline for international applicants who need a visa, 15 June for the winter 2026/27 intake, so that a visa appointment can still be booked in time. Applications for winter 2026/27 opened 1 January 2026 (Master) and 1 May 2026 (Bachelor). Deadlines are final; late or incomplete applications are not considered.

Through the university's own HISinONE applicant portal. University of Erfurt does not use uni-assist, so there is no uni-assist account and no processing fee of about 75 EUR. You register in the portal, upload your documents there, and check your status there yourself throughout the process.

Open the international applicants page at uni-erfurt.de.

University of Erfurt teaches 3 Master's programmes fully in English: Global Communication: Politics and Society, Public Policy (Willy Brandt School), and Religious Studies. Almost everything else, including all Bachelor's programmes, is taught in German, and German-language B1 proof is required at application for every programme except these three. A handful of Bachelor subjects (International Relations, Management, and the Economics/Law/Social Sciences concentrations, Communication Science) additionally require English at B2 level by enrolment, but German remains the language of instruction.

University of Erfurt is a German-taught university at heart, so English certificates only matter for the three English-taught Master's programmes and for a short list of English-taught Bachelor tracks. For Global Communication, the accepted range is IELTS Academic 6.5 or TOEFL iBT 80, or C1 (CEFR); a Bachelor's degree taught fully in English, or six months of English-medium higher education, is also accepted in place of a test.

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 you want to be in Erfurt a few weeks before that for city registration, a bank account and a room.

Founded in 1379 and re-established in 1994 after being closed for over 175 years, University of Erfurt calls itself both the oldest and the youngest university in Germany. It is a liberal-arts, humanities and social-sciences university, without engineering or natural-science faculties, built around education, theology, philosophy, and its own Faculty of Governance for law, economics and social science.

Martin Luther studied here, and the university still trades on that reform-minded, interdisciplinary identity today. It is also home to the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy and the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies. Erfurt itself sits close to the centre of Germany, within easy reach of Leipzig, Weimar and Berlin, and the compact campus keeps teaching staff and students in close contact.