Westfälische Hochschule charges no tuition fees for Bachelor's or consecutive Master's programmes, for EU and non-EU students alike. North Rhine-Westphalia abolished tuition fees at its public universities in 2011 and, unlike Baden-Württemberg, has not introduced a separate fee for non-EU students.

What every student pays is the semester contribution, and it is not a fee for teaching. For summer 2026 it was 364.30 EUR, and the largest part, 208.80 EUR, is the DeutschlandSemesterticket that covers public transport nationwide; the remainder funds AKAFÖ (the regional Studierendenwerk) and the student body. The amount is set each semester, and the winter 2026/27 figure had not yet been published at the time of writing.

No tuition doesn't 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 with a foreign qualification (Bildungsausländer) who apply through uni-assist. Westfälische Hochschule does not publish a separate, earlier deadline for non-EU applicants: the same window applies whether the qualification was obtained inside or outside the EU. For the winter semester the window opens on 6 May, and the closing date depends on the programme, with restricted-admission programmes closing first. First-semester Bachelor's applicants can only start in the winter semester; there is no summer intake for freshmen.

Through uni-assist, like most German universities, but Westfälische Hochschule pays the uni-assist processing fee for up to three applications per applicant each semester, so the standard charge (usually about 75 EUR for a first application) does not fall on you.

Open the international-applicants page at en.w-hs.de/degree-seeking-students.

None. Westfälische Hochschule states directly, on its own international-applicants page, that it does not currently offer any study programmes in English. Every Bachelor's and Master's degree is taught in German, so an applicant needs advanced German, generally at C1, to enrol in any programme, and there is no route into a degree here without it.

Not applicable in the usual sense: because no degree programme is taught in English, Westfälische Hochschule does not publish an English-certificate threshold for admission. German is the requirement instead, generally DSH-2, TestDaF with sub-scores totalling at least 16, telc C1 Hochschule, Goethe-Certificate C1, a Studienkolleg Feststellungsprüfung, or a Dutch HAVO/VWO diploma with at least 6 points in German.

If a school-leaving certificate is not automatically recognised as a German university entrance qualification, the university's stated alternative route is the TestAS exam, with at least 95 points (paper-based) or 75 points (digital) in the matching subject module. The German-language requirement is the same across all programmes rather than set per programme, since it is a general admission requirement and not tied to an English-taught track.

Work backwards from the lecture start rather than the semester start. The winter semester formally begins on 1 September 2026, but lectures do not start until 28 September 2026 — plan to be in Gelsenkirchen, Bocholt, or Recklinghausen a few weeks before that for city registration, a bank account, and a room. Summer 2027 dates will be published by the university closer to the semester.

A young, mid-sized public university of applied sciences founded in 1992, spread across three campuses in the northern Ruhr region — Gelsenkirchen, Bocholt, and Recklinghausen — with roughly 9,000 students and a technical-economic profile in engineering, computer science, business, and the natural sciences.

It sits in a region reinventing itself from coal and steel toward services and renewable energy, and its programmes lean heavily on practical training: internships with regional employers are a standard, often mandatory, part of the curriculum. The Bocholt campus is a short trip from the Dutch border, and all three cities are notably cheaper to live in than Cologne, Düsseldorf, or Munich.