Ausbildung in Germany Requirements for International Applicants

There is no single list of Ausbildung requirements, because three different bodies check you and each one applies its own conditions.

The company or school decides who it admits. The German mission or immigration authority decides the visa. The Federal Employment Agency approves company-based training inside the visa procedure. Something a company asks for is not a legal condition, and something the Residence Act requires is not something a company can waive.

This page lists each condition beside the body that applies it. For the route in order, from choosing an occupation to signing a contract, use the Ausbildung in Germany guide.

Who checks what

Condition	Who applies it	What decides the answer
School-leaving qualification	Company or school, then the mission for the training-search visa	The training type, and what the vacancy or programme asks for
Age	Nobody, for training itself	Only the visa to look for a training place has an age limit
German level	Company or school, and the mission	The vacancy, and whether the institution has tested your German
Training contract	Company or school, then the mission	The contract and its training plan, before the visa is issued
Federal Employment Agency approval	The agency, inside the visa procedure	Company-based training only, handled between authorities
Money for living costs	The mission	The training type, and whether you receive a training allowance
Health insurance	The mission, then your training company	Company-based training usually insures you; other routes do not
Passport and entry route	The mission and the immigration authority	The general conditions that apply to any residence title

Citizens of the European Union and the European Free Trade Association do not need a visa to enter Germany and start vocational training. Everything below about visas applies to everyone else.

School-leaving qualification

What you need depends on which kind of training you are applying for.

Company-based dual training. Once you have finished compulsory full-time schooling, no further prior school learning requirements apply to entry into dual training. German law does not set a specific school-leaving qualification for a company training place, and therefore no recognition of your certificate either. Each company sets its own criteria.

School-based training. Here you must have completed general school education and have that qualification officially recognised. The German qualification your certificate has to match depends on the profession.

Dual studies, which combine a degree with company training, require a university entrance qualification, the Hochschulzugangsberechtigung.

The visa to look for a training place has its own rule. To come and search you need a qualification from a German school abroad, or a school-leaving certificate that gives access to higher education either in Germany or in the country where you obtained it.

Two federal sources disagree about recognition

One federal page says dual company training needs no recognition. The Federal Employment Agency’s English guide to vocational training in Germany tells applicants they must have the school-leaving qualification recognised and present the certificate to the vocational school, and that this costs money.

Both are current federal sources, so do not guess. Ask the company and the vocational school which document each of them needs, and ask before you pay for anything.

If you do need recognition, the certificate recognition bodies of the 16 federal states handle it, and you find the responsible one through the anabin database. One detail catches people out: a recognition body will only accept your application once you have a registered address in Germany or a concrete confirmation of a training place. Recognition is usually not something you can finish before you apply.

Professional recognition is a different procedure. The Recognition in Germany portal covers foreign professional qualifications for people who already hold one and want to work in that occupation. You do not need it to start training.

Age

Vocational training itself has no age limit, and people who already hold a degree or work experience can generally do one.

Two age rules do exist, and neither is an Ausbildung age limit.

The visa to enter Germany and look for a training place requires that you have not yet completed your 35th year of life, or, as the Consular Services Portal puts the same condition, “the applicant may not be 35 or older”. That condition disappears once you already have a training place, because you then apply for the training visa instead.

The second rule is the one most often misread. Federal guidance warns applicants over 45 to pay attention to a minimum salary or retirement provision requirement if they need a visa, since a training allowance is usually below those thresholds. The wording of that threshold limits it to the first issue of a skilled-worker permit, the permit you would need after your training, not the training permit itself. If you are over 45, take the warning seriously and ask the responsible German mission how it applies to your case rather than assuming either answer.

German

The law and the federal guidance describe the same condition at different levels of precision, so read both.

You have to prove sufficient German for qualified vocational training when the education institution has not tested your German and you are not going to acquire it in a preparatory German course. The wording is “sufficient”, not B1.

B1 is the level named in guidance. In exactly that case you normally need B1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages for the visa for vocational training. The level can also vary with the type of training, and the education institution, vocational school or training company can confirm it. For the visa to look for a training place, B1 is mandatory and a recognised language certificate has to be presented.

The Federal Employment Agency’s English guide gives the short version. If you need a visa for your training, you generally need B1.

Which certificates count as proof is a separate question with a published answer. The Federal Foreign Office names the accepted exam providers, and the guide to official Ausbildung websites lists them beside the rule that certificates from other language schools are not recognisable for the visa.

Meeting the visa level does not mean meeting the company’s level. A vacancy can ask for B2, and the interview, vocational school and final examination all happen in German. Whether B1 is enough for your route works through that separately.

The training contract

The training visa needs a contract for in-company or school-based training, with a training plan.

The law fixes what a company training contract must contain. The trainer has to record the essential content in text form immediately after the contract is concluded and at the latest before training begins, and hand it to you. The list includes:

1. the names and addresses of both parties;
2. the type, factual and time structure, and objective of the training, in particular the occupation you are being trained for;
3. the start and duration of the training;
4. the training site, and training measures outside it;
5. the length of the regular daily training time;
6. the length of the probation period;
7. the payment and amount of the training allowance, and its components if it has several;
8. payment or compensation of overtime;
9. the length of the holiday entitlement;
10. the conditions under which the contract can be terminated;
11. a general reference to the collective and works agreements that apply;
12. the form of the training record you have to keep.

Read your contract against that list before you sign. A missing item is a question to ask, not proof of anything, and a chamber or the Federal Employment Agency can explain what an entry means.

One protection is worth knowing in advance. Before your training permit can be withdrawn, revoked or shortened for reasons you are not responsible for, you must be given up to six months to look for another training place.

Federal Employment Agency approval

For company-based training, the permit depends on the Federal Employment Agency approving your employment, unless the Employment Ordinance or an intergovernmental agreement allows the training without that approval.

You do not apply for this approval. It is an internal procedure between German authorities, carried out as part of your visa application and requiring no action on your part. What it checks is whether you would be employed on conditions no less favourable than comparable domestic workers. The duty to supply the pay, working-time and working-condition information falls on the employer, not on you.

School-based training has no such approval step. Instead the programme itself has to qualify: it must lead to a state-recognised occupational qualification under federal or state rules, and it must not be aimed predominantly at nationals of one country.

Money for living costs

A secured livelihood means you can cover your costs, including adequate health insurance cover, without recourse to public funds. For training permits the law then sets the measure. You need monthly means equal to the monthly requirement calculated under the Federal Training Assistance Act, which is where the published figures come from.

These minimum monthly amounts have applied since 1 September 2025:

Purpose of stay	Minimum per month
Company-based vocational training	EUR 1,048 gross, or EUR 822 net
School-based vocational training	EUR 959
Company-based advanced training	EUR 1,090 gross, or EUR 855 net
School-based advanced training	EUR 992
Looking for a vocational training place	EUR 1,091

Read the row that matches your route. Pages that quote one figure for every kind of Ausbildung are quoting the wrong one for most readers.

How you prove it depends on the route. With company-based training your training allowance itself counts: an allowance at or above the amount in your row secures your livelihood. If the allowance falls short, you make up the difference with a blocked bank account, a Sperrkonto, or a declaration of commitment, a Verpflichtungserklärung, in which somebody in Germany formally undertakes to cover your costs. School-based training and the training-search visa have no allowance, so the blocked account, the declaration of commitment or a scholarship carries the whole amount. The blocked account guide explains how the account works and multiplies your route’s figure by the months you need.

Both permits also allow a side job of up to 20 hours a week independent of the training, and the training-search permit allows up to two weeks of trial work in total. The Federal Employment Agency puts it plainly: the training allowance is often not enough on its own, so plan for savings.

These amounts change. Check the Consular Services Portal for the current figure before you open an account or transfer money.

Health insurance

Health insurance is not a separate box to tick. It is part of the secured-livelihood condition, because a livelihood counts as secured only when it includes adequate health insurance cover, and membership of the statutory health insurance counts as adequate.

In practice the route decides who arranges it. Depending on the purpose of your stay, you are either covered through your employer or training company or you have to arrange cover yourself. Company-based trainees are employees and are normally insured through the training relationship. On school-based training, or while you are looking for a place, nobody does this for you.

The same guidance recommends taking out travel health insurance at home to cover the period between arriving in Germany and the start of your employment, and checking with the responsible German mission which requirements that insurance has to meet. Ask that question while you are still preparing documents, because the answer varies by mission.

Long-term care insurance comes automatically with German health insurance, so it is not a separate purchase.

The conditions that apply to any residence title

Underneath everything above sit the conditions for any residence title. As a rule you need a secured livelihood, clarified identity and nationality, no interest in expulsion, and a valid passport.

You also have to have entered with the required visa and given the relevant information in the visa application. Entering on a visa issued for another purpose and asking to switch afterwards is not a route the law offers you, apart from narrow exceptions decided case by case.

The training visa is generally issued for one year. Some German missions work with service providers who may charge a service fee for handling applications. That fee is separate from the visa fee, and you find out during the application whether your mission uses one.

What is a preference, not a rule

Several conditions repeated across the web are real, but they come from employers rather than from law. Treat them as information about your competition, not as eligibility criteria.

• An intermediate school-leaving certificate. Many companies ask for one in practice, and popular or demanding occupations may expect a higher qualification. That is a company decision, not a legal minimum for dual training.
• Being young. In Germany it is mainly young people who do vocational training after leaving school, as the Federal Employment Agency notes. That describes who applies, and it does not create an age limit.
• B2 German. A company may require it. The visa rule normally names B1.
• A specific document set. Requirements differ by company, school, mission and occupation. Build your list from the vacancy and your mission’s page, not from a generic checklist.

None of this makes the preferences unimportant. It changes what you do about them. You improve a preference to compete, and you satisfy a legal condition to qualify.

Check your own case against this list

Open one real vacancy or programme and one page from the German mission responsible for you. Then go through the list above and write, next to each condition, the evidence you already hold and the evidence you still need.

The gaps are your work plan. A missing certificate becomes an exam booking. An unclear school qualification becomes one question to the company and one to the vocational school. An uncertain amount becomes a check on the Consular Services Portal before you move money.

The Ausbildung preparation self-check turns those notes into ordered actions and stays in your browser. If your gap is timing rather than evidence, the Ausbildung application timeline planner works backwards from the intake you are aiming at.

This page explains published rules. The German mission or immigration authority responsible for you decides your case.