Goethe, telc and DTZ B1 Exam Dates and Fees: How to Find and Book a Date

You have chosen your exam. Now you need an actual date, and this is where most people lose a month.

The reason is simple and nobody says it plainly: none of the three providers keeps a single worldwide list of B1 exam dates and prices. Goethe exam dates live on the page of the institute in your own country, with your own currency beside them. telc publishes no dates at all, because each licensed centre runs its own calendar and sets its own fee. And the DTZ cannot be booked by an outsider on any date, at any price, because it is not a public exam.

This guide covers the part after the choice: how each provider publishes its dates and how to read a real date row, what a sitting costs, how early the booking window opens and closes, what you must carry on the day, and when the result arrives.

If you are still deciding between the three, read the German B1 exam guide first. Booking the wrong exam costs more than a month.

The three providers work in three different ways

	Goethe-Zertifikat B1	telc Deutsch B1	DTZ
Who publishes the dates	The Goethe-Institut of your country, on its own page	Each licensed centre, individually	g.a.s.t. sets the dates; your test centre registers you
Who sets the fee	The local fee schedule of the centre	Each centre, individually	BAMF pays it if you hold a course entitlement
How you book	Online at goethe.de, on the centre’s site, or in person	Through the centre	In person at the test centre where you take your course
Open to anyone	Yes	Yes	No

That last row is the one that surprises people, so take it first.

The DTZ is not a date you can book

The Deutsch-Test für Zuwanderer is the language exam at the end of the German integration course, the Integrationskurs. It is not a certificate you can buy a seat for.

To sit it you need to know the Latin alphabet, be at least 16, and hold either a valid integration-course entitlement or have already attended at least one section of an integration course, which you may pay for yourself. People outside the integration-course system cannot take the DTZ, and that one rule ends most searches.

If you are outside Germany, or inside Germany without a course place, and you need a B1 certificate, your exam is the Goethe-Zertifikat B1 or telc Deutsch B1. The comparison in DTZ vs telc explains what each certificate is accepted for.

If you are inside the system, or entitled to be, the route runs like this. The Foreigners Authority issues your entitlement, the Berechtigungsschein. You find a course provider through BAMF-NAvI, the federal directory of local integration services, hand in the entitlement and register. The provider tells you when the next course starts, and the same provider is usually your test centre, because BAMF authorises integration-course providers, public and private language schools alike, as DTZ test centres.

The exam itself runs every two weeks. Your centre registers you up to 21 days before the date, in person, and g.a.s.t. then prints an answer sheet with your name and a barcode on it. That three-week deadline is the reason you cannot decide on a Monday to sit the test that month. The dates for the whole year are fixed in advance, so your centre knows them long before you ask.

What the DTZ costs

The exam fee is not the number to plan around. The course is.

If you hold an entitlement, BAMF covers your fee for the first sitting and for one repeat. If your first attempt came before you had used up your allocated lesson hours, BAMF covers a second attempt too.

The course underneath it is where the money goes. Your contribution is 2.29 euros for each lesson period, or 2.20 euros if you registered before 1 August 2022. A general integration course is 700 lessons, so the whole course costs 1,603 euros, paid in instalments for each 100-lesson stage. A special course of 1,000 lessons costs 2,290 euros.

Two things reduce that. You can be exempted from the contribution altogether on three grounds: receiving citizen’s allowance, unemployment benefit or living assistance; financial need for other reasons; or being employed below a gross monthly salary limit, which takes your children into account. And if you pass the final test within two years of your entitlement being issued, three years for target-group courses, you can apply to have half the contribution refunded. Both need an application. Ask your provider for the forms when you register, not when you finish.

If you fail to reach B1 after the whole course, BAMF may approve a one-off repeat of 300 further lessons, and that approval includes the right to sit the language test once more free of charge.

Goethe exam dates: find your country first

Everything starts on one page. The Goethe-Institut’s German examinations page has a country search box. Pick your country and you land on that institute’s exam page, which is the only place your real dates exist.

From there, open the Goethe-Zertifikat B1 page. You get a filtered list: adults or young learners, computer-based or paper-based. Each row is one sitting, with its city, its format and its price.

Open the details of a row and you get the part that decides your plan. Take a real one, a B1 sitting in Kolkata on 23 and 24 September 2026: speaking on the first day between 9:45 and 18:00, then writing, reading and listening on the second, bookable until 8 September at 11:55 in the evening, with a minimum of ten participants. Below the minimum, the sitting does not run, and the institute offers an alternative or refunds what you paid.

The German institutes show the same information as a visible window. On the Berlin B1 page, the 23 September 2026 sitting could be booked online from 22 May to 16 September. Neighbouring rows were already marked as expired, and one was fully booked. Registration opened four months ahead, closed a week before the exam, and one date sold out before either deadline mattered.

None of this is a global rule. The Goethe-Institut’s own Exam Guidelines, in force since 1 September 2025, leave the decision with the centre: it sets the registration deadline, the place and the time, and publishes the current dates and deadlines on its own page. The exact start time reaches you in writing about five days before the exam.

Where places are short, the published closing date is not the real deadline. Goethe-Institut Pakistan runs weekly and monthly dates in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad and announces the day and the hour when registration opens, because capacity is limited to a few hundred places and the site struggles on registration days. In early September 2026 the Pakistan B1 page showed no open dates at all. If that is your situation, the date to put in your calendar is the opening hour, not the exam.

What a Goethe B1 sitting costs

There is no worldwide price, and the Goethe-Institut does not pretend there is. The fee follows the local fee schedule of the centre and appears on the registration form or in the exam description online. So the honest answer is three real figures and an instruction to check your own.

These are the 2026 adult fees in three countries. Each country name links to the page the figure came from.

Where	Whole exam	One module	Notes
Germany	259 euros	104 euros	The 2026 fee schedule, per person excluding tax; the Berlin date rows note a VAT exemption. Course participants pay 20 per cent less: 207.20 and 83.20 euros
India	18,800 rupees	4,700 rupees	Both including 18 per cent GST. Course participants pay 14,000 and 3,500, applied automatically at booking
Türkiye	17,280 lira	5,730 lira	Exempt from VAT

Three things in that table are worth more than the numbers.

The course discount is large and easy to miss. In Germany it is 20 per cent off, in India about a quarter off, and it applies if a Goethe-Institut course ended no more than six months before your exam date. It is applied during booking, not claimed afterwards.

Four single modules do not always cost the same as the whole exam. In India they match exactly: four times 4,700 is 18,800. In Türkiye four modules at 5,730 come to 22,920, well above the 17,280 whole-exam price. Splitting your exam across dates can cost you money, which is worth knowing before you decide to split it.

These are 2026 figures in three countries. If you are booking anywhere else, open your own institute’s date row. The price is printed there, in your currency, beside the date you would actually sit.

Booking one module instead of four

The Goethe-Zertifikat B1 is modular. Reading, listening, writing and speaking are four separate exams that you can take together or one at a time, and each is passed at 60 points or 60 per cent on its own. That flexibility has rules, and they change what you should book.

Pass one or more modules and you receive a certificate for those modules. Take and pass all four at one venue in one session and you can ask for a single overall certificate instead. Retake a module later and its certificate can be combined with the ones you already hold.

There is also a time limit on combining. You can have an overall certificate showing your best results in the four modules within one year, across Goethe-Instituts inside the European Union, or inside one country outside it. A cross-institute overall certificate can only be issued by an institute where you passed at least one module. So if you plan to split your exam, keep it inside twelve months and inside one country unless you are in the EU.

Retakes themselves are not limited. Under the B1 exam regulations, modules can be taken or retaken as often as the centre’s capacity allows, and the same goes for the whole exam. What is limited is money and seats: you pay the fee again each time, and there is no entitlement to a specific date.

telc: the centre is the whole answer

telc licenses centres rather than running exams itself, and that shapes everything you can find out in advance.

Start at the telc examination centre finder. telc counts over 3,000 centres worldwide, and your centre is the one that tells you the upcoming dates. Not every centre offers the whole telc programme, so confirm that yours runs telc Deutsch B1 before you plan around it.

On the fee, telc is unusually direct: your examination centre will tell you the fee, and because each centre sets its own, telc cannot give any information about the costs. That is why this page prints no telc fee. Anyone who quotes you a single telc B1 price for your country is guessing, and the only number that binds is the one your centre gives you in writing.

The dates work the same way. Centres run exams regularly and may also run one on request, which is genuinely useful if no published date suits you. The one fixed constraint is administrative: the centre has to register your exam with telc 14 days before the date. Ask about a date at least three weeks out and you are asking a question the centre can still answer with yes.

Two more scheduling facts. The centre decides the date, and if the written and oral parts fall on different days, there must be no more than seven days between them. And if you need accessible exam conditions, special registration deadlines apply, so contact the centre early, well before you would otherwise book.

How early to start, in one table

Exam	When booking opens	When it closes	The deadline that really binds
Goethe, Berlin example	About four months before	One week before	Sitting sold out before either date
Goethe, Kolkata example	Not stated on the row	About two weeks before	Ten-participant minimum
Goethe, Pakistan	An announced day and hour	Announced with the date	The hour registration opens
telc	Whenever the centre publishes or agrees a date	Set by the centre	The centre must register it with telc 14 days ahead
DTZ	Dates fixed for the year, every two weeks	21 days before	Getting a course place at all

The pattern across all three: the published closing date is the last moment the system will accept you, not the moment to aim at. Work back from the date you want, add the practice you still need, and book at the start of the window, not at the end. If you have not sat a full practice paper yet, the free official practice tests will tell you more about your readiness than another week of vocabulary, and the timed mock exam runner keeps the published clock for you.

What to bring on the day

Identity is the part that ends exams before they start. Goethe requires an official, valid photo ID before the exam begins, and the centre decides which documents it accepts and tells you which ones together with the decision on your participation. That means your centre’s answer beats every general rule, including this page.

Two real examples of how specific it gets. In India, the answer is a valid national passport in the original, and since 1 September 2025 a passport is the only accepted identification for A1 to C2 there. In Pakistan you bring the original passport, a printed booking confirmation and an original CNIC, with an original Tazkara and English translation for Afghan nationals. If your passport happens to be at a consulate, Goethe-Institut Pakistan asks for the confirmation letter from that office.

What you may not carry in is more consistent. Goethe treats dictionaries, grammar books, your own rough paper, mobile phones, minicomputers, smartwatches and any recording or playback device as unauthorised aids, and reasonable suspicion of bringing one into the preparation or exam room is grounds for exclusion. Hearing aids count as unauthorised unless you declared them at registration. Only text written in non-removable black or blue ballpoint, fibre-tip or gel pen is graded.

telc’s list is closer to a packing list. Pencils, pens, sharpeners, erasers, drinks in transparent bottles without labels and personal items such as tissues are allowed. Jackets, bags, mobile phones and wrist watches are handed in before the exam starts. Dictionaries, textbooks, notes and sample answers are unauthorised.

The DTZ has its own small rule that costs marks every year. Answer sheets have been personalised since 2023, so you check your own name, date of birth, location and exam date at the start of each part, because those details go onto your certificate. You write with a non-erasable black or blue ballpoint. No pencils.

When the result arrives, and what you get

Provider	Result timing	What you receive
Goethe, Germany	One week at Berlin, Bonn, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Göttingen, Hamburg and Munich; two weeks at Bremen, Frankfurt and Freiburg; four weeks at Mannheim; two working days at Schwäbisch Hall	A digital certificate downloaded from meingoethe.de
Goethe, Pakistan	Usually about 20 working days after the exam	Results in My Goethe.de
telc	4 to 6 weeks, depending on how many exams are being marked	Through your centre
DTZ	g.a.s.t. sends results to BAMF about two and a half weeks after the exam, BAMF validates them, then they reach the centre portal	Your test centre hands you the certificate or result sheet

The Goethe certificate timing table is worth reading before you book, because the spread inside one country is four weeks wide. If a visa appointment or an application deadline depends on the certificate, the city you book in is part of that deadline.

A few things follow the result.

Goethe results are archived for ten years and can be verified at goethe.de/verify. If you lose a certificate, no duplicate is issued, but the centre where you registered can issue a replacement document within ten years, for a fee. DTZ certificates have been digital since 2023 and are checked through a g.a.s.t. verification form.

Both Goethe and g.a.s.t. let you look at your own marked papers. Goethe allows an inspection on request within three months of the results being announced, without showing you the tasks or model answers. g.a.s.t. runs DTZ inspections up to three months after your result, usually on the second Wednesday of a month at selected centres in eight cities, and gives you 15 minutes with your answer sheets, your writing sheet and the assessment of your speaking. Processing the application can take up to eight weeks, so ask early if you plan to appeal.

And one fact that changes how you plan a whole year: Goethe certificates do not expire, but many institutions and employers expect a certificate no more than two years old. Sitting the exam long before you need it is not free.

If you have to sit it again

Retakes are where the three exams stop resembling each other, and the difference is worth knowing before you pick a date, not after a result.

Goethe lets you repeat the whole exam or a single module as often as capacity allows, and a new module certificate combines with the ones you already have. Failing one module costs you one module fee. telc allows repeats as often as you like, and whether you repeat everything or only a part depends on the level, which is a question for your centre.

The DTZ is the strict one. It can be repeated as often as you like, but the complete exam has to be repeated, written and oral together, and part results from an earlier sitting do not carry over. A strong writing result last time is worth nothing this time. That, plus the rule that your overall level depends on your speaking result and at least one other part, is why reading your DTZ result properly matters more than it does elsewhere.

Your next step

Open the finder for your exam and read one real date row, today, before you prepare anything else.

For Goethe, that is your country’s institute page, reached from the German examinations page. Write down three things from the row you want: the price in your currency, the last day you can book, and whether the format is paper-based or computer-based. For telc, use the centre finder, then email the nearest centre and ask two questions in one message: which telc Deutsch B1 dates are coming, and what the fee is. For the DTZ, find a course provider through BAMF-NAvI and ask when the next course starts and which exam dates it ends on.

Then work backwards from that date. If the two exams still feel interchangeable, Goethe vs telc sets out the format differences that change your preparation, and the B1 exam guide covers what B1 has to prove in your case.