Ausbildung in GermanyHonest, sourced information for students in Nepal

The exam bottleneck — 1,200 people for 187 places

People assume the hard part is learning German. In Nepal the hard part is getting a seat in the exam, and nobody selling you a course is going to say so.

Rows of empty wooden chairs and desks in a classroom.
The bottleneck is not the exam. It is the seat. Photo: Pixabay

On 17 August 2026, applicants began queueing outside the exam centre in Kathmandu at midday. They waited through the afternoon, through the night, and into the following day.

We are told roughly 1,200 people were in that queue. There were 187 places.

That is about six people for every seat — and this was registration for A2, the second-lowest level of the six. One applicant who queued the full twenty-four hours, sleeping outside, secured a place for an exam nine days later.

What this means

It means the usual advice — study hard, then take the exam — describes a process that does not exist. The real sequence is: study hard, then win a lottery you enter by standing in the street overnight.

It also means a number of things that follow, and which nobody tells you:

Your exam date is not under your control. You can be fully prepared and still be four months from a certificate.

The shortage does not stop at A2 — it gets worse. At B1 and B2 registration moves online, so you are not sleeping outside; you are refreshing a Facebook page instead. But the waiting list is long. One applicant on the B1 list in August 2026 was past position 1,000.

And B2 appears to run only once a year. We are told by candidates that after the July 2026 sitting, the next B2 exam date at the Kathmandu centre is July 2027. If that is right, someone who finishes a B2 course in the summer waits twelve months for a chance to certify it. We have asked the centre to confirm.

And where the queue is physical, that is not a neutral cost. Waiting a full night outside is not equally available to everybody. It is harder if you are travelling in from outside the valley, if you have work or family duties, and it carries real safety risk — particularly for young women queueing alone overnight.

This explains the B1 wall, and it is not what people say it is. Teachers in Nepal report that many students stop at B1 and few go on to B2. That is usually described as students losing interest.

It is not. If B2 runs once a year, then finishing a B2 course and sitting a B2 exam are separated by up to twelve months — regardless of how good you are or how hard you work. People are not stopping at B1. They are being stopped, by a calendar. B1 is enough for the visa, and waiting a year to prove B2 is a cost most people cannot carry.

Someone who sleeps on a pavement for twenty-four hours to sit A2 is not short of motivation.

The rules are different at different levels — and this matters

The Goethe-Zentrum Kathmandu is the Goethe-Institut's cooperating institution in Nepal, offering certificates at A1 through C1. Its own published information sets out two quite different registration systems:

A1 and A2: registration is physical. Places are given out in person on announced dates, first come first served. That is why the queue above formed — it was A2 registration, and standing in it overnight was the process.

B1 and B2: registration is online. Applicants submit a form published on the Goethe-Zentrum Kathmandu Facebook page, again first come first served.

If you are heading for an Ausbildung, B1 is your level — so watch that Facebook page, not the street. The form appearing there is the event you cannot afford to miss.

The centre states it can take a maximum of 70 applicants for exams at all levels, across three Sundays a month. That is around 200 places a registration round, which fits the 187 reported above.

And one rule matters more than the seat count: B1 and B2 registration reopens only once every applicant who already submitted a form has been given a date. Registration is not a monthly event you can plan around. It reopens when the queue clears — which means the wait is open-ended rather than merely long.

What to do about it

Plan the exam first, and everything else around it. Most guides treat the certificate as step one of many. On this evidence it is the longest and least predictable step. Work backwards from the German training year: chamber guidance is 4–6 months from contract to entry, and your employer needs the certificate before the contract.

For B1 and B2, follow the Goethe-Zentrum Kathmandu Facebook page. That is where the registration form is published, and allocation is first come first served. The day you submit matters more than how ready you feel that week.

For A1 and A2, expect to queue in person. People go in groups and take turns. If you have to be there overnight, be there with someone — that is a safety matter, not just a comfort one.

Three institutions are accepted, not one — and you can mix them.

Read this next part carefully. It is the most useful thing on this site and getting it wrong costs money and months.

The German Embassy in Kathmandu accepts certificates from three providers, and explicitly allows you to sit different parts of the exam with different providers. Its own words:

Es ist möglich einzelne Prüfungsteile bei verschiedenen anerkannten Anbietern zu absolvieren (z.B. 3 Teile beim Goethe Zentrum und 1 Teil bei der VHS). Nur Sprachzertifikate der folgenden Institutionen können derzeit anerkannt werden: Goethe-Zentrum Kathmandu, VHS (Bhaktapur & Pokhara) oder Telc.

So the accepted list is:

Provider Where Notes
Goethe-Zentrum Kathmandu Thapathali The queue everybody is in
VHS Bhaktapur and Pokhara Nepal's official ÖSD centre; also has a Kathmandu branch at Putalisadak
telc no centre in Nepal Accepted, but you would have to sit it abroad

Three things follow, and hardly anyone seems to know any of them.

VHS is a second accepted route, and it is in Pokhara as well as Bhaktapur. If you are stuck deep in the Goethe waiting list, this is the alternative — and for anyone outside the Kathmandu valley, Pokhara may be far easier to reach. VHS is Nepal's official ÖSD examination centre and takes external candidates, not only its own students.

You do not have to sit all four parts in the same place. The embassy gives its own example: three parts at the Goethe-Zentrum and one at the VHS. If you can get some modules but not others, that is not a dead end — it is the documented route.

telc is accepted but has no centre in Nepal, and none is planned. We asked telc directly in August 2026. Their answer: "Aktuell bieten wir in Nepal keine telc-Prüfungen an und es gibt derzeit auch keine konkreten Pläne, ein Prüfungszentrum dort einzurichten." — "At present we do not offer telc examinations in Nepal, and there are currently no concrete plans to set up an examination centre there." They pointed to neighbouring countries instead. So telc means India — see below.

Sitting telc in India — the option nobody mentions

This is worth setting out properly, because it is a real route and the pieces fit together better than they look.

In plain terms: yes in principle, but you arrange it with an individual licensed exam centre, not with telc head office. telc publishes a centre finder on its website; a centre in Delhi or elsewhere in northern India is the place to ask about dates and about places for a group.

Whether this is worth it is a calculation, not a principle. Against it: roughly a thousand kilometres each way from Kathmandu, travel and accommodation costs, and telc is not the exam format Nepali courses prepare you for.

For it: if you are deep in a waiting list with no date, a certificate you can actually obtain in a few weeks may be worth a difficult journey. Several people travelling together shares the cost, and is safer than going alone.

Work out your own numbers. But do not let anyone tell you it is impossible — it is not, and the embassy accepts the result.

And the certificate must be in the file when you apply. The embassy states the language proof "bereits mit der Antragstellung eingereicht werden muss" — submitted with the application itself, not handed in later. So the exam has to be done before you start the visa process, not alongside it.

What we still do not know

If you find any of this out, it is worth telling other people. This page exists because one person was willing to say what actually happened to her.

Where this comes from