Ausbildung in GermanyHonest, sourced information for students in Nepal

Programmes you can actually apply for

There are routes into Germany that are run by public bodies, cost you nothing in agency fees, and are open to people in Nepal. They are not the ones being advertised to you, mostly because nobody makes money from them.

The German flag flying above the Reichstag building at dusk.
Several of these are funded by German federal ministries. None of them requires you to pay an agent. Photo: Pixabay

Most of what reaches you is either a paid service or a rumour. In between there are real programmes, run by German public bodies, that a person in Nepal can apply to. They are less famous because there is no commission in them.

None of these is a shortcut. Every one still needs German, and every one still goes through the same embassy queue. But they are real, and they are free.

NSST — the one that charges the employer instead of you

The Nepal Secretariat of Skills and Training is a German–Nepali organisation that trains young Nepalis for skilled work. For some of them that means an Ausbildung in Germany. It started in September 2021. It is registered in Nepal as a Company Not distributing Profit, which is like a German non-profit company. It says it has an agreement (an MoU) with the German embassy in Nepal.

They wrote to us on 9 October 2026.

You pay nothing. Their training, their German support and their mentoring are, in their words, "free for candidates at every stage". That includes the whole time you are in Germany, until your Ausbildung ends. The German company that takes you on pays instead. What it pays for is the whole journey: your preparation and extra German lessons in Nepal, your flight to Germany, and mentoring that continues all the way through your training.

This is how the law says it should work. Under § 296a SGB III, a fee for arranging an Ausbildung may be charged to the employer and to nobody else. Why that law exists.

Your living costs, and any course you decide to take outside their programme, are still yours to pay. NSST say they run a scholarship fund to help with those courses.

You can apply with Class 10. A completed SEE is enough. You do not need +2 or any higher qualification, and NSST told us they are glad to take people who have only the SEE. They give particular attention to women, and to young people from poorer backgrounds, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In 2023 they were taking people aged 18 to 25. Ask them whether that is still the range.

The preparation takes about a year. You learn German up to the level the visa needs. There is an orientation programme to help you choose a trade, training on how work and daily life in Germany are different, and preparation for the job itself. There is a programme for your family as well, because they believe your family needs to be behind you. If you live outside Kathmandu you do not have to move there: they run the training in blocks for people who live further away.

You choose where you learn German. NSST are a partner of the Goethe-Zentrum Kathmandu and recommend it for the quality of its teaching. That is a recommendation, not a rule. You decide where and how you learn. For the visa, your certificate has to come from one of the providers the embassy accepts.

Mentoring in Germany. They aim to give every apprentice two mentors in Germany, although how many you actually get depends on the region. You will also have one named person at NSST looking after you for the whole of your Ausbildung.

They start from what you want to do. This is what NSST tell German employers:

People are happier and more successful in their work when they can choose a job that genuinely interests them.

That is why they run an orientation programme before anyone is matched to a trade, instead of offering the two jobs most young Nepalis are offered, Pflege and Mechatroniker. The law agrees with them. § 16a AufenthG names no trades, and there is no approved list. More about choosing your trade.

How many people. NSST do not give exact numbers. They are a small organisation and what they do keeps changing, so a number today is wrong again quickly. What they told us is that more than 1,500 young people have been through their training, and that several hundred have gone on to an Ausbildung in Germany. The 1,500 counts every programme they run, including young people who stay and work in Nepal. These are their own figures and we have not checked them.

They are taking new people. A new intake starts roughly every three to four months, depending on how many places they have. Intakes are announced on their social media. Their website is being rebuilt at the moment, so use these: Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

Before you join anything, ask the five questions on the fees page. With NSST there is one more worth asking: which German employers have actually taken Nepali trainees through you? An honest organisation will answer it.

The volunteer year — the route almost nobody mentions

Germany runs two national volunteer services. You work full time for a year at a social organisation: a care home, a hospital, a kindergarten, a disability service, an environmental project. You are given an allowance, insurance, and usually your accommodation and meals.

FSJ (Freiwilliges Soziales Jahr) BFD (Bundesfreiwilligendienst)
Age Up to your 27th birthday No upper age limit
Length Usually 12 months, up to 18 Usually 12 months, up to 18
Repeatable Once only Every five years

The embassy in Kathmandu already issues these visas. Freiwilligendienste is one of the national visa categories it lists — the same page that covers Ausbildung and family reunification. This is not a theoretical route.

What you get. The law caps the allowance at €676 a month in 2026. Each organisation sets its own figure and it is often lower. One national provider states at least €480 a month. On top of the allowance, accommodation, meals and work clothing are often free or paid for separately. Some providers give you around €300 towards your journey home after twelve months.

What it costs you. Your own flight, and your own time. No agency fee is involved, and none should be asked for.

What it needs. German, in practice B1 with a certificate. Providers say so plainly, because you will be working with people who speak no English. You apply in German. You send a CV, your language certificate, your last school report, a motivation letter and the provider's application form. The templates on this site work for this too.

There is one extra step people do not expect. A federal office, the BAFzA, has to approve your volunteer agreement before you can get a visa. That takes at least six weeks on its own. Put it in your plan.

Be honest with yourself about the queue. The embassy publishes an approximate 8 to 12 month wait for Au-Pair and FSJ appointments — the longest it publishes. A volunteer year is a real route, but it is not the fast one. How the waiting list works.

Why it is interesting anyway. It has the same shape as the Au Pair route. You arrive legally, you live in German for a year, you get your German up to the level an Ausbildung really needs, and you are already in the country when you apply. One warning: whether a volunteer permit can later be changed into an Ausbildung permit is a question for the local Ausländerbehörde, and we have not confirmed it. Ask before you build a plan on it.

weltwärts — funded by a German ministry, and Nepal is in it

weltwärts is a volunteer programme. It is run by Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) together with civil society organisations. Most people know the version that sends young Germans abroad. The part that matters here is the South–North component, which brings young people from partner countries to Germany for six to eighteen months.

Nepal is on the list of partner countries. Eligibility runs off the OECD DAC list, and the programme describes itself as "a programme for everyone — regardless of budget". It is publicly funded; it is not something you buy.

The catch is how you get in. You cannot apply to weltwärts directly, and you cannot apply from outside its network. Volunteers are nominated by a partner organisation in their own country, and each German host works with its own specific partners — the programme itself notes that not every DAC-listed country has an active sending organisation.

So the practical question is not "how do I apply to weltwärts" but "which organisations in Nepal are weltwärts partners". That is worth asking your German teacher, and worth asking any NGO you already have a connection to. If you find one, tell us and it will go on this page.

Au Pair

Covered on its own page, because it comes up often as an alternative to Ausbildung — usually when the exam queue looks impossible, which is the wrong reason to choose it. It works, it is slow, and the visa queue is the longest of all. Read it before you choose it.

What none of these do

None of them removes the German requirement. Every route on this page needs real German, and most want a certificate. The Federal Employment Agency put it plainly when we asked about the government route: home-country language learning is "das zentrale Nadelöhr", the central bottleneck, for any successful start.

None of them is an Ausbildung. A volunteer year is a volunteer year. It can put you in Germany, in German, legally — which is worth a great deal — but it does not end in a state-recognised qualification the way an Ausbildung does.

None of them skips the queue. They all go through the same embassy in Kathmandu, and for FSJ that queue is the longest one published.

A footnote: the government declaration people keep asking about

Nepal and Germany signed a joint declaration on skilled labour migration, reported to involve a year of paid vocational training, employment afterwards, online applications, and workers paying nothing. Nepal signed something comparable with Romania around the same time.

We asked the Bundesagentur für Arbeit, which signed it for Germany. Their reply, August 2026:

Die gemeinsame Absichtserklärung zwischen Deutschland und Nepal bildet das politische Fundament für eine vertiefte Zusammenarbeit in der Fachkräftemigration, ein offenes oder direktes Bewerbungsverfahren für Einzelpersonen über die ZAV existiert derzeit jedoch nicht.

It is a political foundation, not a programme you can join. There is no open or direct application procedure for individuals. When such partnerships do run, they run as cohort-based pilot projects through official partner structures in Nepal — often with GIZ and the Nepali labour ministry — "und nicht über eine freie Initiativbewerbung bei der Bundesagentur für Arbeit".

So: there is nothing to apply for. Do not wait for it, and do not let anyone put your name on a list for it. If someone offers to register you for a government programme between Nepal and Germany, they are selling something that does not currently exist.

Two things that get mixed up with it. "Free visa, free ticket" is a Nepali policy covering seven Gulf destinations — it has never covered Germany or the EU, and Nepal's Labour Minister announced scrapping it in February 2026. And the ministry that negotiated the declaration, MoLESS, was dissolved on 13 May 2026, its labour functions moving to the new Ministry of Youth, Labour and Employment — so older articles and anyone still pointing you at MoLESS are out of date.

Where this comes from