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DAAD's new rankings show top-funded German universities
The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) published its 2025 funding rankings on 17 July 2026, showing exactly which German universities pulled in the most DAAD money — and how many scholarship holders each one hosts. If you’re choosing between German universities partly on how well-resourced their international offices and scholarship pipelines are, this is the clearest public data point available.
What changed
- DAAD released 2025 figures covering allocations to 244 member institutions, breaking down individual scholarships, project funding, and programme support separately.
- Technical University of Munich (TUM) topped total funding at €17 million and hosted 453 DAAD scholarship holders — the highest of any university in the ranking.
- Technical University of Dresden (€12 million) and Technical University of Berlin (€11 million) followed for total funding; TU Berlin also drew €6.5 million specifically in project funding, with TUM at €6 million and Dresden around €5 million.
- On scholarship holder numbers specifically, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (395), Heidelberg University (380), Free University of Berlin (375) and Humboldt University of Berlin (350) led the field.
- Universities in North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria performed particularly well overall, and Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences led on Erasmus+ funding specifically, at €8 million.
Who it affects
- Prospective international students weighing DAAD scholarship chances at a given university — funding concentration doesn’t guarantee you a place, but it does indicate where DAAD-backed programmes and support infrastructure are most developed.
- Students choosing between similar programmes at different institutions who want a data point beyond rankings and reputation.
- Anyone applying for a DAAD scholarship who wants to check whether their target university has an established track record of hosting DAAD-funded students.
What you should do
- If a DAAD scholarship is central to your funding plan, check whether your target university appears in this ranking before you commit — see our profiles for TU Munich, Heidelberg University, and the other Berlin and Munich institutes named above.
- Don’t treat funding volume as a proxy for admission difficulty or teaching quality — it reflects DAAD programme activity, not overall university ranking.
- Use this alongside, not instead of, your own research into specific DAAD scholarship programmes relevant to your subject and nationality.
What hasn’t changed
DAAD scholarship eligibility criteria and application processes are unaffected by this ranking — it’s a funding-distribution snapshot, not a change to how or where you apply. For general course and city planning, see our German cities overview.