We list 26 Applied Mathematics master's programmes in Germany, and the thing that makes this set unusual is how evenly they are spread.
By institution: the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (4), the University of Göttingen (2), Universität Bremen (2), Philipps-Universität Marburg (2), Technische Universität Chemnitz (2), with Leibniz University Hannover and the University of Bayreuth on one each and the rest scattered further.
By city: Landau (4), Göttingen (2), Bremen (2), Marburg (2), Chemnitz (2), Hanover (1), Bayreuth (1).
No centre of gravity at all
Every other German subject we have written up this week has one. Economics, Political Science and International Relations each put a third of their programmes in Berlin. Biology concentrates in Würzburg, Computer Science in Saarbrücken.
Applied Mathematics has no city holding more than four of 26, and the largest single address — Landau, in Rhineland-Palatinate — is a town of roughly 47,000 people. It also held three of the Biochemistry programmes, which makes Kaiserslautern-Landau the quietest serious address in our German catalogue.
There is a reason, and it is worth understanding before you shortlist. Mathematics does not need a capital city, a hospital network or an industrial cluster next door; it needs a department. German mathematics departments are distributed across the old university towns rather than concentrated in the big ones, and the strength of any one of them has almost nothing to do with the overall rank of the institution around it.
Which means a ranking-led shortlist performs worse here than in any other subject we have mapped. Read the department, the research groups and the specialisations. The university's position in a global table will tell you close to nothing about them.
English, duration and entry
24 of the 26 are taught in English, one in English and German, one in German and English. Durations are 24 months on 25 of them and 36 on one — the German two-year norm, held almost perfectly.
Entry requirements are unusually wide where they are recorded: some programmes ask IELTS Academic 7.0, others 5.5, and several accept TOEFL iBT at the new post-2026 scale instead. A 5.5 floor on a mathematics master's is low by any international standard, and it is genuinely on this list.
That matters for a specific group of applicants: strong mathematicians whose English score has been the thing closing doors elsewhere. The mathematics is the barrier here, not the English, and that is the right way round.
On fees
We hold no verified tuition figure for any of our published German programmes, this subject included. Each listing links to the page that can answer it, and we have covered how the German fee structure works separately.
Who it suits
Someone who knows which area of mathematics they want — optimisation, numerics, stochastics, mathematical physics — and is willing to pick a small town to get the right group. Two research years, near-total English coverage, an entry bar set on the mathematics rather than the paperwork.
It suits you less if the name on the certificate is what you are buying. This is the one subject in our German catalogue where that strategy will reliably take you past the best departments.
Browse the set: Applied Mathematics in Germany, master's only, or the subject across every destination we list.
Catalogue figures counted from our published listings on 6 October 2026. We hold no verified tuition figure for German programmes at the time of writing. Photograph: Philipps-Universität Marburg by A.Savin (Free Art License) via Wikimedia Commons.