We list 20 International Business Administration master's programmes in Germany, and their durations break a pattern that has held across every other German subject in this series.
12 months on six programmes, 18 months on six, 24 months on eight.
Why that matters
Look at what the rest of the German catalogue does. Biology: 24 months on all 38. Biochemistry: 24 on all 27. Computer Science: 63 of 69. Applied Mathematics: 25 of 26. The German master's is a two-year degree, and in the laboratory sciences there is no shorter version at all.
Here, 30% of the list finishes in a year and another 30% in eighteen months. For a self-funding student that is the single biggest variable on the page — a year of living costs, and twelve months earlier into a salary.
The reason is the subject rather than the country. International business is taught, not researched: coursework, cases, a project, frequently an exchange semester. There is no laboratory schedule setting the pace, so the degree can be built short in a way a biochemistry master's cannot.
If the two-year commitment is what has kept Germany off your shortlist, this is the subject where that objection does not apply — and it sits alongside the UK's 12-month master's on time while offering a different cost structure entirely.
Where the 20 are
By institution: Universität Bremen (5), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (2), Freie Universität Berlin (2), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (2), Technische Universität Berlin (2), with Augsburg and Goethe-University Frankfurt on one each.
By city: Berlin (6), Bremen (5), Munich (2), then Augsburg, Frankfurt am Main, Würzburg and Freiberg with one apiece.
Bremen at five is the deepest single address — a northern port city, which for a subject about international trade is less of a coincidence than it looks. Berlin's six are split across the same three universities that dominate every other German social science we have mapped.
Language: check this one
18 of the 20 are taught in English. One runs in German and French, and one in German, English and French — almost certainly joint degrees with partner institutions abroad.
Two out of twenty is a small exception, but it is a consequential one: a programme taught in German and French is not a near miss for an English-speaking applicant, it is closed. Read the language of instruction on the page, as with Political Science, where a third of the list is not fully English.
Entry, and fees
English requirements where recorded run from IELTS Academic 5.5 to 6.5, with programmes variously accepting UNIcert II, Cambridge B2 First, TOEIC 785, TOEFL Essentials and TOEFL iBT 72–83. That is an unusually long list of alternatives even by German standards — if you have sat any mainstream English test, check before paying for another.
We hold no verified tuition figure for any German programme. Each listing links to the page that can answer it; the German fee structure is covered separately.
Who it suits
Someone who wants a European business master's, is comfortable with a taught rather than research degree, and wants the option of finishing in a year. That combination is rare in Germany and this is where it lives.
Browse the set: International Business Administration in Germany, master's only, or compare with the same subject in Finland, where it is overwhelmingly a bachelor's route.
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: Universität Bremen by Roland Kutzki (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Wikimedia Commons.