We list 38 Political Science master's programmes in Germany. Across the three other German subjects we have written up this week — Economics, Computer Science and Biology — English coverage ran from 91% to 100%. Political Science is the outlier, and the difference matters.
27 of 38 are taught in English
Counted from our listings: 27 are English-taught, 4 are recorded as German and English, and 3 as German, Spanish, English and a further teaching language. The remainder carry no language recorded.
Eleven out of thirty-eight is not a rounding error. It is roughly a third of the subject, and it is the one place in our German catalogue where an applicant who assumes English will be wrong often enough to matter. Check the language of instruction on the programme page before anything else — ahead of the fee, ahead of the rank, ahead of the city.
There is a reason for it, and it is not an oversight. Political science is taught through a country's own political vocabulary, case law and public debate; a German programme about German and European politics has a defensible reason to be delivered partly in German. The multi-language programmes are usually joint or Erasmus-style degrees with partners in other countries, which is a feature rather than a complication — provided you knew before you applied.
Where the 38 are
By city: Berlin (12), Göttingen (3), Bayreuth (3), Bochum (2), Giessen (2), Hamburg (2) and Frankfurt am Main (2).
By institution: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (4), Freie Universität Berlin (4), Technische Universität Berlin (4), the University of Göttingen (3), the University of Bayreuth (3), Ruhr-Universität Bochum (2) and Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen (2).
Berlin again holds a third, and for this subject in particular that concentration is not incidental — it is the seat of federal government, and the proximity to ministries, think tanks and international organisations is a large part of what a Berlin political science degree is for. Bayreuth is the one most worth looking up if your interest is African or development politics; it is a specialism that does not show in a general ranking.
Durations and entry
Durations: 24 months on 33 programmes, 18 months on 3 and 12 months on 2. The German two-year norm holds.
Where an English requirement is recorded, it runs from IELTS 6.0 to 7.0, with some programmes asking TOEFL iBT 110 at the top end and others accepting UNIcert, PTE or Cambridge C1 Advanced as alternatives. As with Economics, the accepted-test list is wider than an Indian applicant usually expects, so check before booking another sitting.
On fees
We hold no verified tuition figure for any German programme in our catalogue, this subject included. Each listing links to the page that can answer it; we have written about how the German fee structure works separately.
Who it suits
A German political science master's suits someone with a genuine interest in European politics and institutions, who wants two years rather than one, and who treats the language question as a decision rather than an afterthought. If you intend to work in the field in Germany afterwards, German is not optional — and the programmes that teach partly in German are, for that path, an advantage rather than a hurdle.
It suits you less if you want an English-only degree and will not check which of the 38 qualify, because a third of this list will not.
Browse the set: Political Science 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: University of Göttingen by A.Savin (Free Art License) via Wikimedia Commons.