Ausbildung in Germany, explained honestly
Written for students in Nepal who are considering vocational training in Germany. Nothing here is for sale.
An Ausbildung is paid vocational training in Germany. You work in a company and attend a vocational school (Berufsschule) at the same time, usually for three years, and you are paid a wage throughout. At the end you hold a state-recognised qualification.
It is a real route and thousands of people take it every year. It is also slower and harder than most agencies will tell you, and some of what you may have been told is simply not true.
This site exists because the information you can find is mostly written by people who are paid if you go. Everything here is sourced, and where something is uncertain it says so.
Five things worth knowing before you spend any money
Know what you are paying for. German lessons and exam fees are real costs and worth paying. But no one on the German side may charge you for finding your place — German law puts that cost on the employer. And Nepali institutes are themselves regulated: they need a licence, must publish their fees, and may not take cash. People are being quoted 7 to 16 lakh. Ask what the money buys before you borrow against your family's land to pay it. Read the detail
B1 opens the door. B2 is what makes the first year easier. The embassy in Kathmandu generally asks for B1, certified and not older than six months, and you can start applying for training places at B1. Some vocational schools accept B1; others ask for B2. Plenty of people arrive with B1 and manage. But the difference shows once you are in Germany and following lessons in German all day, and teachers in Nepal report that many students stop at B1 and comparatively few carry on to B2. If you can reach B2 before you fly, do.
The exam queue is the real bottleneck, not your German. In August 2026 around 1,200 people queued overnight in Kathmandu for 187 exam places — at A2. Plan the certificate first and everything else around it. Read the detail
There is a way past the visa waiting list, and your employer holds it. Since 1 December 2025 the embassy in Kathmandu allocates visa appointments from a waiting list. But it has confirmed to us that anyone holding a Vorabzustimmung gets an appointment within three weeks — email it in and they schedule you. Only your employer can obtain one. They pay €411 and most have never heard of it. This is the most useful page on the site. Read the detail
For health and care work, the restriction is on agencies — not on you. Nepal is on the World Health Organization's health workforce safeguards list. Because of that, private agencies are prohibited from recruiting or placing people from Nepal into German health and care jobs, and advertising for it is prohibited too. Only the Federal Employment Agency may do that placement.
None of that stops you applying on your own initiative. What it does mean is that if an agency approaches you offering nursing work in Germany, the approach itself is the thing that is not permitted — and that tells you something about who you are dealing with. If care work is what you want, the Au Pair route is how several Nepali women have actually got there.
The two questions people ask us most
"How do I actually find a place?" You find it yourself, free. On the day this site was last checked the German employment agency was advertising 165,002 training places, open to anyone with a browser. Places are not the scarce thing. An employer willing to take someone who still needs a visa is. Where to search, and what to send
"Can my husband, wife or children come with me?" There is a route in the statute for a spouse and for children — but it turns on a condition decided before you ever leave Nepal, and on whether a trainee's wage supports two people. Anyone giving you a confident timescale is guessing. What the law actually says
What this site will not do
It will not find you a place, take your documents, or ask you for money. It is not an agency and has nothing to sell.
Tell us when we are wrong
Every claim on this site says where it came from and when it was checked. That is not a boast — it is so that you can check us, and so that a mistake is findable instead of invisible. We have already been wrong more than once, and each time someone caught it the page changed.
If something here is out of date, or an embassy or an authority told you something different, please write to clockw1se-nepal@yahoo.com. We will check it and either correct the page or explain why it stands. You do not need to prove anything, and you do not need to be polite about it.
Nobody else writing about this has any reason to be corrected. We do.