KAAD Scholarship Programme 1

Who can apply

Catholic, or, for applicants from the Near and Middle East, generally of a Christian denomination; applicants of another religion may be funded if a Catholic partner proposes them based on a documented willingness to engage in interreligious dialogue
Already holds a university degree and professional experience in their home country
German language skills before entry: at least B1 for a German-taught degree, or at least A2 for an English-taught one, since the compulsory educational programme itself runs in German
The scholarship must be aimed at permanent reintegration in the applicant's home region; KAAD states that if it is not, the scholarship is treated as a loan
KAAD expects above-average performance potential for the proposed study or research, plus a demonstrated religious and social commitment or willingness to engage in interreligious dialogue, beyond the base religious eligibility criteria

A thinner entry by necessity, not by omission

This entry is genuinely thinner than most on this site, and that’s a direct result of what KAAD itself publishes rather than a gap in how it was checked, confirmed again on this check. KAAD’s own pages set out eligibility in real detail, but nowhere on kaad.de, in English or German, is there a stated award value, an itemised list of what’s covered beyond a language course, or a deadline. Widely repeated secondary figures (a 15 January or 30 June deadline) simply are not on KAAD’s own site and are deliberately left out here rather than published as if they were confirmed.

Why: applications route through regional partner committees, not one central process

The reason traces back to how KAAD is actually structured: it works through partner committees in your own region, and applications from outside those regions are only considered in exceptional cases. Your real deadline, and likely more of the real financial detail, sits with the committee for your own country, reachable through KAAD’s regional contact pages for Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, not through a single central process.

The religious requirement isn’t absolute, and the German requirement is real either way

Two eligibility details are worth reading closely before assuming this doesn’t apply to you. The religious requirement is not absolute: applicants of another religion can still be funded if a Catholic partner puts them forward specifically on the basis of a documented commitment to interreligious dialogue. And the German-language requirement is real regardless of which language your actual degree is taught in, since KAAD’s compulsory educational programme itself runs in German; budget for that language preparation as part of the real cost of this scholarship, even though KAAD frames it as a benefit rather than a requirement. If German-language preparation isn’t something you want to take on, see the guide to getting a scholarship to study in Germany without German for routes that don’t carry this requirement.

What KAAD expects beyond the baseline eligibility criteria

Beyond the baseline eligibility criteria, KAAD’s own page sets out what it expects from a scholar: above-average performance potential in the proposed study or research, a demonstrated religious and social commitment or willingness to engage in interreligious dialogue, and, again, orientation of the study or research toward returning permanently to your home region. These read less like hard eligibility gates and more like what the selection committee is actually weighing once the baseline criteria are met, so a strong application should speak directly to them rather than treating them as boilerplate.