How to bring your family to Germany: spouse and children
2 min read · 8 steps · Updated 2 October 2026
With a residence permit that allows family reunification, your spouse and unmarried minor children can join you. They apply for a visa at the German embassy. You need enough income, living space and health insurance, and the spouse usually needs basic German (A1). EU Blue Card holders are exempt from the language rule.
Family reunification, in German Familiennachzug, is a right for most people who live in Germany with a work or study-based residence permit, but it comes with conditions, and the process at the embassy can take many months. Start it as early as you can.
Rules, amounts and deadlines change. Check the official source named at the end before you act, and ask the office in your city, because procedures differ from town to town.
Step by step
Check your own residence permit
Your permit must be one that allows you to bring family. The permits for skilled workers and the EU Blue Card do. A tourist visa or a tolerated stay (Duldung) does not.
Know who counts as family
The rules cover your husband or wife and your unmarried children under 18. Both spouses must be at least 18. Other relatives are only admitted in cases of exceptional hardship.
Show that you can support them
You must earn enough to provide for the family without help from the Jobcentre or the social welfare office, and everyone needs health insurance. In the public system, a spouse and children without income are covered through your family insurance.
Show enough living space
As a guide, the authorities expect about 12 square metres per person aged six or over and 10 square metres per younger child. Holders of an EU Blue Card and of certain skilled worker permits do not have to prove living space.
Prepare the spouse's German certificate
The spouse normally has to show basic German at level A1 before the visa is issued. There are exceptions: if you hold an EU Blue Card or a permit as a highly qualified person or researcher, and where learning German beforehand is impossible or unreasonable, for example because of illness.
Book the embassy appointment
Each family member applies in person at the German embassy or consulate responsible for where they live. They bring the visa application forms, passports, the marriage certificate, birth certificates, a copy of your residence permit and passport, and German translations of all foreign documents. The embassy says which documents must be legalised or verified.
Wait for the decision
The embassy sends the file to the immigration office in your German city, which checks income and housing. This often takes several months and sometimes more than a year.
After arrival
The family registers the address at the Bürgeramt and then applies to the immigration office (Ausländerbehörde) for residence permits before the visas expire.
Good to know
Since March 2024, skilled workers who hold certain permits, among them the EU Blue Card, can also bring their parents, and the parents of a spouse who lives in Germany with them. The rule is limited to the end of 2028 and requires that the living costs and health insurance of the parents are secured.
Family members who join a skilled worker are generally allowed to work in Germany.
In countries where documents have to be verified, such as Pakistan, the verification alone can take months. Ask the embassy for its current information sheet before you book anything.
The salary thresholds for the Blue Card: EU Blue Card salary check. First steps after arrival: how to register your address in Germany.
In short: Right permit, spouse and minor children, income, space and insurance, A1 German unless you hold a Blue Card, visa at the embassy, then residence permits in Germany.
- Handbook Germany: Family Reunification for Immigrants
- Residence Act (Aufenthaltsgesetz), sections 27 to 36a
Rules and prices change. Check the official source before you act.