Applications are processed in the order in which they are received. It does not matter whether documents or inquiries are submitted by mail, through the upload portal, by fax, or by email. Initial applications are processed before applications for continued funding. The date indicates the current status of the oldest unprocessed applications or submissions.
If you have received a request for additional information regarding your application for financial aid, the date listed under “Documents/Other Submissions” is the relevant one for you.
The processing status is usually updated at the beginning of each week.
Status as of July 6, 2026:
(Next update: July 13, 2026)
APPLICATIONS: May 3 , 2026
DOCUMENTS / OTHER RECEIPTS: March 31 , 2026
We ask that you refrain from inquiring about the receipt of documents. Please use the BAföG digital online portal to submit applications and to provide additional documents, supporting evidence, and statements. If this is not possible for you, please submit them by mail. Submitting the same documents multiple times through different channels significantly extends processing times.
When you submit your application, you’ll need to provide a lot of information about yourself and your family and include supporting documents. Your application will then be sent to our BAföG office, where the team will check to make sure everything is complete.
The problem: Only a small fraction of initial and renewal applications arrive at our office complete. If anything is missing, we cannot process the application. Instead, we have to write to you by mail and let you know what’s still missing. Only once you’ve submitted all the missing information can we move forward.
Our office received 14,000 applications last year, the majority of which were submitted around the start of the winter semester. Because so many documents are incomplete, our team spends a lot of time sending out requests for additional information and processing the supplementary documents. This significantly delays the processing. When we receive your additional documents, we process them in the order they are received. We work through them chronologically as they come in. Otherwise, we would have to make newly received applications—even if they are complete—wait until ongoing cases are finished.
As soon as your application is complete, things move quickly: We calculate your grant, you receive the notification, and the funds are transferred. If something is missing again, we’ll write to you once more—and the cycle starts all over.