Can I bring my medication to Germany?

Germany is unusual in this wave of countries: it publishes an actual number, and it publishes it on a ministry page rather than leaving you to infer it.

The Federal Ministry of Health page on importing medicines into Germany, Einfuhr von Arzneimittel nach Deutschland, carried a last-updated date of 2 December 2025 when we read it on 7 August 2026. It states that travellers may carry medicines when entering Germany in a quantity corresponding to usual personal need, and it defines usual personal need as, as a rule, a maximum of three months' requirement taking the dosage recommendation into account.

Three details on that page matter as much as the number itself.

• It does not matter whether the medicine is prescription-only or pharmacy-only. The page says so explicitly. The three-month personal-need allowance is not restricted to over-the-counter products.
• It covers arrivals from third countries, not only from EU member states. A flight from the United States or the United Kingdom is inside the rule.
• No import permit and no German marketing authorisation is required for a quantity within personal need. That is the point of the provision: it exists so a traveller does not have to get their own medicine licensed.

Note the phrase "as a rule". Three months is the working definition of usual personal need, not a hard statutory ceiling with a penalty attached, and it is measured against your dosage. Twelve weeks of a once-daily tablet is a different pile of boxes to twelve weeks of a four-times-daily one, and the dosage instruction on your prescription is what makes the quantity defensible.

The page is in German. Its terms are worth recognising if a customs officer uses them: Arzneimittel is medicines, Einreise is entry, üblicher persönlicher Bedarf is usual personal need, and Betäubungsmittel is controlled drugs, which have their own regime and are covered further down.

Be clear about what the ministry page does and does not ask for. For ordinary medicines in a quantity within usual personal need, it sets no documentation requirement at all: no import permit, no German marketing authorisation, no paperwork condition attached to the allowance. The advice to carry original or certified-copy prescriptions or certificates appears on that page only in its supplementary notes on controlled drugs, and it is covered in the next section rather than here.

Carrying your prescriptions anyway is still the sensible move, but treat it as practical preparation rather than a rule you are complying with. It is what turns a bag of unfamiliar boxes into an obvious personal supply if anyone asks.

A workable pack for a family move looks like this.

• Original packaging with the dispensing label attached. Do not decant into a weekly organiser before you fly. The label is the evidence that links the tablets to you and to a dose.
• The prescription, or a certified copy. One per medicine, or a single printed medication summary listing them, as your prescriber's system allows.
• A prescriber's letter using generic names. German brand names differ from American and British ones. The international non-proprietary name of the active substance, the strength and the daily dose are what a German pharmacist or doctor will work from.
• Quantities that visibly match the rule. If the letter shows the daily dose and you are carrying twelve weeks of it, the arithmetic answers the question before it is asked.
• Hand luggage for anything critical. Insulin, inhalers, anticoagulants and anything with a narrow dosing window should not be in a suitcase that can be delayed.

One thing worth understanding about the wider legal background. German customs publishes a separate regime for importing controlled drugs, and it is strict: a permit to handle controlled drugs plus a per-consignment authorisation from the Federal Opium Agency at BfArM, and entry only through designated customs offices. That page is about consignments, not patients, and it is in German. The patient route is the exemption described in the next section. Knowing that the default regime is that tight is a good reason to carry the paperwork that puts you inside the exemption.

If any of your medicines is a controlled drug, a Betäubungsmittel in German law, the three-month personal-need rule is not the whole answer. Opioid painkillers, stimulants prescribed for attention disorders, benzodiazepines and strong sleep medicines are the usual candidates.

The Federal Ministry of Health page states that controlled drugs may be brought in without a permit or authorisation under specified conditions, which include the patient carrying them on the basis of a medical prescription in an appropriate quantity. German customs guidance for travellers puts the quantity test as an amount appropriate to the duration of the journey, with the medical prescription itself serving as the evidence.

The supplementary notes on controlled drugs are also where that page's documentation advice sits: patients in that situation should carry medical prescriptions or certificates in the original, or as certified copies. That advice is written for controlled medicines specifically, not for medicines generally, and for a controlled medicine it is worth following to the letter.

Within the Schengen Area there is a formal instrument, and BfArM, the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices, publishes the clearest official English explanation on its page about travelling with narcotic drugs. Prescribed controlled drugs may be carried under a certificate issued in accordance with Article 75 of the Schengen Implementing Convention of 19 June 1990. A separate certificate is required for each prescribed controlled drug. It must be authenticated by the competent supreme health authority of the federal state, or a body authorised to do it, before the journey begins. It is valid for a maximum of 30 days.

For arrivals from outside the Schengen Area, BfArM's advice is different: the prescribing doctor should issue a multilingual certificate giving the single and daily dose, the international name of the active substance and the duration of the journey, authenticated by the regional health authority, and it notes that there are no internationally harmonised rules, so the destination country's own legal requirements must be checked.

The departure side is a separate permission. If you are leaving the United Kingdom, GOV.UK guidance on travelling with controlled drugs, last updated on 11 April 2023, allows up to a three-month supply of Schedule 2 to 4 (Part I) drugs lawfully prescribed to you on a prescriber's letter, and requires a personal licence above that. The letter must give your name, the medicines, doses, strengths and frequency, and the prescriber's signature and professional registration details, and it must be evident from your travel dates and quantities that you are within three months. That threshold happens to match Germany's personal-need definition, which makes a three-month supply the sensible planning number in both directions.

This is the point at which a lot of relocation advice quietly goes wrong, so it is worth stating on its own.

The Article 75 certificate is capped at 30 days. It is designed for a person travelling with their treatment, not for a person relocating with an ongoing prescription. Nothing about it makes a foreign prescription renewable in Germany, and nothing about it obliges a German pharmacy to dispense anything.

So the shape of a move is two-stage, and both stages need planning. Stage one is carrying a lawful supply in, with the documentation above. Stage two is getting the medicine re-prescribed by a doctor practising in Germany before that supply runs out. For a controlled medicine, stage two takes longer than people expect, because a German prescriber taking over someone else's controlled prescription will want the diagnosis, the treatment history and usually their own assessment before they sign.

The practical planning rule is to work backwards from the date your carried supply ends, subtract the time it takes to register with a Krankenkasse and find a doctor accepting new patients, and start the search in your first fortnight rather than your last.

German prescribing is now largely electronic. gematik, the national digital health agency, states on its E-Rezept page that since 1 January 2024 all doctors have been obliged to use the electronic prescription for prescription medicines dispensed at the expense of the statutory health insurance, and that it can be redeemed at pharmacies with the electronic health card, by smartphone, or as a printout.

That has one consequence a new arrival feels immediately: the electronic health card, the eGK, is issued by your Krankenkasse after you are a member. Until you have it, you are outside the smooth path and dealing in printouts and private prescriptions.

We are not going to tell you that a prescription written in the United States or the United Kingdom can be dispensed by a German pharmacy. There is an EU cross-border prescription regime that covers prescriptions issued in EU and EEA countries, and an American prescription, or a British one issued after the UK left the EU, is not inside it. We could not verify a route that puts them inside it, so plan on a German prescriber writing your prescriptions from your first refill onwards, and treat the documents you bring as the clinical record that makes that appointment quick.

What to take to that first appointment: the active substance names with strengths and daily doses, the indication for each medicine, how long you have been on it, and anything you have tried and stopped. That last item matters more than people think when a doctor is deciding whether to continue a treatment they did not start.

Once you are a member of a statutory health insurer, medicines are not free but they are capped, and the cap is published in English.

The federal health portal gesund.bund.de, on its page about co-payments and exemption from co-payments, states that for prescription medicinal products and dressings the co-payment is 10 percent of the price, subject to a minimum of 5 euros and a maximum of 10 euros. That page carried an as-at date of 15 March 2023 when we read it, so re-check it before relying on the figures.

There is also an annual ceiling. The same page describes a burden limit reached when co-payments total 2 percent of gross family income, reduced to 1 percent for people with a severe chronic illness. For a family managing a long-term condition, that limit is the number that actually shapes the year, and it is worth understanding how your insurer wants co-payments evidenced before you start accumulating receipts.

Two caveats. These are the figures for statutory members, so they do not describe what you pay in the window before your membership begins, and they do not describe privately insured arrangements, which work on reimbursement rather than co-payment. And the euro band is set nationally and can change, which is why the date on that page matters.

The awkward period is the one between landing and being a member of a German health insurer, and for people arriving on a visa it can run for weeks while registration, a contract or a self-employment status is sorted out.

During that window the co-payment figures above do not apply to you, because they describe statutory membership. A consultation is a private consultation and a prescription is a private prescription, paid at the point of care. Private medical cover taken for a residence application or a first period in Germany is designed to carry those costs while your statutory position is being established, and it is the mechanism that lets you see a doctor to get a medicine re-prescribed rather than rationing the supply you carried in.

Three honest limits. No policy changes what you may lawfully carry across a border, so the customs and controlled-drug paperwork above still has to be done. Cover does not oblige a German doctor to continue a treatment started abroad, which is a clinical decision. And what is payable is whatever the policy wording says, so read the outpatient and prescription sections and the claims route when you buy rather than at a pharmacy counter.

If you or a family member takes a regular long-term medicine, the outpatient and prescribed-medicines part of a policy is the section to read hardest. It is the part of a first year in Germany that gets used.