June 29, 2026 · 12 min read

Which German Language Exam Do You Need for Your Visa? (telc, Goethe, DTZ, B1)

By Language Lab editorial team

telc, Goethe, DTZ, Leben in Deutschland — which German certificate does your residence permit or citizenship actually require, at which level, and how to prepare for the speaking part.

Which German exam do you actually need — and when does it apply?

For most residence and citizenship purposes in Germany you need a B1 certificate, and the two certificates accepted almost everywhere are the telc Deutsch B1 and the Goethe-Zertifikat B1 — they are equivalent in legal value. Which exact level and certificate you need depends on the immigration step: a family-reunion (spouse) visa usually needs A1, the Niederlassungserlaubnis (permanent residence) needs B1, and naturalisation (Einbürgerung) needs B1 plus a separate civic test. The certificate proves the language; it does not grant the permit by itself.

The mistake that costs people months is preparing for the wrong exam. The integration course (Integrationskurs) ends in a specific exam — the Deutsch-Test für Zuwanderer (DTZ), which scores you across A2 and B1 — while a self-study route to permanent residence is usually satisfied with a stand-alone telc or Goethe B1. Citizenship adds the Leben in Deutschland test (a 33-question civic test), which is about German society and law, not language. Knowing exactly which of these your specific permit office wants, before you book and pay, is the single most useful thing you can establish early.

telc B1 vs Goethe B1 vs DTZ — what's the difference?

All three certify B1-level German and all three are recognised by the immigration authorities (Ausländerbehörde). The practical differences are who runs them, where you sit them, and how the levels are reported. telc and Goethe issue a single B1 certificate; the DTZ reports your result as either A2 or B1 depending on how you score, because it is the standardised exit exam of the state integration course.

All four follow a predictable structure, and for the language exams (telc, Goethe, DTZ) the part people fail most is not the reading or listening — it is the speaking. The oral exam is a face-to-face conversation: you introduce yourself, discuss a topic from a prompt card, and plan something jointly with a partner or examiner. You generally need around 60% in both the written and oral parts independently, so a strong written score cannot rescue a weak spoken one.

Why is the speaking part the one that catches people out?

The oral exam rewards the one skill that flashcards and grammar apps barely train: producing correct, spontaneous German out loud, under mild pressure, in a real exchange. You cannot pause to look up a word, and the examiner reacts to what you actually say. People who have studied for months on reading-and-grammar apps routinely arrive able to understand B1 German but unable to speak it fluently enough to pass the oral — because they have never rehearsed the actual back-and-forth of an exam conversation. The fix is not more vocabulary; it is repetition of the spoken format until your responses become automatic.

This is exactly what scenario-based speaking practice is built for. Language Lab lets you rehearse the B1 oral format — the self-introduction, the topic-card discussion, the joint-planning task — out loud against an AI partner that asks the real kinds of questions and corrects you in context. You make the mistakes in practice, hear the corrections in the moment, and walk into the exam having already run the conversation several times. The same approach prepares you for the real-life situations the certificate is supposed to represent: the Bürgeramt, the doctor, the landlord, the bank.