Minimum Wage in Germany (2026)

Key numbers at a glance

The Minimum Wage Commission (Mindestlohnkommission) agreed a two-stage increase in mid-2025 — €13.90 for 2026 and €14.60 for 2027 — which the cabinet adopted into law. Germany is also, by purchasing power, the EU's real minimum wage leader in 2026. Figures below are gross, per Eurostat (earn_mw_cur) and the commission's reports. The unweighted average of the 22 EU national minimums is about €1,379 a month in mid-2026, so Germany’s rate sits roughly 70% above that benchmark.

Minimum wage in Germany: the rate

A parity commission — three employer representatives, three union representatives, plus two academic members and advisory seats for government — reviews the minimum wage every two years and recommends the next stages. Its guiding benchmark is the development of collectively agreed wages, and since 2025 the law adds an explicit adequacy consideration aligned with the EU directive. Recommendations become a statutory instrument and apply nationwide. There is one hourly rate for adults; no lower regional rates, no sectoral opt-outs (sectoral commissions can only set higher floors, and a handful do — mainly construction and electrical trades, whose agreed minimums exceed the general rate).

Germany introduced the general minimum wage only in 2015, at €8.50, after years of debate and union opposition to state interference in collectively agreed pay. The path since: €8.84 (2017), €9.19 (2019), €9.35 (2020), the Covid-delayed steps to €10.45 (2021), then €10.88 and €12.00 in 2022, the one-off political increase to €12.41 in 2024, €12.82 in 2025 — the first stage of the commission's regular two-year cycle — and now €13.90 in 2026 with €14.60 legislated for 2027. Coverage is broad: roughly two million contracts sit directly on the minimum, and several million more within a euro of it.

The €13.90 rate is gross and hourly; €2,343 is Eurostat's monthly full-time conversion. Key exemptions: the general minimum wage does not apply to under-18s without completed vocational training, apprentices within compulsory training, participants in entry-level and orientation internships, and long-term unemployed during their first months in a job (phasing out). Working students in mandatory course-related internships are also outside it. Enforcement runs through the customs authority's Financial Control of Undeclared Work (FKS), which conducts inspections and issues fines; employers paying below scale can also be excluded from public procurement for up to three years — a penalty with real teeth in the German contracting market.

Youth and trainee rates. Effectively no youth sub-rates: the full €13.90 applies from 18 (earlier with completed vocational training). Only the narrow exemption groups above can be paid less, and there is no general youth percentage ladder as in France or the Netherlands.

How Germany compares

In euro terms, Germany's statutory minimum is €2,343 a month gross. Germany sits in Eurostat's top band (over €1,500 a month). The table below sets the rate against neighbouring systems, the EU's highest and lowest statutory floors, and the EU average of roughly €1,379 (unweighted mean of the 22 national rates, Eurostat data for mid-2026).

The comparison to hold on to: Luxembourg tops the statutory table at €2,771 and Bulgaria closes it at €620 — a 4.5-to-1 spread that has been narrowing slowly as the east converges. Germany's position relative to that spread defines both its wage-cost competitiveness and its workers' purchasing power.

Purchasing power. Germany is the purchasing-power champion: at 2,164 PPS in mid-2026 its minimum was worth more in real terms than Luxembourg's (2,108), with the Netherlands third on 2,023 — per Eurostat's purchasing power standard comparison. Germany's 2026–27 stages extend that lead, which is why unions used the PPS league table, not the nominal one, to argue for the €14.60 second step.

Where to verify the current rate

• Eurostat, Monthly minimum wages (earn_mw_cur)
• Minimum Wage Commission (Mindestlohnkommission)
• Eurofound — minimum wage in Germany

Neighbouring countries and related pages

Wage floors change at every border. Compare Germany with Netherlands and Poland, and see also Denmark — the full list of 30 country pages is on the by-country hub, and the pan-European tables are in our minimum wage comparison.