🇺🇦 German Pension Refund for Ukrainian Citizens

Do I qualify for a German pension refund as a Ukrainian citizen?

Three things are checked on the day the application is filed: the citizenships you hold, where your home is, and whether 24 full months have passed since your last month of mandatory pension insurance in Germany or another listed country. Ukrainian citizenship on its own satisfies the first; the other two depend on where you have lived and worked since Germany — and, for many readers, on whether you have left the EU at all.

Citizenship — every citizenship you hold counts, and the stricter rule decides

Ukrainian citizens fall into the general group of German refund law: no ceiling on contribution months and no residence rule of their own. A German, EU, EEA, Swiss or British citizenship held as well closes the refund before German retirement age (one narrow exception aside), whether you ever used that passport or not; a US or Canadian one brings that country's 60-month limit instead, and an Israeli one a block only while living in Israel. Temporary protection in Germany or another EU country is a residence status, not a citizenship — it adds nothing to the citizenship check, though the address it comes with matters below. On the Ukrainian side, Ukraine adopted a law in 2025, in force since 16 January 2026, that recognises multiple citizenship with countries on a government list; whether a second citizenship of yours sits inside that rule is for the Ukrainian authorities to confirm, and for the German claim the test is simpler — every citizenship legally held on the filing date counts, one acquired after a valid application does not undo the claim, and a pending application is not yet a citizenship. Name every citizenship you hold, may hold or have applied for before anything is filed.

Residence — outside the EU, the UK and India

The second condition is your home address on the filing date. Ukraine passes it, and so do Canada, the USA, Türkiye, Moldova, Georgia, the UAE — and Switzerland or Norway, which sit outside the residence rule. The addresses that close the refund are the ones many Ukrainians hold today: Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic and every other EU state, and the UK. A home there keeps the refund closed for as long as you live there, whatever passport you hold (the same narrow exception aside) — the contributions wait; they are not lost. Only Indian citizens can claim from a home in India. A visit to relatives in Germany is not a home there.

The 24-month waiting period — counted from your last month of mandatory insurance in Germany or another listed country

Condition three: 24 full months must separate your last month of mandatory pension insurance — in Germany, another EU state, the UK, Türkiye or an ex-Yugoslav state (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia) — from the application (Deutsche Rentenversicherung sets out the rule here). The anchor is the contribution month, not the day you deregistered or left the country; the first day of the 25th month after it is your earliest filing date, and filing earlier gains nothing — the period does not shorten, and extra confirmation requests can follow. Where you go next matters: an insured job in Warsaw, Prague or Istanbul after Germany restarts the 24 months from that job's last contribution month (and a home in Poland or the Czech Republic keeps the refund closed meanwhile), while local employment in Kyiv, Chișinău, Tbilisi or Toronto — with no compulsory German pension insurance continuing under a posting from Germany — leaves the count where your last German month put it; paying into Ukraine's pension system never moves it, nor does insurance in Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein for anyone outside the no-refund group. No deadline applies to a first application; no interest is paid for the years before it. Enter your last contribution month in our waiting-period calculator and it returns the earliest filing date.

What you need to start

Is there a 60-month limit for Ukrainian citizens?

There is none. The 59-month cap belongs to citizens of the USA, India, Canada, Australia, Brazil, South Korea, the Philippines, Albania, Moldova, North Macedonia and Uruguay — and to Japanese citizens while they live in Japan — counting contribution months plus the German months credited to the account (child-raising periods, for instance, or months on unemployment benefit, though not every line of the insurance record counts) and nothing from any other country. Each cap rests on a social security agreement that gives that country's citizens the right to pay voluntary German contributions, and whoever holds that right — used or not — cannot take the money out early. Ukraine has no such agreement in force with Germany: one was signed in November 2018 but has never taken effect, Ukraine not having ratified it, so Deutsche Rentenversicherung treats Ukraine as a country without an agreement. So a Ukrainian citizen who holds no other citizenship and lives outside the EU, the UK and India has no such right, and after the 24-month wait German law refunds the employee share however many months the record shows. Sixty German months change something else: the five-year qualifying period (allgemeine Wartezeit) is met and a German old-age pension at retirement age has been earned, payable wherever you then live — the refund replaces it, after which the refunded months never count towards a pension again.

Three illustrative journeys — Kyiv, Lviv, Warsaw

Worked examples, not client cases.

The IT specialist back in Kyiv. Berlin on an EU Blue Card from March 2019 to February 2025 — 72 months at €4,800 gross, statutory pension contributions paid throughout — then a Kyiv employer from March 2025, a local contract with no posting from Germany. No limit: €446.40 a month, roughly €32,100 in refundable employee contributions, claimable from 1 March 2027, the first day of the 25th month after February 2025. With 72 months he has also earned a German old-age pension at retirement age, which the refund would replace — a comparison worth making before he decides.

The accountant who came in 2022 and went home to Lviv. Arrived in Hamburg under temporary protection in March 2022; state support — asylum-seekers' benefits until May 2022, then Arbeitslosengeld II, the benefit later renamed Bürgergeld — and a language course until August 2022; employed from September 2022 to June 2025 — 34 months at €2,900 gross — and back in Lviv from July 2025. The months on support, with no job and no child-raising period in them, hold no contributions of hers and add nothing to the refund; the 34 employed months do: €269.70 a month, roughly €9,200 in refundable employee contributions, claimable from 1 July 2027. With 34 months she is below the five-year qualifying period, so no German pension stands against the refund.

The nurse who moved on to Warsaw. Munich from January 2020 to December 2023 — 48 months at €3,600 gross — then a Polish employment contract in Warsaw, under Polish mandatory insurance, from March 2024. Her German months are worth €334.80 each, roughly €16,100 in refundable employee contributions, but two things stand in the way while she lives in Poland: the address itself, inside the EU, keeps the refund closed, and Poland is on the restart list, so once she leaves the EU the 24 months will run from her last Polish insured month, not from Munich. The contributions are not lost; the date simply moves with her.

For your own figure, the free refund calculator takes a minute.

Which of your years in Germany actually paid pension contributions?

Two questions sort your German years before any month is counted: was statutory pension insurance paid for the stretch, and was any of it paid by you?

• Employment based in Germany under German social insurance — the normal result of a German employment contract, whether on an EU Blue Card, a skilled-worker permit, a temporary-protection permit or any other work permit — brings pension insurance from the start: every month counts and the employee share is refundable. Lower pay is the exception: for months in employment covered by the Übergangsbereich rules for the relevant year (in 2026, regular pay between €603.01 and €2,000 a month) the refund is half of the total pension contributions paid for them — 9.3% of gross pay is the wrong sum for those months, so a part-time job at €1,500 a month in 2026 is insured and every month counts, but its refund follows the half-of-total rule (for years before 2023 the band's upper limit was lower, so the year decides).
• Months on Bürgergeld or Arbeitslosengeld hold no contributions of yours. Receiving Bürgergeld — Arbeitslosengeld II until 2022, Grundsicherungsgeld since July 2026 — does not itself generate pension contributions or restart the waiting period; any insured employment or qualifying child-raising period during those months is checked separately, because those do count. Months on Arbeitslosengeld are normally pension-insured, with the Federal Employment Agency paying the contribution: nothing of yours to refund, but they appear in the record as credited months, and where they followed your last job, the 24-month wait counts from the last month for which the Agency paid. A language or integration course is not employment either.
• Werkstudent jobs are pension-insured although students pay no health, care or unemployment insurance through that employment; above the minijob limit the months count and the contributions come back. Ausbildung contracts are pension-insured too, and the Übergangsbereich rules are not applied to training pay. (Only where training pay was €325 a month or less did the employer bear the whole contribution; those months count, but hold no employee share.)
• Minijobs turn on one choice: if the small employee top-up (the default since 2013) was kept, the months count and the top-up is refundable; if it was waived, only the employer's flat-rate contributions were paid: nothing of yours is in the record and those months neither block nor restart the waiting period, though they can still earn partial credit toward the five-year qualifying period.
• A scholarship or stipend without an employment contract — a DAAD-funded stay, say — carries no pension insurance, whereas a doctoral or postdoc position on an employment contract is insured like any job. Freelance or self-employed work usually falls outside mandatory insurance, and where voluntary or compulsory self-employed contributions were paid, the refund is half of them. A posting to Germany from a Ukrainian employer, fixed in length and with the employment relationship left in Ukraine, may have stayed outside German insurance under the Einstrahlung rule — German law alone decides, no agreement being in force — and such months hold nothing to refund.

What memory and old payslips give you is an estimate; what is refunded is what the official insurance record (Versicherungsverlauf) shows — in a managed claim we obtain and review that record where required.

How much comes back — and what about tax in Ukraine?

The refund is your own share of the contributions — 9.3% of gross pay since 2018, charged up to the monthly ceiling (Beitragsbemessungsgrenze: €8,450 in 2026, €8,050 in 2025) — and normally the whole of it; the employer's share stays in the system, and pay above the ceiling was never insured. The main exceptions change the calculation: voluntary contributions and the compulsory contributions of self-employed people are refunded at 50%; months in employment covered by the Übergangsbereich rules for the relevant year at half of the total contributions paid for them; and where Deutsche Rentenversicherung once funded a benefit for you — a rehabilitation programme, say — only the contributions paid after it are refundable, while the completed refund still closes the whole record. These are checked before anything is filed. The legal basis is § 210 SGB VI.

Across our retained completed paid cases — all nationalities — the average refund was €11,571.66 and the median €10,327.10 (calculated 24 August 2026), with completed refunds on record from under €200 to over €53,000. Our refund calculator applies the actual statutory employee contribution rate and monthly ceiling (Beitragsbemessungsgrenze) of every year back to 1975 — including Deutsche-Mark periods and East/West differences — rather than a flat percentage.

On the German side the refund is paid out without income tax; the exemption is written into German law and confirmed by the Federal Fiscal Court. Whether the money is taxed where you live is a separate matter: Ukrainian tax residents are taxed on their worldwide income, subject to the exemptions and treaty rules that apply, and whether a German contribution refund falls into that net in your case — or into another country's, if you live elsewhere — is for a local adviser to say; we do not provide individual tax, pension or legal advice.

Which German pension office handles a Ukrainian citizen's claim?

No liaison office (Verbindungsstelle) exists for Ukraine, so the office is found in five steps: Knappschaft-Bahn-See if it was ever your carrier; otherwise DRV Bund if it was the last carrier of your account; otherwise the liaison office of a second citizenship (DRV Nord for a US or Canadian citizen); otherwise the liaison office for your country of residence where one exists (DRV Nord for the USA and Canada — our guide names the offices for Türkiye, Moldova and the ex-Yugoslav states); otherwise — from Ukraine, Georgia or the UAE — the regional office that holds your account. Our guide to the responsible pension office has the full decision tree and the office finder. In a managed claim, our German partner law firm files the claim with the recommended office we identify from your record.

Getting paid in Ukraine — or wherever you live

No German bank account is required. In a claim we manage, your refund is paid through the escrow account operated by our German partner law firm; after the agreed service fee is deducted, the remaining balance is transferred to the bank account you nominate — a third-party account can be used where the required account-holder declaration and compliance checks are satisfied. Account-holder checks, international sanctions and banking restrictions can limit where — and in which currency — the money can be sent, so the route for a transfer to Ukraine or elsewhere is checked shortly before the money moves. Eligibility and payment route are separate: a valid refund may require an account in a permitted country if transfers to the residence country are restricted.

Digital for most clients — certified signatures where a Ukrainian citizen needs one

Most clients can complete their entire part of the process digitally: you submit your details and sign online. Every client has their identity and signature confirmed using their passport or an accepted equivalent; depending on the route, that confirmation can be completed digitally or, where a certified signature is needed, in person. Where one is needed, we prepare the document and you have it certified by one certifier — no combination of certifiers is ever required. In Ukraine the German Embassy in Kyiv is the route to try first, and usually the cheaper one: it certifies signatures on documents for use with a German authority whatever your nationality, you sign in person before the consular officer by appointment booked online, and it has resumed operations while performing consular tasks only to a limited extent until further notice, with the Consulate General for Donetsk (seated in Dnipro) still closed — so check the Embassy's current service notice before you plan on it. The alternative is a Ukrainian notary or a bank whose certification the responsible pension office accepts for that particular document; a certifier that does not read the document's language may ask for a translation first, which costs more and takes longer. Required local certification, notary or translation costs are borne by the client. From Canada, the USA or Türkiye, the German mission there certifies in the same way, by appointment, with a local notary or bank as the alternative where the pension office accepts it for the document. If DRV Oldenburg-Bremen is responsible for your refund — for a Ukrainian citizen that is the usual result of living in Australia, unless Knappschaft-Bahn-See ever insured you or DRV Bund was the last carrier of your account — we prepare the power of attorney and payment declaration and ask you to send us the signed originals.

You may apply directly to Deutsche Rentenversicherung without using our service; the pension office charges no application fee. Self-filing from abroad means paper — form V0901 in the post, since ordinary email is not accepted for identity reasons and fax has been discontinued. In a self-filed claim, the official application form provides for your personal data to be certified on the form itself, so the application travels to the certifying body — the Embassy, or a notary or bank whose certification the pension office accepts for that form. In a managed claim, the analog step is a single page we prepare for you. The form is walked through section by section in our V0901 guide.

Living in Ukraine with another citizenship?

Holding another passport and living in Ukraine? The address passes — Ukraine is outside the EU, the UK and India — and paying into the Ukrainian pension system neither blocks, restarts nor counts, whatever your citizenship. Your citizenship's own rule applies: no limit for most nationalities; the 60-month limit, counting German months only, for citizens of the eleven countries named above — US, Canadian, Australian, Indian, Korean, Filipino and Moldovan citizens among them; no refund before German retirement age for German, Polish and other EU, EEA, Swiss and British citizens (one narrow exception aside). Our guide for citizens of other countries sets out the rule nationality by nationality.

A family member's German contributions

Where a spouse, registered partner or parent has died with German contributions on record, the closest family — the surviving spouse or registered partner and, in the cases the law provides for, the children — can be entitled to a refund of those contributions where no German survivor's pension is payable because the deceased had not met the five-year qualifying period (allgemeine Wartezeit). Checking that period means looking beyond the German months — at foreign periods that count toward it (periods under Ukraine's pension system do not — no agreement is in force) and at the rules that treat it as met in special cases. Survivors need not wait 24 months, but their claim can become time-barred four years after the end of the year of death. Where the qualifying period was met, a German survivor's pension may be payable instead — worldwide, the payment route being a separate question. Our German widow's pension guide and the survivors chapter of the complete guide explain who can claim, in which order and with what evidence.

Frequently asked questions