Because many of these posts are a work in progress, I’ve created a German Freelance Visa Facebook group to help answer any individual questions as they arise. Please feel free to ask your questions there or in the comments below, and if you’ve successfully received your visa, please pass your knowledge along by helping to answer questions as well. Thanks and please join here!

After much planning and stress, I’ve just come out on the other side of successfully getting the German Freelancer visa, on my first visit no less. In preparing for the visa, I read countless guides, stories, and checklists, but always came out needing more information on one topic or another. So I’ve decided to recount my experience and decisions in much more detail from what I’ve found for the benefit of others stressing out about this experience.

Of course, this comes with a huge disclaimer. This was my experience and my experience alone. I hope you can learn from it, but this is not advice, legal or otherwise, and definitely should not be used as your only source of information. Requirements may change, your background is likely different from mine, I may have gotten lucky. Use what you can, but don’t quote this as gospel.

Because I’ll be going into such detail, I’m going to break this into several posts, writing as quickly as I can. However, if there are sections I should prioritize over others, let me know in the comments. You can also sign up for our email list to be notified when new posts go live!

German Freelance Visa Process Outline

1. My Background
2. Checklist
3. Booking the Appointment
4. Living on the Tourist Visa
5. Registering your Address
6. Forms
   1. Application
   2. Capital Budget
   3. Profit/Loss
7. Health Insurance
8. Extras
   1. Letters of intent
   2. Bank statements
   3. Budget
   4. “Presentation”
   5. Translation
9. Interview Appointment
   1. Getting there
   2. German vs English
10. FAQ
11. Getting settled in your new home!

Don’t forget to join our Facebook Group!

Next Up: Booking the Appointment

Sidenote: For any Americans (or other nationalities that have the same 90-day tourist visa restrictions as us), I found now and in my previous travels, that keeping track of my tourist visa in Schengen is incredibly difficult due to the rolling nature of the visa (it does not reset when you leave Schengen, we are allowed 90 out of every 180 days). To make this easier to track, I built myself a very very basic (Android) app called How Long Can I Stay? (HLCIS) to track days left. If you would like to use it, feel free, but just know I recognize the design and functionality is very basic. Hopefully one day I can spend more time on this, so let me know if you have any feature requests.