Inviting Your Parents and Family to Germany 2026: Visit Visa and Verpflichtungserklärung

Do Your Parents Need a Visa to Visit Germany?

Start with their passport, not yours. Your residence permit or German passport changes nothing about whether they need a visa. Here is how it looks for the countries our readers usually invite from, checked against the Auswärtiges Amt's visa list:

Visa-free or not, every visit counts toward the same limit of 90 days in any rolling 180-day window across the whole Schengen area. Since April 2026 the EU's Entry/Exit System records each entry and exit with fingerprints and a photo instead of a passport stamp, so an overstay is recorded automatically. Count the days before you book the return flight.

Two Ways to Prove the Money: Verpflichtungserklärung or Their Own Funds

The embassy needs to believe the trip is paid for. Either you guarantee it with a formal declaration, or your guest shows they can pay. The embassy in Cairo accepts both: the formal obligation letter, or an informal signed invitation with your contact details and a copy of your passport and residence permit.

How Much Do You Need to Earn to Invite Your Parents?

This is the question everyone asks and almost no official page answers with a number. The honest answer is that there is no national threshold. Your Ausländerbehörde looks at the part of your net income that a creditor could garnish under the § 850c ZPO table, after your own dependants are protected, and asks whether it is big enough to carry your guests. Cologne says this openly: the garnishment limit is the basis of the calculation for every declaration.

Munich is one of the few offices that publish their numbers, and they show how the system works:

Behind those figures is one rule: Munich wants €281.50 of garnishable income for each invited visitor, plus a quarter of the standard benefit rate for each child travelling along. So inviting both parents needs twice the garnishable amount of inviting one, and every child of your own that you support raises the income at which garnishable money starts. That is why a family man on a good salary can still fall short for two parents while a single colleague on less passes easily.

Other offices use the same garnishment table but rarely publish their per-guest amount, so treat the Munich numbers as a realistic guide, not a promise. The garnishment table itself is updated every 1 July, so a declaration you passed last spring might not pass this autumn.

If your income is not enough

• Sign jointly with your spouse or another relative living in Germany, so both incomes count. Each person who signs pays the fee.
• Ask whether your office accepts a savings account with a blocking note (Sperrvermerk). Stuttgart and Münster mention it; an ordinary bank statement does not count.
• Drop the declaration and let your guest apply with their own funds and your invitation letter.

Cologne also offers a security deposit instead, but only for urgent family reasons such as a birth, a death or a serious illness, and not for weddings, celebrations or holidays.

Getting the Verpflichtungserklärung, Step by Step

What You're Actually Promising (and the Real Risk)

The form is short, but what you sign is not small. Under § 68 AufenthG you promise to repay public money spent on your guest's living costs, housing, medical treatment and care, and the cost of their departure, including a deportation. That obligation runs for 5 years from the entry your declaration made possible, and you can only withdraw it if someone else takes it over or your guest's costs are covered another way.

Now the honest risk ranking, because the paragraph above scares people more than it should:

The insurance is where you control the risk. The embassy in Cairo asks for cover of at least €30,000, valid across the Schengen area, with no treatment limits or exclusions for age, pregnancy or similar. Cheap policies for older travellers often hide exactly those exclusions, so read the conditions, not just the certificate.

The Visa Application: Their Side of the Process

Once your guest holds the original declaration, the rest happens at the German mission in their country, usually through a service provider. The federal rules are the same everywhere:

What the embassy in Cairo actually asks for

Local requirements are where files fail, so here is one real example. The Cairo embassy's tourism and visit factsheet (August 2025) asks Egyptian applicants to book through TLScontact and submit between 6 months and 4 weeks before the trip, and expects roughly 2 to 4 weeks of processing. On top of the federal basics it wants:

• the original Verpflichtungserklärung plus one copy, not older than 6 months, or a signed informal invitation
• copies of your passport and residence permit, and proof you are related (a birth or marriage certificate)
• an extract from the Egyptian family register, and a death certificate for widowed applicants, translated into German or English
• a Mogama certificate for first-time applicants over 16, unless they hold an earlier Schengen, US, UK or Canadian visa
• six months of signed and stamped bank statements for employees, the self-employed and retirees
• a round-trip flight reservation and a short travel plan

Every mission publishes its own list, and Amman, Riyadh, Casablanca or Beirut will differ in the details. Download the current one from the mission's website on the day your guest prepares the file, not from a forum post. For how a German visa file should look in general, our visa documents guide covers translations and the cover letter.

The Timeline That Works

Work backwards from the date your parents want to land. The declaration is the slow part on your side, the embassy appointment is the slow part on theirs.

Can They Stay Longer Than 90 Days?

Not as a plan. A Schengen visa is capped at 90 days in any 180, and an extension inside Germany is only for new facts after arrival: Berlin's immigration office lists force majeure (no flights because of a strike or weather), humanitarian reasons (urgent treatment, unable to travel) and important personal reasons. The first two are free, the third costs €30, and an expired visa cannot be extended at all, so go before the last day.

If the real wish is for a parent to live with you, that is a different question. Parents of adult children can only move under the exceptional-hardship rule, which is rarely granted; the family reunion guide explains who qualifies. For most families, the realistic pattern is repeated visits: a clean first trip with an on-time return makes the next application easier.

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