People mostly just call it Uni Augsburg for short. The wider university opened in 1970 as a Reformuniversität, a purpose-built reform university, at a time when Augsburg, despite being one of Bavaria's oldest cities, had no university of its own. So, this makes the university itself a genuinely modern institution, even though it sits in a city with a history stretching back over two thousand years.

Medicine is a genuinely recent addition to this university, and the story behind it is worth knowing in some detail. In February 2009, Bavaria's then Minister-President, Horst Seehofer, wrote a short, three-exclamation-mark note, "Die Uniklinik kommt!!!", meaning "The university clinic is coming!!!", into the Golden Book of the City of Augsburg. That handwritten line is widely credited as the real starting point for everything that followed. So, unlike faculties that simply appear in an administrative announcement, this one traces back to a specific, documented, almost casual moment that later became official policy.

The broader national context matters too. Back in 1961, West Germany's Wissenschaftsrat, the country's central science policy advisory body, had already identified a need for ten new medical training institutions nationally, including seven new Medical Academies. So, Augsburg's eventual medical faculty responds to a genuinely old, documented national planning gap, not a purely local ambition decades later.

Here's a fact most guides skip entirely. The Augsburg hospital's own central building, opened back in 1982, was reportedly designed from the very beginning with the possibility of a future university hospital in mind. So, decades before the Medizinische Fakultät actually existed, the city's own hospital infrastructure was already, in a sense, built toward that eventual purpose.

The faculty's formal creation followed a clear, documented timeline. It was founded on 1 December 2016. On 1 January 2019, the previously municipal Klinikum Augsburg was formally transferred into the ownership of the Free State of Bavaria, becoming the Universitätsklinikum Augsburg, marked with its own ceremony on 9 January 2019. Students first arrived at the new faculty in the 2018/19 winter semester, though initially only in the Medical Informatics bachelor's programme; Humanmedizin itself only began teaching students a year later, in the 2019/20 winter semester, once the faculty's first teaching building had opened that October. So, medicine here is barely half a decade older than the faculty's formal founding date suggests.

Humanmedizin isn't the only programme at this faculty either. The Medizinische Fakultät also offers Medical Informatics at bachelor's and master's level, jointly with the Faculty of Applied Computer Science, and added a Midwifery Science bachelor's programme from the 2023/24 winter semester, run in cooperation with Universitätsklinikum Augsburg. So, medicine sits within a genuinely broader, still-expanding health sciences faculty, not a single, standalone medical degree.

One especially distinctive detail concerns how the medical curriculum itself is taught. Augsburg runs its Humanmedizin degree as a Modellstudiengang, a specially approved model curriculum, described as the first of its kind in the whole of Bavaria. Rather than splitting study into the traditional separate preclinical and clinical stages, Augsburg's curriculum integrates basic-science and clinical content together from early on, deliberately avoids large lecture-hall teaching in favour of problem-based, seminar-style, and small-group instruction, while still preserving clear subject boundaries between disciplines. So, students here experience patient contact and practical clinical exposure considerably earlier than in many traditional German medical programmes.

The Augsburg Campus and Its Setting

The Medizinische Fakultät sits within the University of Augsburg, based in Augsburg, one of Bavaria's oldest cities, roughly 60 kilometres northwest of Munich. Because the faculty is so new, its early teaching actually took place in a converted former children's hospital building in Augsburg, extensively renovated to include seminar rooms, small-group teaching spaces, practical and microscopy laboratories, an interprofessional training centre with simulation and observation rooms, and even a temporary medical library. A permanent Medical Campus has since been built directly south of the university hospital, including a dedicated teaching building and an Institute for Theoretical Medicine. So, students here have watched their own faculty's physical campus grow from a repurposed building into purpose-built facilities within just a few years.

Clinical training runs through the Universitätsklinikum Augsburg, a hospital with around 1,700 beds, ranking among Bavaria's largest, and standing as the only Maximalversorger hospital, Germany's highest tier of hospital care provision, in the entire Swabia administrative region, an area home to roughly two million people. A second clinical partner, the Bezirkskrankenhaus Augsburg, a district-run psychiatric hospital, also contributes to student training. So, the clinical backbone here is a genuinely large, regionally essential hospital, not a smaller teaching-only facility.

Research infrastructure in Augsburg actually predates the medical faculty itself. UNIKA-T, the Universitäres Zentrum für Gesundheitswissenschaften am Klinikum Augsburg, was founded in 2011 as a joint research network bringing together Klinikum Augsburg, the University of Augsburg, the Technical University of Munich, and LMU Munich, with a focus on health care operations, health information management, environmental medicine, and epidemiology. So, by the time the Medizinische Fakultät itself was founded in 2016, a genuine, multi-institution research collaboration had already been running in Augsburg for five years.

The faculty has also deliberately prioritised general medicine, Allgemeinmedizin, from the very start, with its own dedicated professorship and a supporting network of local practices that help teach students directly. So, community-based, general-practice training is built into the programme's design, rather than added on as an afterthought.

Course Structure, Cost, and Practical Details

Augsburg runs Humanmedizin as a Modellstudiengang rather than the traditional Regelstudiengang used at most German medical faculties, with a standard study period of roughly six years, concluding with a Staatsexamen, Germany's state medical examination, and opening the path to Approbation, the medical licence needed to practise.

Admission for Medicine at the University of Augsburg runs entirely through Germany's national system. Applicants cannot apply directly to the university for a place in Humanmedizin; instead, the process runs through the Stiftung für Hochschulzulassung, accessed via Hochschulstart.de. Places are allocated across three national quotas: the Abiturbestenquote, based on the best school-leaving grades, taking 30 percent of places, the Zusätzliche Eignungsquote, an additional aptitude quota, taking 10 percent, and the Auswahlverfahren der Hochschulen, the universities' own selection procedure, taking the remaining 60 percent.

Fee figures here are refreshingly simple. Bavaria charges no general tuition fees, and the University of Augsburg has not opted to introduce a separate fee for non-EU students, unlike at least one other major Bavarian university that has already begun charging one, and another that plans to from 2027. The only regular charge is a semester contribution, currently running at around EUR 177, which includes a regional semester transport ticket priced at roughly EUR 92 to 97.

Quick Overview

Fee Structure

Why Augsburg's Medizinische Fakultät Deserves a Harder Look Than Its Age Suggests

Bavaria's First Modellstudiengang in Medicine

Most rival pages describe new medical faculties as simply smaller or younger versions of older ones. Augsburg is genuinely structurally different: it runs the first Modellstudiengang in the whole of Bavaria, integrating basic-science and clinical teaching together, avoiding large lecture halls, and giving students early, sustained patient contact. So, the curriculum itself represents a real, documented departure from the traditional German medical teaching model, not just a newer building housing an old-style course.

A Founding Story That Traces to a Handwritten Note

Most guides describe a faculty's founding purely through committee decisions and legislation. Augsburg's origin genuinely traces back to a specific, handwritten line in the city's own Golden Book, written by Bavaria's Minister-President in 2009, a full seven years before the faculty formally existed. So, there's a real, documented, almost personal moment behind this faculty's creation, not just a policy paper.

Honest Assessment

Be upfront about a few real limits here. The whole programme runs in German, so applicants without strong German language skills will struggle from the outset. Admission runs entirely through Germany's national Hochschulstart system rather than the university directly, so applicants need to track the national portal's quotas and deadlines. As one of Germany's youngest medical faculties, Augsburg doesn't yet carry the multi-generational graduate track record of the country's oldest medical schools.

So, who fits here best? Students comfortable studying entirely in German, and drawn to a genuinely modern, integrated Modellstudiengang with early clinical exposure, fit well. Students interested in a faculty still visibly building its own campus and research identity fit well too. However, anyone hoping for an English-taught path should look elsewhere, since none exists here. Still, the zero-tuition structure and the faculty's distinctive curriculum design are genuine, well-documented strengths.

Established Year: University founded 1970; Medizinische Fakultät founded 1 December 2016; Humanmedizin teaching began 2019