Child benefit is currently being paid to around 17.5 million children. From mid-2026, a new procedure will apply to child benefit processing.
Not all government services are well received Child benefit does not belong to it. According to data from the Federal Employment Agency, state support is more popular than ever:
- In 2025, the family fund paid out child benefit to 17.57 million children.
- From the Child allowance for low- and middle-income families, 1.45 million children benefited.
- The family fund spent a total of 55.32 billion euros on child benefit, around 800 million euros more than in the previous year.
- A further 3.28 billion euros were spent on the child allowance, which corresponds to around 300 million euros more than in 2024.
The family fund offers a uniform service for child benefit and child allowance throughout Germany. There will be an important innovation in mid-2026. In the future, this could make applying for child benefit superfluous.
Automatic child benefit takes effect
Vanessa Ahuja, head of family benefits at the Federal Employment Agency, announced further improvements to child benefit. To this end, the advantages of the uniform organizational structure throughout Germany should be used.
From the middle of the year we will determine the first child benefit cases automatically.
“We are making an important contribution to a modern and efficient welfare state,” she said, referring to digital administration. What this means is that you do receive child benefit still have to applybut all applications no longer have to be checked by human clerks. Instead, software checks the application and grants the child benefit payment.
This should mean that standard cases are processed more quickly and the service ends up in the account without much delay.
No child benefit application necessary in 2028?
The federal and state governments want to subject the German welfare state and its millions of affected people to a major reform. In a comprehensive report, the responsible government commission recommends, among other things, relief from child benefit.
There we talk about proactive granting of benefits or application-free procedures. What this means is that, according to the recommendations, child benefit should in future be paid out automatically after birth. An explicit application or going to the family fund would no longer be necessary.
The planned innovations are to be enacted into law by the end of 2027. It could be that from 2028 onwards it will no longer be necessary to apply for child benefit. The automatic application review from mid-2026 is considered a preliminary stage.
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