Does the health insurance company cover the costs of travel vaccinations? 2026

March 19, 2025, 4:37 p.m. | Reading time: 3 minutes

Hepatitis, malaria and the like: Before traveling, holidaymakers should also take their vaccinations into account - and early on. Where you can get advice and what costs the insurers will cover.

Especially before long-distance travel, holidaymakers should not only check whether their passport is still valid. It is also advisable to take a look at the vaccination certificate - because the risk of diseases such as hepatitis A or Japanese encephalitis is much higher in certain regions of the world than in Germany. You should also find out what costs your own health insurance company covers for travel vaccinations.

Plan ahead

Contact points for advice

Who covers the costs of travel vaccinations?

Requirements for payment

Plan ahead

In order to close vaccination gaps, if necessary, advance notice is required. It is therefore advisable to deal with this a few months before departure. At Sunnytrips, for example, you can find information on mandatory and necessary vaccinations for popular global travel destinations on a corresponding overview page.

The Federal Foreign Office's online travel advice for the holiday destination also provides initial information for all countries in the world. There you click on the “Health” menu item and then find information about the recommended vaccination protection. The German Society for Tropical Medicine, Travel Medicine and Global Health also has an overview of travel vaccinations on the Internet.

Contact points for advice

However, the risk of infection is always individual - underlying illnesses can play a role, as can the question of what time of year you travel to a country and what you do there. According to the Robert Koch Institute, it is therefore advisable to seek travel medical advice before your holiday if in doubt.

Specialized doctors can be found, for example, via the Travel and Medicine Forum, which offers an online search function by zip code or location. The Center for Travel Medicine has a zip code search for vaccination and advice centers. The tropical institutes, which exist in twelve German cities, are another contact point.

And: Many statutory health insurance companies offer free, qualified information via their hotlines, reports the magazine “Stiftung Warentest Finanz” (issue 4/2025). According to the report, they usually do not cover the costs for individual medical vaccination advice.

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Who covers the costs of travel vaccinations?

Things look better when it comes to covering the costs of travel vaccinations: the majority of health insurance companies pay them in full. Some only cover part of the costs, exclude certain vaccinations or limit the subsidies to sums of 150 to 500 euros - if more comes together, insured people have to pay the rest out of their own pockets.

11 of the 68 statutory insurers examined by Stiftung Warentest do not subsidize medical malaria prophylaxis with tablets.

Requirements for payment

The following applies: According to the report, in order for the health insurance company to cover the costs, a doctor's recommendation and almost always a recommendation from the Standing Vaccination Commission (Stiko) are required for the respective travel vaccination. Some health insurance companies also used the travel advice from the Foreign Office or the Center for Travel Medicine as a criterion.

A few health insurers are not so strict, Stiftung Warentest continues: The only requirement for them to cover the costs is that the vaccine is approved in Germany.

In the doctor's office, the rule is that insured people pay for the travel vaccination and later submit the bill to the health insurance company.

With material from dpa

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