Most German advice pages get the central fact about the German pension after moving to Dubai exactly backwards. They say anyone moving to a country with no social security agreement can simply cash out their contributions. For German nationals that is almost never true. Your German pension is not lost when you move. It just cannot be taken with you either. The account stays open, your accrued points stay yours, and the balance freezes when your German employment ends. Three questions then decide everything. Have you completed the 60-month qualifying period? Will you keep paying in voluntarily? And are you one of the few who can even apply for a refund? Everything else is paperwork.
This article is not written for retirees. Almost every page on this topic is, which is why almost none answer the question people actually ask. This is for people aged 30 to 55 moving next quarter with 19 contribution years behind them. Their question is: am I above or below 60 months, and is topping up worth EUR 112.16 a month? For the rest of the move, see our complete guide to moving to Dubai from Germany.
What happens to my German pension when I move to Dubai?
Nothing is deleted. Your account at the Deutsche Rentenversicherung, the German state pension insurer, stays open, along with your contribution months and your Entgeltpunkte (the earnings points that set the size of your pension). What stops is the inflow. Compulsory insurance ends with your last German salary, and from that month no new points are added unless you pay in voluntarily.
That is the whole mechanism behind the German pension after moving to Dubai. It freezes. It does not vanish.
Take the 42-year-old with 19 contribution years. Those years are locked in. The move does not shrink them, it stops them growing. What you lose is the future, not the past.
The legal trigger is not the flight. It is the end of compulsory insurance, which is why deregistering from Germany properly matters: it gives you the exact date you will need later.
The 60-month question: have you cleared the qualifying period?
The regular German old-age pension requires a qualifying period (Wartezeit) of five years, which in pension language means 60 calendar months. Clear those 60 months and you have a pension claim for life, wherever you live, even if you never pay another cent. Fall short and you have no claim at all, only contribution months.
Check this before you move. Your annual pension statement answers it in one line. Employment contributions count toward the 60 months, as do child-raising periods, months from a pension split after divorce, and marginal employment. And, crucially for anyone emigrating, voluntary contributions count too. That splits readers into two groups.
Above 60 months. The 42-year-old is here. She does not have to do anything. Her claim is secure, just far away, and voluntary contributions are a return question rather than a necessity.
Below 60 months. This catches young professionals, long study or self-employment phases, and people returning from abroad. For them the gap is the most expensive loose end in the move. Without those months you do not get a smaller pension. You get nothing.
The 60 month qualifying period
The only number that decides whether you have a German pension at all
Example: 48 contribution months completed before the move. Twelve are missing, and voluntary contributions are the only way to buy them.
12 months missing
The example above. One payment closes the gap and secures a lifetime claim.
24 months missing
Two years short. Still cheaper than most single relocation line items.
Starting from zero
All 60 months bought outright, spread over as many payments as you like.
Based on the 2026 minimum voluntary contribution of EUR 112.16 per month. The maximum is EUR 1,571.70 per month. Contributions for a calendar year can be paid until 31 March of the following year. Figures are reset annually by the Deutsche Rentenversicherung.
The gap can be priced. Twelve missing months at the minimum contribution of EUR 112.16 cost EUR 1,345.92. Twenty-four months cost EUR 2,691.84. A full 60 months cost EUR 6,729.60. Against a lifetime claim that also carries survivor cover, those are modest sums, which is why this calculation belongs on the list before you fly.
Voluntary pension contributions from abroad: who qualifies, and what it costs
Here is the second common error. Many German pages describe the rules as though you need a German address. That is the domestic version, and for you it is wrong.
The Deutsche Rentenversicherung states it without qualification in its FAQ on voluntary contributions from abroad: "Ja, als deutscher Staatsangehöriger mit gewöhnlichem Aufenthalt im Ausland sind Sie zur freiwilligen Versicherung berechtigt." In English: yes, as a German national whose habitual residence is abroad, you are entitled to voluntary insurance. Only two things are required. You are at least 16, and you are not subject to compulsory German insurance. No German address.
You set the amount yourself. For 2026 the monthly contribution is at least EUR 112.16 and at most EUR 1,571.70, and you choose how many months to pay. You can change or stop at any time, and there is no minimum term.
The deadline matters. Contributions for a calendar year can be paid up to 31 March of the following year. For 2025 the limits were EUR 103.42 and EUR 1,497.30, and that window closed on 31 March 2026. For 2026 the deadline runs to 31 March 2027. Move mid-year and you have until next spring to fill in the part-year.
Voluntary pension contributions from abroad buy more than the qualifying period. They keep your reduced-earning-capacity cover alive, they can preserve the route to the pension for long-term insured people, and they raise the eventual payment.
The logic is the same one that governs health insurance when you leave Germany for Dubai. There too, the move is not the decision. The decision is which voluntary continuation stays open.
Can I get my German pension contributions refunded if I emigrate?
If you are a German national living in Dubai, almost certainly not. And the reason is the very right you were just granted in the section above.
Refunds are governed by § 210 SGB VI, the section of the German social code on returning contributions. Paragraph 1, number 1 describes the group that matters when you emigrate: insured people "die nicht versicherungspflichtig sind und nicht das Recht zur freiwilligen Versicherung haben", meaning those who are neither compulsorily insured nor entitled to voluntary insurance. Both conditions have to be met together. After the move you meet the first. You do not meet the second, because as a German national abroad you are entitled to pay voluntarily. The door is shut, and it is shut precisely because you hold an extra right.
Section 210 SGB VI, paragraph 1 number 1
Two conditions. A refund needs both, and German nationals abroad fail the second.
This is the interlock the German search results keep getting backwards. The right that protects you is the same right that closes the refund door.
Condition 1
Not compulsorily insured
Your compulsory German insurance ends with your last German salary. After the move to Dubai this condition is met.
MetCondition 2
No right to voluntary insurance
A German national with habitual residence abroad is always entitled to pay voluntarily. So this condition is not met.
Not metResult for a German national living in Dubai: no contribution refund
The claim stays intact instead. Nothing is paid out now, and nothing is lost either.
Who the door is actually open for
Mainly insured people without German nationality who genuinely hold no right to voluntary insurance, plus the paragraph 1a cases. Even then, section 210 paragraph 2 adds a 24 calendar month bar after compulsory insurance ends, and paragraph 3 refunds only the share the insured person bore.
Source: section 210 SGB VI, German social code, book six. General information only. Binding advice on your own record comes from the Deutsche Rentenversicherung advice centres.
Even if that barrier fell, there is a second. Under § 210 paragraph 2, contributions are refunded only once 24 calendar months have passed since compulsory insurance ended, and only if it has not restarted. That is a two-year lock counted from the end of compulsory insurance, not from the move. Anyone budgeting a refund to fund the relocation is budgeting money that could not arrive this year.
And even then it would be less than most people assume. § 210 paragraph 3 refunds contributions only in the amount the insured person actually bore, so the employer's share stays with the state. Voluntary contributions and contributions from self-employment are refunded at half. Paragraph 6 draws the line under it: the refund dissolves the insurance relationship, and claims from the periods completed up to that point cease to exist. You would trade a lifetime claim for roughly half the nominal contributions, with no interest and no way back.
So who is the rule for? Mainly insured people without German nationality who genuinely do not hold the right to voluntary insurance, plus the paragraph 1a cases such as people exempt from insurance who never completed the qualifying period. Those are the cases German forums keep applying to emigrants they do not cover.
German pension after moving to Dubai: the three routes compared
| Do nothing | Keep paying voluntarily | Refund under § 210 SGB VI | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you do | Nothing. The account rests | Pay EUR 112.16 to EUR 1,571.70 a month, as many months as you choose | Apply, earliest 24 months after compulsory insurance ends |
| Who it is open to | Everyone | German nationals abroad, 16 and over, with no compulsory German insurance | In practice not German nationals, because the right to voluntary insurance exists |
| What it costs | No money, but every month stops counting toward the qualifying period | EUR 1,345.92 for twelve minimum months, EUR 6,729.60 for a full 60, up to EUR 18,860.40 a year | The entire claim. The insurance relationship is dissolved |
| What you get | The balance as it stood the day you left | A completed qualifying period, a higher pension, retained incapacity cover | Only the share you bore yourself, half of that for voluntary contributions, no interest |
All figures apply to 2026 and reset annually.
No social security agreement: what that means and what it does not
The Deutsche Rentenversicherung lists Germany's agreement states outside the EU, the EEA and Switzerland individually: Albania, Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Chile, India, Israel, Japan, Canada and Quebec, Kosovo, Morocco, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, the Philippines, Serbia, South Korea, Tunisia, Turkey, Uruguay and the USA. That is 21 states as of September 2026. The United Arab Emirates appears on none of them.
In practice that means three things. First, UAE employment periods are not added to German ones. Your Dubai years do not help the German qualifying period, and your German years help no Emirati system, because there is no state pension scheme for foreign residents there. Second, there is no mechanism that shortens procedures: everything runs directly between you and the Deutsche Rentenversicherung. Third, and this is the part the internet most often gets backwards, the missing agreement does not open a refund door. Whether you can get your pension contributions refunded turns on § 210 SGB VI and the right to voluntary insurance, not on whether an agreement exists.
There is reassurance too. For the size of your pension, the missing agreement matters less than it sounds. The rules for beneficiaries abroad key off German contribution periods in § 113 SGB VI, and § 114 adds non-contributory periods back in the ratio German contribution periods bear to all contribution periods. If your whole working life was insured in Germany, that ratio is one to one.
Once the pension is running: payment to Dubai and the annual life certificate
Eventually the question flips from paying in to paying out. The Deutsche Rentenversicherung sums that up in one line: "Ziehen Sie als Rentner ins Ausland, zieht Ihre Rente mit." Move abroad as a pensioner and your pension moves with you, into an account of your choice, German or Emirati. Tell the Renten Service of Deutsche Post AG about two months beforehand so the bank details are switched in time.
One condition is missing from almost every guide, and it is the one that causes trouble. Pensioners abroad must submit a Lebensbescheinigung, a certificate confirming they are alive, once a year, and in the Emirates only one office issues it. The German Federal Foreign Office writes on the Dubai Consulate General's pension page: "Die Lebensbescheinigung kann vom Generalkonsulat in Dubai bestätigt werden." And then: "Dazu ist die persönliche Vorsprache des Rentenempfängers unerlässlich." Attending in person is essential.
That means going once a year, with an appointment and a valid German passport or ID card. An Emirates ID is not enough. For the state pension the certificate is free.
What about tax?
Germany and the UAE have had no double taxation agreement since 1 January 2022, and what that means for a German pension is covered in full in Retirement in Dubai: Can Germans Spend Their Retirement Here?. This article deals with the accrual phase, not the taxation of the payout.
What to do now
For the German pension after moving to Dubai, the order is short. Pull up your pension statement and check whether the 60 months are complete. If not, price the missing months at the minimum contribution. If you intend to keep paying, watch the deadline of 31 March each following year. And drop the refund idea unless an official body has confirmed in writing that you fall into the exception.
This article is general information on German social insurance law. Binding advice on your own record comes only from the Deutsche Rentenversicherung's advice centres (Auskunfts- und Beratungsstellen), which are free and reachable by phone from abroad. If you are weighing large voluntary payments or a refund, get that advice first, and the same applies if you are also relocating a German GmbH to Dubai.
