Federal Minister of Health Nina Warken presented the health budget for the coming year, which shows some improvements in the area of laboratory capacities after parliamentary negotiations. The budget places particular emphasis on prevention, health resilience and the promotion of women’s health, with financial stability remaining a key challenge.

One focus is on strengthening preventive measures, including health literacy, child health, healthy ageing and suicide prevention. Drug and addiction prevention in particular will be supported with an additional four million euros to avoid early suffering and reduce costs in the system. Another area is increasing resilience to threats, for example through a ten percent budget increase for laboratory capacities and medical countermeasures in the event of biological threats or terrorist attacks. At the same time, preparations are underway for a health security law.

A new funding priority is focused on women’s health, which is emphasized as a central issue for half of the population. From the beginning of 2026, funding guidelines with up to 12 million euros over several years are to be published in order to expand the database at the Robert Koch Institute. The minister underlined that these measures are intended to improve care, but financing remains an ongoing issue.

The coalition has agreed to keep the contributions to statutory health insurance (GKV) and social long-term care insurance (SPV) stable at the turn of the year. A loan of 1.7 billion euros will be made available for the SPV to build a bridge to necessary reforms. At the same time, the increase in costs in hospitals will be limited to the level of the average cost development, supported by a federal transformation fund of up to 29 billion euros and four billion euros for immediate measures. Despite planned savings, expenditure in the hospital sector will rise to 120 billion euros, an increase of eight billion euros compared to the previous year.

The minister stressed that initial savings were unavoidable in order to stabilise the system and announced a discussion about a double-digit billion gap for 2026.

The BMG budget in detail:

• The health budget for the 2026 financial year totals 21.8 billion euros.
• It includes a loan totalling 3.2 billion euros to ensure the financing of social long-term care insurance (SPV) in the short term, which was topped up by 1.7 billion euros in the parliamentary procedure.
• In addition to the loan to the SPV, a loan for statutory health insurance (GKV) of 2.3 billion euros is included.
• 190 million euros will be available for the immediate action programme for cybersecurity in the healthcare sector in the coming year.
• General prevention: 27 million euros will be invested in the promotion of health literacy from children’s health to “healthy aging” as well as in suicide prevention. Funding priorities for children’s health are projects to determine the health situation, reduce lifestyle-related risks and improve health-promoting behaviour.
• Drug and addiction prevention will be supported with 18 million euros. By avoiding addictions at an early stage, individual suffering can be avoided and economic costs reduced.
• 3.3 million euros are available to strengthen the resilience of the healthcare system – due to the increasingly tense security situation caused by various global threats. This is intended to complement the existing measures of the states and aid organisations. The laboratory capacities of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) are being expanded.
• Up to twelve million euros will be made available for the women’s health funding priority until 2029. These include health services research on endometriosis and menopause as well as the funding of junior research groups. The aim is to achieve real improvements for women with regard to gender-specific differences in care. A database at the RKI is also to be built up for this purpose.

Read more:

Nina Warken on the 2026 health budget in the Bundestag | BMG | BMG

Editor: X-Press Journalistenbüro GbR

Gender Notice. The personal designations used in this text always refer equally to female, male and diverse persons. Double/triple naming and gendered designations are used for better readability. ected.