Germany Address Format Guide: Structure & Examples

Jul 9, 2025

Updated: July 9, 2025

Table of Contents

Germany Address Format Guide

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the standard address format used in Germany. Whether you’re shipping packages, sending mail, or validating addresses for your business, understanding the proper address structure is essential for successful deliveries. We’ll cover the basic elements, provide examples, and explain how GeoPostcodes can help with address validation.

Germany - Address Format

An address format in Germany contains the following elements:

Recipient’s name
Business or department name (if applicable)
Street name and house number
Postal Code and City Name
Country – GERMANY (in all caps)

John Smith
Häberlstraße 5
80337 München
GERMANY

Germany Address Format Examples

Example 1:

John Smith
Greifswalder Str. 16
10405 Berlin
GERMANY

Example 2:

Deutsche Post Abholstation
Konrad-Adenauer-Platz 1
40210 Düsseldorf
GERMANY

Postal and Country Information for Germany

Country/territory name	Germany
ISO codes	ISO 3166-1 alpha-2: DE ISO 3166-1 alpha-3: DEU ISO 3166-1 numeric-1: 276
Administrative area count	16
Administration area names and abbreviations	Baden-Wurttemberg Bavaria Berlin Brandenburg Bremen Free State of Thuringia Hamburg Hesse Lower Saxony Mecklenburg-Vorpommern North Rhine-Westphalia Rhineland-Palatinate Saarland Saxony Saxony-Anhalt Schleswig-Holstein	BW BY BE BB HB TH HH HE NI MV NW RP SL SN ST SH
Term to describe postal codes	PLZ
Postal code format	99999
Population	82 681 251
Total land area	357 451km²

How to Validate Addresses for Germany Using GeoPostcodes Database

GeoPostcodes offers comprehensive address validation database to validate Germany addresses. Our database ensures addresses follow the correct format for Germany, reducing delivery errors and improving efficiency.

Use GeoPostcodes:

Address Database to validate Street Names, Postal Codes and Cities in Germany
Postal Database if you only need to validate Postal Codes and Cities in Germany
Population Database if you would like to do urban/rural mapping or compute how many people live in Germany segmented by postal code, city or administrative divisions

You can leverage GeoPostcodes data to validate addresses in Germany using:

Street column to validate Street names
Postcode column to validate Postal Codes
Locality column to validate City names

Explore our Germany address database.

Our location dataset for Germany

Germany ZIP Codes

Germany uses a “PLZ” system, which is a five-digit numeric format, like 99999, with no letters or separators. This means it uses only numbers, similar to US ZIP codes, which are also five digits and purely numeric. According to the GeoPostcodes world postal code database, Germany has 26,266 postal codes covering 4,723 regions and 13,097 towns.

Germany ZIP & Administrative boundaries

Germany administrative landscape often follows inconsistent regional models and irregular public sources, making it difficult to maintain reliable boundaries. Our standardized postal and administrative boundary data resolves these gaps to ensure complete, coherent geographic coverage.

Germany Administrative Divisions

GeoPostcodes provides a standardized reference for Germany’s address structure, ensuring consistent, accurate, and globally aligned formatting across your systems. The dataset captures the official address elements required by the national postal operator and maps them into our unified global schema.