Landungsbrücken

Child Care Kita Care Hours

Hamburg’s day-care facilities offer various ranges of care hours for your children. See here for a helpful summary.

Little girl with pigtails looking at red alarm clock at table

Kita Care Hours

Optional care hours at kitas

As a general rule, childcare in kitas is provided five days per week. Krippe day-care for children under the age of three is possible for four, five or six hours at a time and can be employed on fewer days throughout the week, amounting to 20, 25 or 30 hours per week. Most kitas offer daily care for four, five, six, eight, ten or twelve hours.

At Hamburg’s kitas, the following sets of children’s day-care are possible:

  • Ten hours per week or less
  • 11 – 20 hours per week
  • 21 – 25 hours per week
  • 26 – 30 hours per week
  • 31 – 40 hours per week
  • 41 hours per week or more

Before you start your child in day-care services, please ask in advance if your preferred kita or childminder offers the hours you need.

Please see here for a more detailed overview of the different childcare programmes.

The care hours for children with current or impending disabilities from the age of three until they start school is usually six hours per day. However, this depends on each child’s individual need for support: if required, there are also care times of four, five, eight, ten and twelve hours per day.

When it comes to school children, you can choose between regular day care and all-day education and care at school. Almost all schools in Hamburg offer free childcare from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. as well as early and late childcare; a fee may be charged for the latter.

You can also make use of all-day care in addition to or instead of afternoon care at school.

Applying for longer care hours

If for various reasons you cannot look after your child yourself, you can apply for a kita voucher for longer care hours. These reasons may include:

  • You are employed, studying, or undergoing vocational training or further education
  • You are participating in a work integration programme
  • You are enrolled in an integration course or a German language course for migrants

If applicable, these longer care hours are available for any child from birth until their 14th birthday. You can take advantage of the right kind of care tailored to your or your child’s needs at any kita, whether it is all-day care, after-school support or any combination of these.

Please note that a kita voucher or day care admission can only be issued if it can be made credible that neither you, your partner nor any other custodian can care for your child.

The hours of care are determined by the time neither parent or custodian is able to care for the child themselves. This also takes travel times to and from work into account.

Otherwise, you can also receive a kita voucher or admission to longer hours of day-care for your child if there is an urgent need for social or educational reasons. For more information on this, please make an appointment with the child day-care department (Abteilung Kindertagesbetreuung) at your local district office.

Kitas