The University of Bonn, officially the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, is based in Bonn in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It was founded in 1818. Its legal notice describes it as a corporation under public law, represented by its rector, with the state’s Ministry of Culture and Science as supervisory authority. Michael Hoch has been rector since May 2015 and is in his third term.
The university’s facts and figures page lists seven faculties and 31,318 students, of whom about 5,285 come from abroad, as of December 2025. It reports 707 professors and a budget of 835.5 million euros for 2024 on a preliminary basis, excluding the Faculty of Medicine from the staff counts. It has been one of Germany’s Universities of Excellence since 2019.