When should I bring up salary in the interview?

Not you — let the employer raise the topic. In Germany, the second interview or the offer stage is the usual time. The EU Pay Transparency Directive 2023/970 — implemented in Germany as the Entgelttransparenzgesetz — increasingly obliges employers to include salary information in job postings or early in the process. If you are asked in the first interview: name a narrow range, not a fixed salary. BA Entgeltatlas, Destatis, and Gehaltscheck.de are your reference sources. Rule of thumb: your lower bound = current salary +10% or market median for your experience level, upper bound = market median +15%.