We consider weak solutions u of non-linear systems of partial differential equations. Assuming that the system exhibits a certain kind of elliptic behavior near infinity we prove higher integrability results for the gradient Du. In particular, we establish Hölder continuity of u in low dimensions. Moreover, we obtain analogous results for vectorial minimizers of multi-dimensional variational integrals. Finally, we discuss an extension to minimizing sequences and applications to generalized minimizers.