How to Apply for the Stipendium Hungaricum Scholarship 2027: Step-by-Step Guide

The single most important thing to understand about the Stipendium Hungaricum Scholarship is that it is not a scholarship you win by submitting one online form. It is a two-door process. Behind the first door is the online application portal, where you register, choose up to two study programmes and upload your documents. Behind the second door is your Sending Partner — the government body, ministry, agency or organisation in your own country that Hungary has formally partnered with — and that partner must nominate you. If you walk through the first door perfectly and never go through the second, your application is rejected. Every year, capable students lose this scholarship not because their grades were too low, but because they treated the nomination stage as paperwork that would sort itself out. It does not sort itself out. This guide walks you through the whole process, step by step, in the order it actually happens, so that you can plan your 2027 application around both doors from the very first day.

Stipendium Hungaricum was launched by the Hungarian Government in 2013 and is managed by the Tempus Public Foundation under the supervision of Hungary’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Its purpose is to attract talented international students to Hungarian universities, strengthen educational links between Hungary and partner countries, and send graduates home with qualifications and connections that benefit both sides. Hungary offers programmes taught in English and other languages across bachelor’s, master’s, one-tier master’s, doctoral and non-degree levels, at dozens of participating Hungarian higher education institutions. For students from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Nigeria, Indonesia and many other partner countries, it is one of the few European government scholarships that combines tuition-free study with a monthly stipend, an accommodation contribution and medical insurance in a single award.

This article is a how-to guide, not a general overview. If you want the broader picture of benefits and eligibility first, read our parent guide to the Stipendium Hungaricum Scholarship, browse other awards in our scholarships directory, and compare Hungarian institutions through our universities directory before you commit to your two programme choices. Then come back here and work through the steps in order.

Stipendium Hungaricum 2027 at a Glance

A note on dates before you go any further. At the time of writing, the dates in this table follow the pattern and the published timetable of the most recent completed call, for studies beginning in 2026/27, whose portal deadline was 15 January 2026 at 14:00 CET. The 2027 round — for studies beginning in autumn 2027 — is expected to follow the same rhythm, with the call published and the portal opening in November. Treat every date here as a planning date, not a promise, and confirm the exact day and hour in the official call for applications on the Stipendium Hungaricum website as soon as it is published. Your Sending Partner’s local deadline is the one that can hurt you most, because it is often earlier, it is published separately, and missing it cannot be repaired later.

Step 0: Understand the Two-Door System Before You Register

Most scholarship guides bury the nomination rule in a footnote. Here it is at the top, because it shapes everything else. Hungary does not accept Stipendium Hungaricum applications from individuals acting alone. Each participating country or territory has a designated Sending Partner — for example a ministry of education, a higher education commission, a scholarship board or another public body named in the bilateral agreement with Hungary. That partner publicises the scholarship locally, may run its own pre-selection, and, crucially, submits the official list of nominated candidates to the Tempus Public Foundation after the online portal closes.

The consequence is stark and it is stated plainly in the programme’s own rules: applications will only be considered eligible if the applicant is nominated by the responsible authorities of the Sending Partner. A complete, polished, on-time portal application with no nomination behind it is not a weak application. It is an ineligible one. Conversely, a nomination cannot rescue an application that was never submitted properly in the portal, or that was submitted after the deadline, or that is missing documents the universities need for their entrance decisions. You need both doors, in the right order, on time.

Practically, this means your first task is not choosing a university. Your first task is identifying your Sending Partner, finding its official announcement for this cycle, and writing down its local requirements and its local deadline. Some partners simply endorse applications submitted in the portal. Others run a fuller national competition with their own forms, attestations, interviews or shortlists. Some require printed copies delivered to an office. You cannot know which model your country uses until you look, and looking in December is far better than looking in January.

Step 1: Check That Your Country Is a Partner — and What It Can Nominate You For

Eligibility for Stipendium Hungaricum begins with citizenship. You must be a citizen of a country that has a Sending Partner agreement with Hungary, and you must apply through the partner for your own citizenship. Hungarian citizens are not eligible, and the programme’s rules also exclude certain categories such as people who already hold, or have previously held, this scholarship for the same study level in ways set out in the call. The official partners list on the programme website is the authoritative source, and you should check it directly rather than relying on any third-party country list, including this one.

Partnership is not all-or-nothing. The agreement for your country may cover only certain study levels and certain fields. One country may be able to nominate bachelor’s and master’s candidates across many fields, while another may be limited to specific areas such as agriculture, engineering or medicine, or to doctoral studies only. This is why checking the partner page matters before you fall in love with a programme: a course can exist in the portal, be taught in English, and still be unavailable to you because your country’s agreement does not cover it. The portal generally reflects these restrictions, but your Sending Partner’s announcement is the document that tells you what your country is actually offering this year.

You also need to meet the age and prior-study conditions in the call. Applicants generally must be at least 18 years old by 31 August of the year in which their studies would begin. For bachelor’s programmes you need completed secondary education; for master’s programmes a bachelor’s degree; for one-tier master’s programmes — long single-cycle degrees in fields such as general medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, architecture and veterinary medicine — the secondary qualification that the Hungarian institution requires; and for doctoral programmes a master’s degree plus, in most cases, a research plan and a prospective supervisor’s support where the doctoral school asks for it. Partial or exchange applicants must be enrolled at a home institution. Read the specific call for your level carefully, because bachelor’s and master’s applicants and doctoral applicants are covered by separate calls with different document lists.

Step 2: Choose Your Two Programmes as if the Order Matters — Because It Does

The portal allows you to choose up to two study programmes, and you rank them in order of preference. This is a strategic decision, not a formality. Hungarian institutions examine applicants for the programmes they have chosen, hold entrance examinations or interviews, and make admission decisions programme by programme. Your first preference is where your application will be considered first and most seriously, so it should be the programme you most want and for which you most clearly meet the entry requirements — not a prestige gamble with a safer course underneath it as an afterthought.

Before ranking, do the unglamorous research. For each programme you are considering, check the language of instruction, the entry requirements, whether an entrance examination or interview is held and in what format, any portfolio or aptitude requirements for arts programmes, and the specific language certificate the institution accepts. Programmes taught in English normally require proof of English proficiency at the level the institution sets; programmes taught in Hungarian may route you through a preparatory year. If you are unsure whether a Hungarian university fits your goals, compare institutions and countries in our study abroad guides and check where universities stand in our rankings section — but remember that for this scholarship, fit with the entry requirements matters more than brand name, because an institution that rejects you at entrance examination stage cannot award you a place no matter how strong your nomination was.

Doctoral applicants need an extra layer of preparation. You should identify a research topic that fits a Hungarian doctoral school, prepare a research plan, and, where the school requires or strongly expects it, contact a potential supervisor before applying and obtain the statement of supervisor that the call describes. A generic research plan pasted into a doctoral application is easy for an expert committee to spot. A plan that names the school’s research groups, methods and literature shows that your two choices were made deliberately.

Step 3: Register on the Apply Portal

When the call opens — typically in November — register on the official portal at apply.stipendiumhungaricum.hu. Use an email address you control, check daily during the application season, and will still control in July when results and next steps arrive. Complete your personal data exactly as it appears in your passport: names, date of birth and document numbers must match across your application, your certificates and your passport, or you will spend the spring explaining discrepancies instead of preparing for examinations.

Work through the portal systematically. Select your Sending Partner correctly — this field connects your application to the body that must nominate you, and choosing the wrong partner can disconnect you from the nomination list entirely. Enter your education history, add your two programme choices in preference order, and complete every section the system marks as required, including the motivation section described in the next step. Save as you go. The portal lets you build the application over multiple sessions before final submission, and there is no advantage whatsoever in submitting a rushed application in November over a complete one in December. There is, however, a serious disadvantage in starting in January, when every other applicant in your country is also uploading documents and any technical problem becomes a deadline problem.

Step 4: Write a Motivation Letter That Answers Hungary’s Actual Question

The motivation letter in a Stipendium Hungaricum application is not an essay about how much you have always dreamed of Europe. Read from the programme’s perspective, the question it answers is: why should Hungary invest in this student, in this programme, at this university — and what will that investment produce when the student goes home? Strong letters answer that question in a tight, specific structure.

Start with your academic story so far, told through evidence rather than adjectives: the subjects you excelled in, the projects or work that prepared you, the results that prove readiness for the level you are applying for. Then explain the programme choice: why this curriculum, why Hungary for this field, and why this institution’s strengths match your goals. Then look forward: the career or research path you intend to follow after graduation, and how it connects to your home country’s needs and to cooperation between your country and Hungary. Close by showing you understand the scholarship’s terms — that you will study full-time, respect the programme rules, and complete the degree within the funded period.

Keep the letter honest and concrete. Committees read thousands of letters that claim a passion for knowledge; they remember the applicant who explained that her country’s flood-prone delta agriculture needs the water-management expertise taught in a specific Hungarian master’s, and who could point to the undergraduate project that proved it. Do not copy templates, do not invent achievements, and do not promise outcomes no student can guarantee. You are making a case, not signing a prophecy.

Step 5: Prepare and Upload the Required Documents

The portal document list varies slightly by level and by programme, but the core set is consistent. Prepare clean, legible scans — photographs of documents taken at an angle on a bedsheet are a quiet reason applications look careless — and translate anything that is not already in the language the call requires, usually English or Hungarian, using the certified translation route your country and the call specify.

Two documents deserve special warnings. The medical certificate must be completed on the template and within the timing rules the current call sets out — a general fitness note from any clinic, on the wrong form, can fail the technical check even if your health is perfect. And if you will only graduate later in the application year, the call normally allows you to apply with the documents you have and submit the missing certificate by a later date the call specifies, often in the summer; missing that second deadline can still cost you the award, so diarise it the day you apply.

Step 6: Submit in the Portal — Then Immediately Work on Nomination

Submit your completed application in the portal before the deadline, which in recent cycles has been 15 January at 14:00 CET. Do not aim for the deadline day. Aim to submit at least a week early, because the deadline is a hard system cut-off in Central European Time — which may be the middle of the night or a different calendar day where you live — and because your Sending Partner may need your submitted application reference for its own process.

The moment you have submitted, switch your attention to door number two. Follow your Sending Partner’s instructions to the letter: if it requires an online registration on a national portal as well, complete it; if it requires attested copies, a printed application set, an interview or delivery to an office by a local date, do exactly that, by that date. Keep proof of everything — submission confirmations, receipts, screenshots and copies. If your partner publishes a shortlist or calls candidates for verification, respond immediately. Nomination lists are typically finalised and sent to Tempus by the end of February, and a candidate who cannot be reached or whose national paperwork is incomplete can simply be left off the list.

It is worth repeating the rule one more time, in the plainest possible words, because it is the heart of this guide: no nomination means rejection, regardless of how good your portal application was. The Tempus Public Foundation’s technical check, the universities’ examinations and the final allocation all operate on nominated applications. Guard your nomination as carefully as your grades.

Step 7: Pass the Technical Check and the University Entrance Stage

After nominations close, applications go through a technical check for completeness and formal eligibility, and nominated applications are forwarded to the Hungarian institutions you chose. Between roughly mid-March and the end of May, institutions hold their entrance examinations, interviews or both. Formats vary: written tests in a subject, online interviews, aptitude assessments, portfolio reviews. The institution will contact you with its arrangements, which is another reason the email address on your application must be one you monitor constantly through the spring.

Prepare for this stage as seriously as you prepared your documents. Revise the core subjects of your previous degree or school curriculum that your chosen programme builds on. Practise explaining your motivation and your study plan aloud, in the language of instruction, in two minutes and in ten. If you are a doctoral candidate, be ready to defend your research plan’s question, method and feasibility in detail. Universities rank the applicants they examine, and that ranking feeds the final allocation — a nominated student who performs poorly at the entrance stage can still miss out, because nomination makes you eligible, not admitted.

Step 8: Allocation, Results and Acceptance

Final allocation typically takes place in June and July. Tempus, working from Sending Partner nominations, institutional admission decisions and the quotas available for each partner country and study level, issues the scholarship decisions. Successful candidates receive their award documentation — including the scholarship certificate and admission information needed for the next stages — and must formally accept the scholarship and meet any remaining conditions, such as submitting a final certificate they owed, within the deadlines given.

Read your award letter carefully the day it arrives. It states your institution, programme, study level and the conditions attached to your funding. If you have been allocated your second-preference programme, that is the offer on the table; allocation is not a negotiation, and declining in the hope of a better offer usually means declining the scholarship. If your circumstances have genuinely changed, contact Tempus and your Sending Partner through the official channels and ask — but do not simply fail to respond, because silence is treated as refusal and places can be reallocated.

Deadlines and Timeline for the 2027 Round

What the Scholarship Actually Pays For

Understanding the money matters for an honest application, because Stipendium Hungaricum is generous but is officially described by the programme itself as a contribution to your living costs, not a guarantee that every expense in Hungary will be met. According to the provisions published by the programme on its official provisions page, scholarship holders receive tuition-free education; a monthly stipend of HUF 43,700 for non-degree, bachelor’s, master’s, one-tier master’s and postgraduate specialist levels, paid for 12 months a year until completion of studies; for doctoral students, HUF 140,000 per month during the first, training-and-research phase and HUF 180,000 per month during the second, research-and-dissertation phase; a free dormitory place or an accommodation contribution of HUF 40,000 per month; and health care services under Hungarian legislation plus supplementary medical insurance up to HUF 65,000 a year per person, in the provisions for that year.

Two practical conclusions follow. First, budget honestly: Budapest rents in particular can exceed the accommodation contribution, dormitory places depend on institutional capacity, and you will need some resources of your own for deposits, winter clothing, local travel and the gap between arrival and your first stipend payment. Our study tools, including budgeting and cost calculators, can help you model that gap before you accept. Second, protect the funding you win: stipend and accommodation support are tied to active student status, academic progress and compliance with the scholarship contract, and holders who abandon their studies or breach the terms can lose support and face repayment obligations as the contract sets out. Treat the award as a professional commitment from day one.

How Selection Really Works — and How to Improve Your Chances

Selection is a chain with three links, and you can strengthen each one. The first link is your Sending Partner, which decides whom to nominate from your country’s applicants, within its quota and priorities. National priorities matter here: a candidate whose field matches the partner’s published priority areas and whose grades are strong starts ahead. The second link is the Hungarian institution, which examines you and decides admission to its programme. Subject readiness and language ability decide this link. The third link is the final allocation by Tempus, which must fit nominated, admitted students into the places and funding available for each country and level.

Within that chain, the improvements genuinely in your control are these. Keep your grades as high as you can in your final year — they are the evidence every link in the chain can see. Choose programmes whose entry requirements you demonstrably meet, and order them by genuine fit. Write a motivation letter that connects your past evidence, your chosen programme and your post-graduation plans into one coherent story. Upload complete, correctly translated documents the first time, because technical problems waste the goodwill of everyone handling your file. Complete your Sending Partner’s national process early and completely. And prepare for the entrance examination or interview as a real examination, not a formality. None of this guarantees selection — no honest guide can promise that, because quotas, national priorities and institutional decisions are outside your control — but each step removes a reason for your application to fail that was within your control.

Common Mistakes That End Applications

Submitting in the portal and ignoring the Sending Partner. The most expensive mistake in this entire programme, covered throughout this guide because it ends more applications than any grade ever has.

Missing the local deadline. Applicants fixate on 15 January and discover their ministry or commission closed its own process days or weeks earlier. Your earliest deadline is your real deadline.

Choosing programmes you are not eligible for. A programme outside your country’s agreement, above your qualification level, or requiring a language certificate you do not hold cannot admit you, however beautiful the application.

Wrong or inconsistent personal data. A name spelled one way in the portal and another way in the passport creates verification problems at nomination, admission and visa stages alike.

Uploading the wrong medical certificate. Use the programme’s current form, completed and signed as the call requires.

Treating the entrance interview as a chat. Universities examine and rank. Prepare your subject knowledge and your study plan properly.

Paying an agent to ‘secure’ the scholarship. The application is free and nomination decisions are made by public bodies. Anyone promising to arrange your nomination or award for a fee is selling you something they do not control. If you are comparing this route with other government schemes, our guides to the Türkiye Burslari Scholarship and the Eiffel Excellence Scholarship in France show how differently — and how transparently — other programmes structure the same stages.

After You Win: Visa, Travel and Arrival

Winning the scholarship is not the same as having permission to live in Hungary. Non-EU/EEA scholarship holders generally need to apply for a residence permit for the purpose of studies through the Hungarian consulate serving them, using the admission and scholarship documents issued after allocation, and must complete the process within the validity and timing rules that apply to them. Start the moment your documents arrive, answer consular requests promptly, and do not book non-refundable travel before your permit or visa position is confirmed. StudyGraduate cannot promise any visa or residence outcome — those decisions belong to the Hungarian authorities — but a complete, consistent file, where your passport, admission letter and scholarship certificate all tell the same story, is the part within your control.

On arrival, enrol at your institution within its deadline, complete scholarship administration, arrange your residence registration, health insurance activation and bank or payment details as instructed, and keep every document you are given. Your first stipend and accommodation arrangements depend on these administrative steps, not on the award letter alone.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I apply directly to a Hungarian university for Stipendium Hungaricum?

No. You apply through the online portal and you must be nominated by your country’s Sending Partner. A direct approach to a university, or a portal application without nomination, does not make you eligible for the scholarship.

What happens if my Sending Partner does not nominate me?

Your application is rejected, regardless of its quality or completeness in the portal. This rule is the single most important fact about the programme, and it is why this guide tells you to complete your partner’s local process as carefully as the portal application itself.

How many programmes can I choose?

Up to two study programmes, ranked in order of preference. Choose programmes you are genuinely eligible for and order them by real fit and preference, because institutions examine you for the programmes you select.

Is there an application fee?

The programme does not charge a fee to apply through its portal. Be very cautious of any intermediary who charges you to submit this free application or who claims they can arrange nomination or selection for payment.

How much is the monthly stipend?

In the programme’s last published provisions, non-degree, bachelor’s, master’s and one-tier master’s holders received HUF 43,700 per month, and doctoral holders received HUF 140,000 per month in the first phase and HUF 180,000 in the second phase, plus a dormitory place or HUF 40,000 per month accommodation contribution. Amounts are set in the current call and provisions, so confirm them on the official website for your cycle.

Can I apply if I graduate in the same year as the deadline?

Generally yes — the call normally allows final-year students to apply and to submit their missing final certificate by a later date specified in the call. Missing that later submission date can still cost you the scholarship, so treat it as a second deadline.

Does the scholarship cover travel to Hungary?

Travel arrangements and any travel contribution are governed by the scholarship provisions and your Sending Partner’s arrangements, which vary. Do not assume your flight is paid for; check the current call and your award documents, and budget accordingly.

Can I work in Hungary on this scholarship?

Your residence status and the scholarship contract both matter here, and student work is subject to Hungarian rules for third-country nationals and to your obligation to study full-time and make academic progress. Check the current rules with your institution’s international office before taking any job, and never let work put your student status — and with it your funding — at risk.

Sources and Verification

This guide was written from the programme’s official sources: the Stipendium Hungaricum website (programme rules, partners list and provisions, including the monthly stipend, accommodation contribution and medical insurance figures quoted above), the official application portal at apply.stipendiumhungaricum.hu, and information published by the Tempus Public Foundation, which manages the programme. Dates for the 2027 round follow the timetable of the most recent completed call, whose portal deadline was 15 January 2026, and are labelled as typical or expected wherever the 2027 call had not yet published a confirmed date at the time of writing.

Disclaimer: Scholarship details, amounts, deadlines and eligibility rules change from cycle to cycle. Always confirm deadlines and amounts on the official website before applying. StudyGraduate is an information portal, not an agency, and cannot promise selection, admission or visa approval to any applicant.