Scholarships for Indian Students in UK 2026/2027

For an Indian postgraduate, the United Kingdom runs the richest government scholarship market in the world — and India is one of its priority countries in every scheme. Three UK government competitions are open to Indian citizens in the same autumn: Chevening, the FCDO’s leadership scholarship for a one-year master’s; the Commonwealth Master’s and PhD Scholarships, which fund candidates who could not otherwise afford the UK and judge development impact as heavily as grades; and the GREAT Scholarships, a £10,000 tuition award run university by university with the British Council. Behind those sit India’s own trusts — Inlaks above all, which funds UK postgraduate study generously for students who already hold an offer — and the universities’ own scholarship funds, from Oxford’s and Cambridge’s college and trust awards to the automatic international discounts advertised by mid-ranked universities.

This guide explains each route for Indian citizens applying for 2026/2027 entry: who is eligible, what is actually paid, when the deadlines fall, and how the Indian side of the process works — including the step most applicants discover too late, the national nomination that sits behind a Commonwealth application from India. Keep our scholarship directory open alongside it, and compare the UK against the parallel American plan in our guide to scholarships for Indian students in the USA, because the strongest Indian applicants usually run both countries in one season.

Scholarships for Indian students in the UK at a glance

Chevening India: the leadership scholarship

Chevening is the UK Government’s global scholarship programme, funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and partner organisations, and India is one of its largest country programmes. It funds a one-year taught master’s degree at any UK university, in any subject, and it selects explicitly for leadership and influence: the application is built around your leadership record, your networking, your reasons for studying in the UK, and your career plan after you return. The eligibility frame is the same for India as worldwide — the full criteria and the application itself sit on the official Chevening website. You must be a citizen of a Chevening-eligible country — India is eligible. You must hold an undergraduate degree that enables entry to a UK postgraduate programme. You must have at least two years of work experience, calculated as 2,800 hours, which can include full-time, part-time, voluntary and internship experience. You must apply to three different eligible UK university courses and hold an unconditional offer from at least one of them by Chevening’s deadline in the July after application. And you must commit to returning to your country of citizenship for at least two years after the scholarship ends. Chevening pays full tuition fees — with tuition for MBA programmes capped at £22,000, the balance being the scholar’s problem — a monthly stipend at a higher rate inside London than outside it, economy return airfare, the entry clearance (visa) fee, the Immigration Health Surcharge, an arrival allowance, a homeward departure allowance, a grant toward a TB test where one is required, and a travel grant for Chevening events.

The calendar is fixed and early: for the 2027–28 cycle, applications opened on 4 August 2026 and closed on 6 October 2026 at 11:00 UTC, reading committees assessed applications through the winter, shortlisted candidates are interviewed in the spring of 2027, results follow from mid-June, and the unconditional-offer deadline falls on 8 July 2027, for courses starting in September or October 2027. For an Indian applicant targeting the following cycle, the working translation is simple: your Chevening application is an August-to-October task, your three university applications are an autumn task, and the two must be planned together because a Chevening award without an unconditional offer by the July deadline cannot be taken up. India-specific Chevening partnerships and the country page on the official site are worth a careful read each cycle, since partner-funded awards for Indian candidates are published there. Our step-by-step guide to the Chevening Scholarship 2027 walks the essays question by question, and profiles of universities Indians most often choose — the University of Oxford and Imperial College London among them — will help you build a defensible list of three.

Commonwealth Scholarships: the dual application Indians must not miss

The Commonwealth Master’s and PhD Scholarships are provided by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission (CSC), funded by the FCDO, and aimed at talented candidates from eligible low- and middle-income Commonwealth countries who could not otherwise afford to study in the UK. India is an eligible country for both the master’s and the PhD awards. The master’s award funds one-year full-time taught master’s degrees — the CSC does not fund MBAs under this scheme — and the PhD award funds full-time doctoral study, normally for 36 months. Both are judged under the CSC’s development themes, and both require a development-impact case: what your study changes in India, for whom, and how you will know. Financial need is not an embarrassment in this competition; it is a stated eligibility condition, and you must be able to show that you could not afford the UK degree without the scholarship.

The package is comprehensive: approved airfare to and from the UK, full tuition fees, a monthly stipend of £1,712 — or £2,000 if your university is in the London metropolitan area — a warm clothing allowance, a study travel grant, a thesis grant, and child allowances for scholars who qualify. For study beginning in September or October 2027, the CSC application window ran from 8 September 2026 to a deadline of 20 October 2026 at 16:00 BST. The Indian trap sits underneath that date. Indian candidates apply twice: once to the CSC through its CSC Central system, and once through India’s national nominating process — in recent cycles the Ministry of Education, Government of India, acting as the nominating agency, has required Indian applicants also to apply through its SAKSHAT portal, uploading the CSC application, by the Ministry’s own deadline. An application that exists in only one of the two systems is not considered, however strong it is. Confirm the nominating arrangements and the Indian deadline for your cycle on both the CSC site and the Ministry of Education’s scholarship notices before the window opens, because the Indian date can differ from the CSC’s. Academic eligibility for the master’s requires a first degree of at least upper second-class standard, or a second-class degree together with a relevant postgraduate qualification; Indian guidance in recent cycles has expressed this as a first degree with at least 60% marks, or 50–59% plus a relevant postgraduate qualification. The Commonwealth Shared Scholarships, by contrast, bypass the ministry entirely: you apply to a participating university for a course on the CSC’s approved list, and the university nominates candidates to the CSC, on the university’s own timetable.

GREAT Scholarships for India: £10,000, university by university

GREAT Scholarships are the pragmatic middle of the UK market: not full funding, but a real, stackable discount available at a defined list of universities. The British Council’s India page states the 2026–27 position exactly: twelve postgraduate scholarships were available from UK universities across various subjects for students from India, each worth a minimum of £10,000 toward tuition fees for a one-year postgraduate course, each jointly funded by the UK Government’s GREAT Britain Campaign and the British Council with the participating institution. The institutions listed for India in that cycle were Anglia Ruskin University, Norwich University of the Arts, Queen’s University Belfast, the Royal College of Art, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the Royal Northern College of Music, the University of Bristol, Trinity Laban, the University of Dundee, the University of Reading, the University of Surrey and UWE Bristol — with a notable group of awards in creative and performing arts alongside finance, marketing, business, psychology, STEM, design and humanities subjects.

To be a GREAT scholar you must be a citizen of India, hold an undergraduate degree, be motivated and show an interest in the proposed subject area, meet the English language requirement of the UK university, and be willing to engage with the UK as a scholar — attending the GREAT scholars’ networking event, maintaining contact with the British Council and your institution, and acting as an ambassador for the scheme, including speaking to future candidates as an alumnus. There is no central GREAT application: you apply to the university for the course and follow that university’s own GREAT instructions and deadline, which is why the British Council directs you from its country page into each university’s pages for course eligibility and application detail. Our guide to GREAT Scholarships by country tracks the scheme across destinations. Two planning truths follow. First, £10,000 off tuition still leaves tuition balance plus a full year of UK living costs to fund — GREAT works best stacked with an education loan sized honestly, family funds, or a further university discount where the institution permits stacking. Second, because each university sets its own process, an Indian applicant can legitimately run several GREAT applications in parallel at different listed universities, which no other scheme in this guide allows in quite the same way.

Indian trusts and university awards behind the headlines

The Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation belongs in every serious Indian UK plan because the UK is one of its three destination regions and its partner list is heavily British. Inlaks awards up to USD 120,000 toward tuition, living costs, healthcare and one-way airfare for full-time master’s, MPhil and doctoral study lasting nine months to four years, and it holds joint-scholarship arrangements with Imperial College London, the Royal College of Art, the University of Cambridge through the Cambridge Trust, and King’s College London for PhD students, under which a combined award can exceed the standard cap. The conditions are the strictest in this guide: an Indian passport holder resident in India at application; born on or after 1 January 1996 in the 2026 cycle; a degree from a recognised Indian university with at least 65% (CGPA 6.8) in social sciences, humanities, law, fine arts and architecture, or 70% (CGPA 7.2) in mathematics, sciences, environment and related subjects; an admission offer — conditional or unconditional — already in hand; the English condition in that offer met before applying; and no previous postgraduate degree from abroad and no postgraduate study abroad already begun. The exclusions matter as much: business and finance, computer science, most engineering outside the Imperial arrangement, fashion design, hospitality and tourism, management studies, medicine and dentistry, and public health are not funded, with narrow stated exceptions. An Indian humanities, law, architecture or social-science graduate with an Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial or King’s offer is precisely the candidate Inlaks exists for; an MBA applicant is precisely the candidate it does not fund.

Below the named schemes, university money does quiet, essential work. Oxford’s Clarendon Fund offers fully funded graduate scholarships across subjects, awarded on academic excellence within the normal Oxford application — there is no separate Clarendon application, and meeting the course’s December or January deadline is the application. The Gates Cambridge Scholarship funds outstanding applicants from outside the UK for full-time postgraduate degrees at Cambridge, covering the full cost of studying through the Cambridge Trust. The JN Tata Endowment’s loan scholarship of up to ₹20 lakh, described fully in our USA guide, is destination-neutral within overseas study, so a UK-bound Indian can hold it alongside a GREAT award or a university discount. And across the sector, international tuition discounts — typically a fixed sum off first-year fees for Indian offer-holders meeting published conditions — are common enough that you should always read the funding page of every university on your list before assuming the sticker price is the price. Use the rankings pages to shortlist institutions, then cost each one individually: in the UK, the funding answer is per-university, never per-country. If Australia or Canada is your alternative, compare honestly with our guides to scholarships for Indian students in Australia and scholarships for Indian students in Canada — remembering that Australia Awards, unlike the UK schemes, is not open to Indian citizens at all.

Eligibility checklist for Indian applicants

Before you write a single essay, test yourself against the five gates that decide Indian applications to the UK. Citizenship and residence: Chevening, Commonwealth and GREAT all require Indian citizenship, Inlaks requires an Indian passport and residence in India at application, and Commonwealth additionally requires permanent residence in an eligible Commonwealth country. Degree standard: Chevening needs a degree that gains UK postgraduate entry; Commonwealth master’s expects an upper second-class equivalent — expressed in Indian guidance as 60% or above, or 50–59% with a relevant postgraduate qualification; Inlaks sets 65% or 70% by subject family. Experience: Chevening’s 2,800 hours is the only hard experience rule among the government schemes, and it counts part-time, voluntary and internship hours, which makes it achievable for younger Indian applicants who plan for it from their undergraduate years. English: none of the three government schemes sets its own test — Chevening removed its English requirement and the CSC does not require IELTS — but every UK university sets one for its offer, and an unconditional offer, which Chevening ultimately requires, means every condition including English has been met. Return and impact: Chevening requires two years back in India after the award as a condition of the scholarship; Commonwealth requires a development-impact argument rather than a return contract, but it is scored as heavily as your grades. Failing any one gate ends that application regardless of the other four, which is why this checklist precedes, not follows, your shortlist.

How to apply: a step-by-step plan for one UK season

1. Build the shortlist by funding, not just by ranking. For each target university, record whether it hosts GREAT for India, whether its courses appear on the CSC’s approved lists, and what university scholarships its funding page publishes.
2. Open the Chevening application in August. Draft the four responses — leadership, networking, study in the UK, career plan — against real evidence from your 2,800 hours, and choose three courses you can defend as a coherent set.
3. File the Commonwealth dual application in September. Complete CSC Central by 20 October on the current cycle’s pattern, and complete India’s nominating application — the Ministry of Education route, via its SAKSHAT portal in recent cycles — by the Indian deadline, uploading the CSC application as instructed. Diarise both dates separately.
4. Apply to the universities themselves through the autumn. Chevening’s three courses, any GREAT universities, and any Inlaks-partner institutions each need their own admission application; Oxford and Cambridge graduate deadlines fall in December and January and double as the deadline for funds like Clarendon and Gates Cambridge.
5. Apply to GREAT at each university that lists India. Follow each institution’s own GREAT page and deadline; there is no central form and no single closing date.
6. File Inlaks when its window opens, offer in hand. Confirm the cycle’s birth-date rule, subject minima and exclusions on the Foundation’s site, and meet any English condition in your offer before you apply.
7. Convert offers to unconditional. Send final transcripts and English results promptly; Chevening’s July unconditional-offer deadline is absolute, and your visa cannot be issued on a conditional place.
8. Prepare the visa file on your real funding. Your CAS, your scholarship letters and your financial evidence must agree with each other; a GREAT award letter showing £10,000 means your remaining tuition and living costs must be evidenced separately.

Required documents

The Indian applicant’s UK file normally contains: a valid Indian passport; bachelor’s degree certificate and complete transcripts, with percentage-to-grade evidence your university can supply where a scheme expresses its standard in UK terms; work-experience evidence sufficient to substantiate 2,800 hours for Chevening — employment letters, contracts or verified records of voluntary and part-time work; two referees for Chevening, named at application and contacted if you are shortlisted, and references uploaded within CSC Central for Commonwealth by its deadline; a development-impact statement and study plan for Commonwealth, written to the CSC’s themes; your CSC application PDF for upload to the Indian nominating portal where that step applies; offer letters, and ultimately an unconditional offer, from your UK universities; English test results meeting each university’s condition, even though the schemes themselves set no test; financial evidence for the visa stage matched to your actual funding letters; and a TB test certificate from an approved clinic where UK visa rules require one for residents of India — Chevening reimburses the test cost up to its published cap for its scholars. Keep the spelling of your name identical across passport, degree records and every portal, and keep scanned copies of everything: the Commonwealth process in particular accepts documents only through its systems, not by email after the deadline.

Deadlines and timeline

Selection tips and common mistakes

Chevening is won on evidence: a leadership answer built on one real episode, with your decision, its scale and its result, outperforms five paragraphs of adjectives, and the career plan must name the Indian institutions and roles your master’s feeds into. Commonwealth is won on the join between need, merit and impact — the panel must believe the degree could not happen without the award, that you will excel on it, and that India gains something specific from it. GREAT is won earlier and more quietly, on the quality of the admission application and the university’s own statement requirements. Inlaks is won at the offer stage: by the time you apply, the decisive event — admission to a partner-standard institution in a funded subject — has already happened.

• Filing only half of the Commonwealth application. CSC Central without the Indian nominating application — or the reverse — is an incomplete application and is not considered.
• Choosing an MBA for a scheme that excludes it. Commonwealth Master’s does not fund MBAs at all; Chevening caps MBA tuition at £22,000 regardless of the university’s fee.
• Counting Chevening hours you cannot evidence. The 2,800 hours must be real, post-degree-qualifying experience you can document if audited at interview.
• Treating GREAT as full funding. £10,000 toward tuition leaves the tuition balance and all living costs to other sources; budget the full year before accepting.
• Applying to Inlaks in an excluded subject or without an offer. Both are automatic failures; the exclusions list and the offer requirement are published precisely so applicants check first.
• Missing the July unconditional-offer deadline. A Chevening award lapses without an unconditional offer from one of your three courses by the stated date — chase transcripts and English results early.
• Using one essay for Chevening and Commonwealth. Leadership-and-network evidence and development-impact evidence are different answers to different questions; panels score them differently.

Frequently asked questions

Can Indian students apply for both Chevening and Commonwealth in the same year?

Yes. They are separate FCDO-funded competitions with different administrators, criteria and calendars — Chevening closing in early October and Commonwealth on 20 October in the current cycle — and strong Indian candidates routinely enter both, plus GREAT applications at individual universities. If you win more than one full award you must decline all but one; you cannot hold Chevening and a Commonwealth Scholarship simultaneously for the same degree.

What exactly must an Indian Commonwealth applicant submit, and where?

Two applications. First, the CSC’s own application through CSC Central by its deadline — 20 October 2026 at 16:00 BST for September/October 2027 entry — with full transcripts and references uploaded inside that system. Second, the Indian nominating application: India’s nominating agency is the Ministry of Education, and in recent cycles Indian applicants have also had to apply through the Ministry’s SAKSHAT portal, uploading the CSC application, by the Ministry’s own deadline. Check both the CSC site and the Ministry’s notices for your cycle, because missing either system disqualifies the application.

How much is the Commonwealth stipend, and what else is covered?

The CSC publishes a monthly stipend of £1,712, rising to £2,000 for scholars whose university is in the London metropolitan area. The award also covers full tuition fees, approved return airfare between India and the UK, a warm clothing allowance, a study travel grant, a thesis grant, and child allowances for qualifying scholars. Rates are reviewed by the CSC, so confirm the figures on the official scholarship page for your cycle.

How do GREAT Scholarships work for India — is there one application form?

There is no central form. For 2026–27 the British Council listed twelve postgraduate scholarships for students from India, each worth a minimum of £10,000 toward tuition for a one-year postgraduate course and each jointly funded by the GREAT Britain Campaign, the British Council and the university. You must be a citizen of India with an undergraduate degree and meet the university’s English requirement, and you apply to each participating university under its own GREAT instructions and deadline. The list of universities changes by cycle, so work from the British Council’s India page for the year you apply.

Does Chevening require IELTS?

Chevening itself sets no English language test requirement. Your UK universities do: each of your three courses will state its English condition, and you must meet it to receive the unconditional offer Chevening requires by its July deadline. In practice, most Indian Chevening applicants therefore take IELTS or an accepted equivalent during the application year — for the university, not for Chevening.

Can Inlaks fund my UK MBA or computer science master’s?

No. The Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation’s published exclusions include business and finance, management studies (the MBA), computer science, most engineering outside its Imperial College arrangement, fashion design, hospitality and tourism, medicine and dentistry, and public health. Inlaks funds full-time master’s, MPhil and doctoral study in its eligible fields — up to USD 120,000, with joint awards at Cambridge, Imperial, the Royal College of Art and King’s College London — for Indian passport holders resident in India who already hold an offer and meet its age and marks rules.

I cannot afford the UK at all. Which scheme is designed for me?

The Commonwealth Scholarships. Financial need is an eligibility condition, not a preference: you must be unable to afford to study in the UK without the scholarship, and the award then covers tuition, airfare and living costs in full. Chevening, by contrast, does not test need — it tests leadership and career plan — which is why the two schemes, entered together, cover most strong Indian profiles between them.

Do I have to return to India after a UK scholarship?

Under Chevening, yes: returning to your country of citizenship for at least two years after the award ends is a condition of the scholarship. Commonwealth awards are built around development impact in your home country and are assessed on that basis, and Inlaks expects its scholars’ work to benefit India, though the mechanisms differ. None of this is decided by the UK visa system — it is a condition you accept from the funder, and breaking a Chevening return condition has consequences for the award. Read the condition for your scheme before you sign anything, and plan your career story around it honestly. Prepare the practical side with our test preparation resources and track every date in our deadline tools.

Sources & Verification

Facts in this guide were checked at the time of writing against official sources: the British Council GREAT Scholarships India page (twelve scholarships for India in 2026–27, minimum £10,000 toward tuition for a one-year postgraduate course, the participating-university list, and the GREAT scholar eligibility profile); Chevening’s published eligibility, benefits and 2027–28 calendar (applications 4 August to 6 October 2026, unconditional offer by 8 July 2027, MBA tuition cap of £22,000, 2,800 hours of work experience, two-year return condition); Commonwealth Scholarship Commission published terms (stipend £1,712 per month, £2,000 in London; applications 8 September to 20 October 2026 for 2027 entry; MBA excluded from the Master’s scheme) and the established Indian dual-application route through CSC Central and the Ministry of Education’s nominating process; and the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation’s published terms (up to USD 120,000, partner joint scholarships, birth-date, marks and exclusion rules).

Disclaimer: StudyGraduate is an information portal, not an agency. We do not submit applications, charge fees, or promise selection, admission or visa approval — no one honestly can. Scholarship details change yearly; always confirm deadlines, amounts and eligibility on the official website of the scheme before you apply.