Scholarships in Spain for International Students 2026/2027

Spain rewards honest research more than almost any other study destination, because the first thing to understand about scholarships in Spain for international students in 2026/2027 is that there is no single “Spanish Government Scholarship” open to everyone. Funding comes through several separate doors, and each door is labelled with a nationality, a professional profile, or a level of study. The MAEC-AECID programmes of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs serve citizens of partner countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and the Philippines — and several of them serve public employees specifically. Fundación Carolina, Spain’s best-known scholarship foundation, serves the Ibero-American community: Latin American countries and Portugal. Erasmus Mundus serves absolutely everyone, including the Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani, Nepali, Nigerian, and Indonesian readers who form much of StudyGraduate’s audience — and for those readers it is usually the strongest fully funded route into a Spanish university. University scholarships, la Caixa fellowships, and Spanish doctoral contracts complete a picture that is generous but segmented.

This guide maps every major route with its real eligibility, because applying to the wrong door is the most common and most wasteful mistake in Spanish scholarship applications. It also covers the things the segmented system makes essential: the short application windows published in Spain’s official gazette (the BOE), the difference between the Ministry’s general grants — which require legal residence in Spain and so are not an application route for most new international students — and the cooperation scholarships that are, the role of Spanish language certification, and the realistic costs that a scholarship in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Granada, or Salamanca has to cover. Plan in parallel with the wider scholarships directory, compare Spain with Italy and France in the study abroad section, browse institutions through the universities directory, and keep your budget honest with the StudyGraduate tools. If Italy is also on your list, our guide to scholarships in Italy for international students shows a usefully different, need-based model worth comparing before you commit.

Scholarships in Spain at a Glance

Costs First — Tuition and Living Expenses in Spain

Spain’s public tuition is set per credit by each autonomous community, which is why honest figures come as ranges. Public bachelor’s degrees commonly cost roughly €800 to €2,500 per year for a first enrolment, and official master’s degrees commonly fall in a band around €1,000 to €3,500 per year, with some communities and some professionally oriented master’s priced higher and with non-EU students in certain regions paying increased per-credit prices. Private universities and business schools charge far more — frequently €8,000 to €25,000 or above for a master’s — which is precisely where their scholarship and discount schemes matter. Repeat enrolments in the same subjects raise per-credit prices, so passing first time is also a financial strategy. Living costs follow the city: Madrid and Barcelona are the most expensive, where a careful student budget of roughly €900 to €1,300 per month is realistic; Valencia, Granada, Sevilla, and Salamanca — all major student cities — are noticeably cheaper, often €700 to €1,000 per month for a room in a shared flat, food, transport pass, and personal costs. Non-EU students may work part-time within the limits attached to their student authorisation (Spain’s rules allow work compatible with studies, up to 30 hours per week under the current framework, subject to the authorisation’s conditions), but scholarship planning should treat any earnings as a supplement, never as the foundation. Your visa application will require documented means for the first year regardless of scholarship letters, assessed against Spain’s IPREM-based thresholds as published for your application year.

The Main Routes, One by One

1. MAEC-AECID — Spain’s cooperation scholarships

The Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation (MAEC), runs Spain’s best-known government scholarship family — and the one most often misdescribed online. These are cooperation instruments tied to Spain’s development partnerships, organised as distinct sub-programmes rather than one open competition. The MASTER programme funds public employees from listed Latin American countries and the Philippines to take official master’s degrees in Spain connected to development priorities. The Africa-MED programme serves citizens of African and Middle Eastern partner countries. The Diplomatic School programme funds study at Spain’s Diplomatic School for listed countries across Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, the Philippines, and Ukraine. Other strands cover cultural and academic stays, lectorados (Spanish language teaching assistantships abroad — outward, not a route into Spain), and specialised training. Two operational facts matter more than any summary: each call is published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado (BOE) with its own country list, benefits, and deadline, and the filing windows are short — in some programmes around ten working days from publication — with applications filed through AECID’s electronic headquarters (Sede Electrónica). Benefits are defined inside each call and typically combine a monthly allowance, enrolment support, health and accident insurance, and travel assistance in the proportions that call specifies; any website quoting one universal MAEC-AECID stipend figure for all programmes is simplifying past the point of accuracy. Start at the official AECID website, read the current call’s country annex before anything else, and if your country is not listed, redirect your effort to the routes below rather than preparing an ineligible application. Note, as one concrete example of why this matters: India does not appear in the current MAEC-AECID master’s country lists, so Indian applicants should build their Spanish plan on Erasmus Mundus, university awards, and research fellowships instead.

2. Fundación Carolina — the Ibero-American flagship

Fundación Carolina is a public-private foundation created to strengthen educational and cultural relations between Spain and the Ibero-American Community of Nations, and its annual call is one of the largest scholarship calls in the Spanish-speaking world. For 2026/2027 — its 26th call — the Foundation offered 736 scholarships and grants across 203 academic programmes, broken down as 228 postgraduate (master’s) scholarships, 120 doctoral scholarships and short postdoctoral stays, 114 doctoral renewals, 24 teacher-mobility grants, and 250 scholarships for institutional studies, with a stated emphasis on STEM, women in science and technology, human rights, and programmes aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, as summarised in the EURAXESS listing of the Fundación Carolina call. Eligibility turns on nationality: applicants must be nationals of an Ibero-American Community member country — the list spans Andorra, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Uruguay, and Venezuela among the community’s members — and programmes are hosted at Spanish universities and centres across the country. Financial conditions are programme-specific by design: each programme sheet in the call states the tuition percentage covered, any monthly living aid, travel support, and insurance included, and the student’s own contribution where one exists, so two Carolina awards can look quite different on paper. Applications are filed on the Foundation’s own platform at the Fundación Carolina website, with the call opening in January and postgraduate deadlines typically in March and doctoral and mobility deadlines later in the spring — the exact dates in the current call always govern. Doctoral scholarships under Carolina generally require an institutional agreement or endorsement route through a home-country university, which is another reason to read your specific programme sheet before investing in the application.

3. Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters — the open door

For applicants from Asia, Africa, and everywhere else outside the Ibero-American and AECID partner lists, Erasmus Mundus is the principal fully funded route that includes Spain. These are prestigious joint master’s degrees delivered by consortia of at least three universities in different countries; Spanish institutions — among them universities in Barcelona, Madrid, Granada, Valencia, and the Basque Country — coordinate or partner in consortia across fields from public health, data science, and environmental management to translation, tourism, and law. A Mundus scholarship pays €1,400 per month for up to 24 months (a maximum of €33,600) toward travel, visa, installation, and living costs, with participation costs including tuition covered separately through the consortium, for study in at least two countries. There is no nationality restriction and no central application: you apply directly to each consortium between roughly October and January, following the official Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters page of the Erasmus+ programme and the consortium’s own site, and you must not have held a Mundus scholarship before. Competition is severe and academic — top-ranked applicants win — but eligibility is universal, the funding is the most complete in this guide, and a Spanish semester or year inside a Mundus degree also builds the record for later Spanish doctoral funding.

4. University scholarships and school awards

Spanish universities fund international students directly, most visibly at master’s level. Public universities publish calls for tuition grants, excellence awards, and collaboration scholarships through their own international and grants offices; amounts are usually partial — a percentage of tuition or a fixed grant — and are decided on admission merit, so the application is typically woven into the admission process. Private institutions compete harder on discounts: examples widely published by the institutions themselves include international excellence scholarships at UIC Barcelona, merit-based tuition waivers at Barcelona School of Economics (which awards waivers covering part or, for outstanding candidates, all of tuition on its master’s programmes), and talent scholarships at business schools such as ESADE, IE, and EADA, each under its own rules and deadlines. Santander Universities scholarships, run with partner universities in Spain and internationally, add smaller grants across levels. The honest summary: university money in Spain rarely equals a full ride on its own, but stacked on public tuition levels — or used to bring a private master’s within reach — it changes real decisions, and it is the one route in this guide where strong Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani, and other non-partner-country applicants compete on identical terms at the point of admission.

5. Research funding — la Caixa, FPU and FPI

Doctoral funding in Spain works differently from taught-degree scholarships: researchers are commonly funded as employees or fellows. The la Caixa Foundation’s fellowship programmes (including its INPhINIT doctoral and Junior Leader postdoctoral strands) fund research at Spanish and Portuguese centres of excellence under published nationality and mobility rules, with structured multi-year support — read each call’s eligibility carefully, because the doctoral and postdoctoral strands differ. The Spanish state’s FPU programme (university teacher training) and FPI predoctoral contracts attached to funded research projects provide multi-year salaried contracts for PhD candidates, advertised through the ministry and universities; in practice these are highly competitive, are tied to Spanish research groups and projects, and frequently interact with enrolment and residence status, so international applicants usually reach them through a supervisor and a specific project call rather than a general application. If your goal is a PhD in Spain, the working sequence is: identify a research group, contact a prospective supervisor with a focused proposal, and then target the FPI, FPU, la Caixa, or university contract calls that the group can support.

Eligibility — Reading Spain’s Segmented System Correctly

Work through eligibility in this order. First, nationality and residence: Fundación Carolina requires Ibero-American nationality; MAEC-AECID sub-programmes each list their partner countries in the BOE call; the Ministry’s general grants require Spanish/EU status or an existing Spanish residence permit; Erasmus Mundus requires nothing but merit. Second, professional profile: MAEC-AECID’s MASTER programme is for public employees, evidenced by employer certification; Carolina doctoral awards run through home-university agreements; FPI contracts attach to specific research projects. Third, academics: a bachelor’s degree giving access to official master’s study in Spain (with your qualification’s recognition handled as the university requires), a master’s for doctoral routes, and grades strong enough for the competition you are entering — Mundus and la Caixa sit at the demanding end. Fourth, language: most Spanish-taught official master’s programmes require certified Spanish, commonly B2 or higher under the DELE/SIELE system, and some scholarship calls set their own Spanish requirement; English-taught programmes set English requirements instead. Applying to a Spanish-taught programme without the language evidence the call requires is an eligibility failure, not a detail to fix later. Fifth, admission: several routes require pre-admission or a confirmed place — or at minimum an identified official master’s of the size the call specifies (some AECID calls attach to official master’s of no more than 60 ECTS) — so university application timelines and scholarship timelines must be planned together, not sequentially.

Benefits and Coverage Compared

Coverage in Spain is best compared by component rather than by headline claims. Erasmus Mundus is the most complete package in this guide: participation costs covered plus €1,400 per month for up to 24 months, from which travel, visa, installation, and living costs are met. Fundación Carolina awards are defined per programme — combinations of tuition percentage, monthly aid, travel, and insurance — and must be read on the programme sheet; some include a required student contribution. MAEC-AECID awards are defined per BOE call, typically combining monthly aid with enrolment support, insurance, and travel assistance for the funded period. University awards are usually tuition-focused: a waiver or discount that reduces your largest single bill but leaves living costs to you, which at Spanish public tuition levels can still produce a workable total budget. Doctoral contracts (FPI) and la Caixa fellowships are employment-style funding — salary or fellowship payments over several years with social-security coverage under their terms — and belong in a different mental category from student grants. A final caution: none of these awards removes the visa requirement to show documented means for your stay, and award letters should be presented as part of — not instead of — a complete financial file.

Programmes and Fields of Study

Spain’s scholarship map follows its academic strengths. At master’s level, funded demand concentrates in public health and health sciences, environmental sustainability and renewable energy, data science and artificial intelligence, international relations and development cooperation (a natural fit for AECID and Carolina calls), business and economics in Barcelona and Madrid, law and human rights, tourism and cultural heritage — fields where Spain is a global industry leader — and Spanish language and Hispanic studies. Doctoral funding follows research-group strength: biomedicine, materials, photonics, agriculture and food science, and marine sciences all host internationally funded groups. Two structural notes help planning. First, the official master’s (máster universitario) is the degree that scholarships and doctoral access recognise; Spain also offers many máster propio (university-specific) degrees, which are professionally useful but generally sit outside official scholarship calls and do not lead directly to PhD admission — check which type you are applying to before assuming funding attaches. Second, English-taught official master’s programmes are growing fastest in Catalonia, Madrid, and Valencia, while the widest programme choice remains Spanish-taught; your language profile therefore shapes your realistic programme list more in Spain than in most European destinations.

How to Apply, Step by Step

1. Identify your door first. Match your nationality, residence, and profile against the table at the top of this guide. If no government door fits, build the plan on Erasmus Mundus plus university awards from the start.
2. Shortlist official master’s programmes at Spanish universities, confirming each is a máster universitario, its language of instruction, its per-credit price for your student category, and its admission calendar.
3. Secure language evidence early. Book DELE or SIELE for Spanish-taught routes, or the English test your programme requires, so results exist before calls open — AECID windows are too short to fix missing certificates.
4. Prepare legalised documents. Degree and transcripts with Hague apostille and sworn Spanish translation (traducción jurada) where required, passport, CV, and — for AECID MASTER — your public-employment certification from your institution.
5. Apply for admission or pre-admission where the scholarship call requires it, keeping the admission letter with your scholarship file.
6. File the scholarship application on the correct official platform: AECID’s Sede Electrónica for MAEC-AECID calls published in the BOE; Fundación Carolina’s own application system for its January call; each Mundus consortium’s site for Erasmus Mundus; and the university’s system for its own awards. Scholarship applications through these official channels are free.
7. Track resolutions on the same official channels, respond to any subsanación (document-correction) notice within its short deadline if one is issued, and formally accept any award in the manner the call specifies.
8. Complete the student visa process at the Spanish consulate for your residence, with admission, award letter, insurance, accommodation evidence, and financial documentation, then register in Spain and enrol within the university’s deadlines.

Required Documents

A complete Spanish scholarship file typically contains: valid passport; bachelor’s (and, for doctoral routes, master’s) degree and full transcripts, apostilled and, where the call requires, translated by a sworn translator into Spanish; language certification (DELE/SIELE or the English certificate the programme specifies); a CV in the format the platform requests; a motivation or study-plan statement tied to the specific programme and, for cooperation scholarships, to the development priorities of the call; proof of admission, pre-admission, or application where required; employer certification of public-employee status for MAEC-AECID MASTER applicants; and any programme-specific annexes the call lists. Consulates and universities may ask for criminal-record and medical certificates at the visa stage. Because AECID filing windows can be around ten working days, the entire file — apostilles and sworn translations included — must exist before the BOE publishes the call, not after.

Deadlines and Timeline for 2026/2027

Because several of these calls for 2026/2027 will have closed by the time many readers find this guide, treat the table as the annual rhythm to plan against: Mundus in autumn, Carolina in January, AECID calls across the first half of the year, university rounds throughout. All three systems are annual, and a prepared file converts next year’s short windows from a crisis into a formality.

Selection Criteria and How to Improve Your Chances

Spanish cooperation scholarships select on development logic as well as grades. For MAEC-AECID, the strongest files connect the applicant’s public-service role, the chosen master’s, and a plausible post-return contribution in the home country, aligned with the call’s priority sectors and the Sustainable Development Goals; employer support and the realism of the return plan are read seriously. Fundación Carolina weighs academic record, the fit between your trajectory and the programme, and the programme’s own criteria, with professional experience counting in many master’s profiles. Mundus is the most purely academic competition of the three: outstanding grades, strong references, and a motivation letter that engages the consortium’s actual curriculum and mobility path. Across all routes, the improvements that matter are documentary and specific: language certification at or above the required level already in hand; a study plan that names real modules and, for research, real groups; references that describe your work concretely; and an application filed early in the window with every annex in the exact format the platform requests, because in short-window systems, administrative completeness is itself a selection criterion.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Applying to a call your nationality cannot enter. Carolina is Ibero-American; AECID lists partner countries per call. Ten minutes reading the country annex saves weeks of wasted preparation.
• Confusing the Ministry’s general grants with an entry scholarship. Without Spanish/EU status or an existing residence permit, they are not a route into Spain for a first degree.
• Missing the BOE window. AECID calls can allow around ten working days; documents requiring apostille or sworn translation cannot be produced inside that window.
• Applying to a máster propio expecting official funding. Scholarship calls attach to official master’s degrees; verify the degree type on the university’s page.
• Underestimating the Spanish-language requirement. A Spanish-taught programme without certified Spanish at the required level ends the application before merit is considered.
• Believing a single “Spain Government Scholarship” portal. There is no such unified scheme; unofficial sites repackaging these programmes with one stipend figure and an application fee are not the official channels — the real applications are free and sit on AECID, Carolina, Erasmus+, and university platforms.
• Ignoring the return and service logic of cooperation awards. Applications that read as emigration plans rather than cooperation projects score poorly with AECID and Carolina panels.
• Leaving the visa file to the award letter alone. Consulates assess complete documented means; keep bank evidence, insurance, and accommodation documentation consistent with your award.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a single fully funded Spanish Government scholarship for all international students?

No. Spain funds international students through separate programmes with their own eligibility: MAEC-AECID cooperation calls for listed partner countries and profiles, Fundación Carolina for Ibero-American nationals, Erasmus Mundus for all nationalities, and university and research funding under their own rules. Any single portal claiming one open-to-all Spanish Government scholarship with one stipend figure does not reflect the official system.

Can Indian, Bangladeshi, or Pakistani students get scholarships in Spain?

Yes, through the routes that are nationality-open: Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters (fully funded, master’s level), university merit scholarships and tuition waivers decided at admission, la Caixa research fellowships where the strand’s rules allow, and doctoral project contracts reached through a research group. The MAEC-AECID master’s calls list partner countries that do not include India, Bangladesh, or Pakistan in their current editions, and Fundación Carolina is restricted to Ibero-American nationals — so applicants from South Asia should not build a plan on those two doors.

How many scholarships did Fundación Carolina offer for 2026/2027?

The 26th call offered 736 scholarships and grants across 203 programmes: 228 postgraduate scholarships, 120 doctoral scholarships and short postdoctoral stays, 114 doctoral renewals, 24 teacher-mobility grants, and 250 institutional-studies scholarships. Financial conditions vary by programme and are stated on each programme sheet in the call.

Do I need to speak Spanish to study in Spain on a scholarship?

For Spanish-taught programmes, yes — certified Spanish, commonly at B2 level or above (DELE or SIELE), is normally required by the programme and sometimes by the scholarship call itself. For English-taught programmes, including most Erasmus Mundus tracks, English certification is what matters, though learning Spanish substantially improves daily life, part-time work options, and any cooperation-scholarship interview.

What does the MAEC-AECID scholarship pay?

There is no single rate: each sub-programme’s BOE call defines its own package, typically combining a monthly allowance with enrolment support, health and accident insurance, and travel assistance for the funded period. Read the current call for the programme you are eligible for — quoting one universal figure, as many blogs do, is not supported by the official calls.

When do Spanish scholarship applications open?

By annual rhythm: Erasmus Mundus consortia open roughly October to January; Fundación Carolina opens in January with spring deadlines; MAEC-AECID sub-programme calls are published in the BOE at points across the first half of the year with short filing windows; university awards follow admission rounds. The current call for your programme is always the controlling document.

Can I work in Spain while studying?

Student authorisations in Spain allow work compatible with your studies within the limits set in the current regulations and your authorisation — up to 30 hours per week under the present framework — provided the work does not compromise your studies. Scholarship conditions can add their own restrictions, and earnings should be treated as a supplement to, not a substitute for, your funding plan and visa financial evidence.

Does a scholarship guarantee a Spanish student visa?

No. The consulate decides the visa on your complete file — admission, financial means, insurance, accommodation, and documentation — and a scholarship is supporting evidence within that file, not a guarantee. StudyGraduate cannot promise selection, admission, funding, or visa approval, and you should distrust anyone who does.

Sources & Verification

Facts in this guide were checked against official and primary sources at the time of writing, including: the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) and its programme information on MAEC-AECID calls, sub-programme structure, BOE publication, and electronic filing; Fundación Carolina’s 2026/2027 call information as carried by EURAXESS (736 scholarships across 203 programmes, with the breakdown by modality and the Ibero-American eligibility list); the Erasmus+ programme’s official Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters page (€1,400 per month for up to 24 months, participation costs covered, worldwide eligibility, consortium applications); and institutional scholarship information published by Spanish universities and schools. Where a benefit is defined inside an annual call rather than published as a standing figure — notably MAEC-AECID allowances and Carolina’s per-programme financial conditions — this guide says so instead of quoting an invented rate.

Disclaimer: Scholarship amounts, eligible countries, deadlines, and conditions change with each annual call. StudyGraduate is an information portal, not an agency or a university, and we cannot promise selection, admission, funding, or visa approval to any applicant. Always confirm every deadline, amount, and requirement on the official website of the scholarship or university before you apply or make financial commitments.