Stipendium Hungaricum: 2026 Benefits and Process

Per the official 2026/27 Call for Applications: a 100% tuition waiver, a monthly stipend of HUF 43,700 (about EUR 110) for bachelor's and master's students paid 12 months a year (doctoral students get HUF 140,000-180,000 depending on phase), a free dormitory place OR a HUF 40,000 monthly housing contribution, and Hungarian public healthcare plus supplementary insurance (official BA/MA Call PDF; PhD Call PDF). Important: there is no airfare and no settlement grant, and the Call itself warns the housing contribution will not cover full rent in Budapest. Around 900 English-taught programs run at 30 institutions.

You must be a citizen of one of the 100+ countries with a bilateral agreement and apply through your country's Sending Partner (usually the education ministry). Ineligible: Hungarian citizens including dual citizens, applicants under 18 as of 31 August 2026, and certain former scholarship holders reapplying at the same level. Unusually, there is no upper age limit and no fixed GPA floor in the Call; academic screening happens through university entrance exams (official Call PDF).

The 2026/27 cycle opened in November 2025 and closed 15 January 2026 at 14:00 CET via apply.stipendiumhungaricum.hu (official announcement). Expect the 2027/28 window to open around November 2026 with a mid-January 2027 deadline (not yet announced). Note that your national Sending Partner may require its own parallel application, and its nomination is a mandatory first-round gate.

The 2026-2027 call separates technical screening, Sending Partner nomination where applicable, host-institution admission review, and final allocation. The official call also reports program-wide historical totals, including more than 80,000 applications and more than 4,500 awards in 2025 (official Call PDF).

Those headline totals should not be converted into a personal acceptance probability. Country agreements, nomination limits, study level, program capacity, eligibility, technical completeness, entrance examinations, and applicant preferences affect the eligible pool and allocation. Use the current call and your Sending Partner's rules rather than a single calculated percentage.

Four, all documented in the Call itself: you cannot change your selected programs, study language or preference order after the deadline, so a careless list is locked in; skipping your Sending Partner's own national step voids the application; the Call explicitly advises against applying through agencies; and budgeting as if the stipend covers living costs (the Call itself flags that HUF 43,700 plus the housing contribution will not cover Budapest), so bring backup funds (official Call PDF).

Compare the current calls line by line: eligible citizenship and Sending Partner, program and teaching language, tuition, stipend, accommodation, insurance, travel, nomination, admission test, funding duration, and post-award conditions. Do not compare only the headline stipend because housing and living costs differ.

The 2026-2027 Stipendium deadline was 15 January 2026. CSC route deadlines are set separately by dispatching authorities and universities, so simultaneous applications and acceptance obligations must be checked in both notices. See the four-program comparison and the China application-readiness assessment.