Study in Finland: Admission, Cost, Visa and Scholarships (2027)

Finland runs its higher education on two parallel tracks. Thirteen universities award bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees and do the research; a separate network of universities of applied sciences awards more vocational bachelor's and master's degrees. This file covers the universities. A bachelor's degree is 180 ECTS credits over three years, a master's 120 ECTS over two, and the two are often applied for together as a single five year study right, which is why a Finnish offer letter frequently names both.

Most teaching at bachelor's level is in Finnish or Swedish, and those programmes are free of charge but require the language. The English taught bachelor's programmes are a small, competitive set, and they are the ones a non-EU applicant normally means. English taught master's programmes are far more numerous, several hundred across the thirteen universities.

Applications run through Studyinfo, the national portal at opintopolku.fi run by the Finnish National Agency for Education. One application form carries up to six study programmes ranked in order of preference. There are three national rounds in a cycle. The autumn joint application, 31 August to 10 September 2026, is for programmes starting in January 2027, with results by 19 November 2026 and a place to be accepted by 26 November. The first joint application of spring 2027, 7 to 21 January 2027, is the main one for international applicants: it covers the English taught degree programmes starting in autumn 2027, with results by 6 July 2027 and a place to be accepted by 13 July. The second joint application, 9 to 23 March 2027, covers the Finnish and Swedish taught programmes. Every deadline closes at 15.00 Finnish time and the form disappears from Studyinfo at that moment.

One trap is worth knowing before planning dates. Several universities run their own separate admission for English taught bachelor's programmes, outside the joint application and on their own calendar. Aalto University states plainly that its English taught bachelor's admission, the first joint application and the second joint application are three separate processes, and its own window for autumn 2027 entry is 7 to 22 January 2027. The University of Helsinki runs two admission groups for its English taught bachelor's programmes with two different windows, 5 to 19 January 2027 for the group ranked on SAT or ACT scores and 9 to 23 March 2027 for the group ranked on a school leaving certificate. So the January date on Studyinfo is the rule, not the whole picture, and the university's own admission page is what an applicant should read.

Admission at bachelor's level is usually score based rather than essay based. The common pattern is two or three admission groups: one ranked on the SAT, and increasingly the ACT, and another ranked on a recognised school leaving certificate such as the International Baccalaureate or the European Baccalaureate. Turku, Tampere and Aalto all use that structure, and Tampere adds the ACT from the 2027 round. An applicant in a SAT group books the test months ahead, because the score has to reach the university by its own supplementation deadline, not merely by the application deadline.

Tuition is charged only to students from outside the EU, the EEA and Switzerland, and only on programmes taught in English. Across the system fees run from about 8,000 to 20,000 euros a year, and each university publishes its own table, sometimes one figure for the whole institution and sometimes one figure per programme. There are no Finnish government scholarships for degree students. Every scholarship is the university's own, most of them tuition fee waivers of 50 to 100 percent awarded on the admission score, and several universities also run an early bird discount of about 2,000 euros for a student who accepts the offer and pays within a few weeks. On top of tuition a student pays a student union fee of roughly 50 to 70 euros a year and a student healthcare fee of about 35 euros a term.

A non-EU student needs a residence permit for studies from the Finnish Immigration Service, Migri, for any stay over 90 days, and it can be granted for the whole length of the degree. Doctoral researchers apply instead for a residence permit for scientific research, valid up to two years. During term a student may work up to 30 hours a week on average and full time in the holidays. After graduating, a student can apply for a two year permit to look for work or start a business, and permanent residence becomes possible after four years of continuous permits, with the study years counting.

Two things have changed since the joint application was the only story. First, applicants who are not EU or EEA citizens now pay an application fee, collected by the Finnish National Agency for Education inside the Studyinfo form rather than by the university. Second, not every university uses the two week national round. LUT University runs an international rolling admission for its English-taught bachelor's programmes that is open from 1 September 2026 to 30 April 2027 for an autumn 2027 start, and states that an applicant meeting every requirement is admitted without competition while places last, which means a programme can fill before the deadline. The University of Oulu runs a similar rolling round, 1 October 2026 to 25 February 2027, for one programme only, its Bachelor's in International Business Management. For anyone who misses the January window or wants a longer run at it, those are the routes to look at.