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

Hungary is one of the few countries in Europe where a foreign student can read medicine, dentistry or pharmacy in English at a state university, and that is what most international applicants come for. The University of Debrecen, the University of Pécs, the University of Szeged and Semmelweis University in Budapest all run English language medical programmes, and the degrees are recognised across the European Union. Semmelweis, founded in 1769, is the oldest and best known of them, and charges USD 10,450 a semester for General Medicine and Dentistry. Hungary also teaches engineering, business, agriculture and the sciences in English, at lower fees than western Europe.

The money works differently from most of Europe. There is no national tuition rate; each university sets its own, and the range within a single university is wide. At the University of Debrecen the 2026/27 rates run from USD 5,500 a year for Social Work in Health Care and USD 6,000 for a Public Health bachelor's, through USD 7,000 to 7,500 for most engineering, computing and business degrees, to USD 8,000 for Pharmacy, USD 16,900 for Medicine and USD 17,500 for Dentistry. Foundation and preparatory courses are priced per programme rather than per year, from USD 3,000 for a short English language course to USD 7,500 for the Basic Medicine Course. On top of tuition Debrecen charges a non-refundable application fee of USD 150 and an entrance examination fee of USD 350, and where a programme's tuition is under USD 10,000 the whole year has to be paid, with a deposit, before the university issues the documents a visa application needs.

Admission is by the university's own entrance examination rather than by a central system. For medical and health science programmes Debrecen sets a written examination in biology, chemistry and physics followed by an oral interview; for other programmes the examination covers English and the subject. The language of the examination and the interview is English, and Debrecen states that the committee tests the applicant's English during the oral interview, so an English test certificate is not the gate that it is in northern Europe. Other universities do ask for one: the University of Pécs publishes a long list of accepted examinations with IELTS at 6.0 and no skill below 5.5, TOEFL iBT at 90 or 4.5 on the scale introduced in 2026, PTE Academic at 59 and the Duolingo English Test at 115, and then tests English again by online test or interview for applicants to its Medical School and its faculties of Health Sciences, Pharmacy, and Engineering and Information Technology, whatever certificate they hold.

Deadlines are late by European standards and there is more than one intake. Debrecen takes applications until 1 November for a January or February start, and until the middle of May for the following September, and it warns that popular programmes can close earlier: Medicine and Dentistry stopped accepting applications for the September 2026 intake before the deadline because of the number received. So an applicant aiming at a medical place should treat the published deadline as an outer limit rather than a plan.

The route worth knowing about is Stipendium Hungaricum, the Hungarian government's scholarship programme, which covers tuition in full and contributes to accommodation. It is run through bilateral agreements, so an application goes both to the Hungarian online system and to the sending partner in the applicant's own country, usually the ministry responsible for education or the Hungarian embassy, and each partner sets its own earlier internal deadline. The 2026/27 round closed at 14:00 Central European Time on 15 January 2026. The 2027/28 call had not been published when this was written on 9 September 2026, though the programme's operational regulations were updated on 31 August 2026, so the next round is being prepared. Scholarship applicants sit the university entrance examinations on a separate timetable from fee paying applicants, after their country has nominated them.