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

Spain's higher education system follows the Bologna three-cycle structure: a bachelor's degree (grado) of normally 240 ECTS credits over four years, a master's degree (master) of 60 to 120 ECTS over one to two years, and a doctorate. There are around 50 public universities, each created and largely funded by one of Spain's 17 autonomous communities, plus roughly 40 private universities, several of them Church-affiliated. Public universities teach mainly in Spanish or the co-official regional language (Catalan, Basque, Galician), though English-taught bachelor and master programmes are increasingly common, especially at technical and business schools and at private universities such as IE University.

A non-EU, non-EEA applicant whose secondary schooling was completed outside Spain generally needs to go through UNEDasiss, the service the Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia (UNED) runs on behalf of the Ministry of Education for university access from foreign educational systems. Students from a system with a recognition agreement with Spain, or who hold an International Baccalaureate diploma, still open a UNEDasiss profile but skip formal homologacion of the school certificate; students from other systems must first have their secondary diploma homologated (recognised as equivalent to the Spanish Bachillerato) by the Ministry of Education, a separate process from UNEDasiss itself. Each university then runs its own admission on top of this, evaluating the applicant's UNEDasiss credential, grades and, where relevant, an entrance test.

Tuition at public universities is charged per academic credit (ECTS), and the price per credit is fixed every year by decree of each autonomous community's government, not by the national government or by the university itself. This produces real regional variation: some communities, including Andalusia and Galicia, set the same or a similar credit price for international and EU students, while others, notably the Community of Madrid, Catalonia and the Basque Country, set a separate, higher non-resident price for non-EU students that can run several times the resident rate. A full bachelor's year is usually 60 credits, so the annual cost is the credit price multiplied by 60, before any repeat-year surcharge. Private universities set their own tuition directly and publish it as an annual or per-programme figure, commonly several thousand to over twenty thousand euros a year.

Most bachelor and master intakes begin in September or October; a smaller number of master's programmes, mainly at private universities and business schools, also open a February or spring intake. English test requirements apply to English-taught programmes; IELTS and TOEFL iBT are the most widely accepted, with each university publishing its own minimum score, and Spanish-taught programmes commonly ask for a DELE certificate or an equivalent level instead. Living costs vary sharply by city: a student budget in Madrid or Barcelona typically runs higher than in a smaller university city. Since May 2025, under Royal Decree 1155/2024, a student on a long-stay student visa for higher-education (superior) studies may work up to 30 hours a week alongside their studies without a separate work permit, and may apply, in the 60 days before or 90 days after finishing their studies, for a residence permit to search for a job or start a business, valid for up to 12 months.