Amsterdam Merit Scholarship (AMS) 2026: Deadline, Eligibility, Benefits

The Amsterdam Merit Scholarship is the University of Amsterdam's central scholarship scheme for students who hold a non-EU/EEA passport and are not eligible for Dutch government study finance. Rather than one university-wide award, the AMS is administered separately by each of UvA's faculties and graduate schools, each of which sets its own scholarship amount, specific eligibility rules, selection criteria and deadline, and publishes them on its own scholarship page. As one example, the Amsterdam Law School offers an AMS worth EUR 25,900 for the 2026-27 academic year to applicants admitted for the first time to one of four English-taught LLM programmes (International and European Law, Transnational and European Private Law, Law and Finance, or International Criminal Law), selected on academic merit including a GPA equivalent to at least 8.0 on the Dutch 10-point scale, a motivation letter and a CV, with a combined LLM and scholarship application deadline of 15 January. Other faculties and graduate schools, covering fields from science to social and behavioural sciences, run comparable schemes with their own figures and dates. In every case, applicants must first apply for a place on a UvA bachelor's or master's programme and then submit a separate scholarship application to the relevant faculty; being awarded the degree place does not by itself grant the scholarship.