English-Taught Degrees in Greece: Bachelor's and Master's

Walk into the foyer of the medical school at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens on an October morning and the languages you hear are not all Greek. A cohort of first-year medical students — from Cyprus, Germany, the Gulf, a couple from Poland — are comparing timetables in English, the working language of their six-year degree. A tram ride away, at the Athens University of Economics and Business, another group is filing into a lecture for the English-taught BSc in International Business and Technology. This is the part of Greek higher education that did not exist a decade ago: a deliberate, English-medium track built for students who want an accredited, startlingly cheap EU degree without first learning Greek.

Here is the bottom line. You can study in Greece in English, but the undergraduate choice is narrow and the master’s choice is wide. As of 2025 Greek public universities run 16 English-taught bachelor’s programmes — concentrated in medicine, business and classics — alongside more than 200 English-taught master’s programmes, according to Study in Greece and the European Commission’s Study in Europe profile. The English-taught bachelor’s cost about €4,000–€6,000 a year for most subjects, rising to €12,000–€17,000 for the English-medium medical degrees (QS Study in Greece); master’s degrees are cheaper still at roughly €1,500–€4,000 total. Entry runs on a TOEFL or IELTS score, not on Greek. The trade-off worth weighing from the start: the parallel Greek-taught route is genuinely free, but it demands Greek at B2 level.

This guide is the focused companion to our complete guide to studying in Greece — read that for visas, living costs, student life and careers, which apply to every route. Here I stay on one question: what does English-taught study in Greece actually look like, programme by programme, fee by fee, and how do you decide between an English-taught place and the free Greek-taught alternative.

English-Taught Study in Greece, Key Data 2025/2026

Source: European Commission Study in Europe; QS Study in Greece guide; Study in Greece (@SiG); Hellenic Ministry of Education, 2025/26.

What “English-taught” actually means in the Greek system

Greek higher education is, by default, a Greek-language system. The constitution kept it public and Greek-medium for its entire modern history, and for the great majority of degrees Greek is still the only language of instruction. The English-taught offering is a recent, deliberate layer grafted onto that core: a set of named programmes — not whole universities — that teach, examine and supervise in English, created specifically to attract fee-paying international students.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. You are not choosing an “English-speaking university” the way you would in the UK or the Netherlands; you are choosing one of a defined list of English-medium programmes, each attached to a Greek public university that otherwise teaches in Greek. The practical consequences are real. Your degree is delivered end to end in English, but the campus, the administration and student life around you operate in Greek, so a working knowledge of the language transforms daily life even when it is not required for your coursework. And because the list is finite, your field either appears on it or it does not — there is no English version of every Greek degree.

The English-taught programmes also sit on a different financial footing from the rest of the system. Greek-taught undergraduate degrees at public universities are constitutionally tuition-free for everyone, EU and non-EU alike, with free textbooks on top. The English-taught programmes are the explicit exception: they charge fees, set per programme, because they were designed as a self-funding international track. So the same university can offer you a Greek-taught degree for €0 and an English-taught degree for several thousand euros a year, in different subjects. Understanding which side of that line your programme falls on is the single most useful thing to establish early.

The bachelor’s landscape — 16 programmes, three fields

At undergraduate level the English-taught map is small enough to hold in your head. The 16 English-taught bachelor’s programmes cluster in three fields with clear international demand, and almost nothing outside them.

The largest cluster is medicine. Five public universities now run six-year English-medium medical degrees built for international students: the two giants, NKUA in Athens and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, plus the University of Patras, the University of Thessaly in Volos and the University of Crete. These are the most expensive English-taught degrees in the country at €12,000–€17,000 a year, and the most competitive, but they are still a fraction of what a private medical school charges in Western Europe, and the clinical years sit inside large public teaching hospitals. If medicine is your aim, read it alongside our study medicine abroad guide, which sets Greece next to the other affordable English-medium medical routes.

The second cluster is business, economics and finance, where English is already the working language of the discipline. The Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB), the country’s leading specialist school for economics and informatics, runs the English-taught BSc in International Business and Technology, and the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki offers English-medium options in its economics and international-studies faculties. These programmes sit at the standard €4,000–€6,000 tier and tend to be the most internationally oriented in their curriculum and faculty.

The third cluster is the one where Greece has no peer: classics and archaeology. NKUA runs an English-taught BA in the Archaeology, History and Literature of Ancient Greece — and there is nowhere on Earth with a stronger claim to teach the subject, given that NKUA ranks 34th in the world for Classics and Ancient History in the QS rankings by subject, with the Acropolis, Delphi and Olympia as field sites. For a student set on the ancient world, studying it in English a bus ride from the Agora is an argument no Oxford or Heidelberg seminar room can quite answer.

Beyond these three fields the undergraduate English offering thins out fast, which is why curation matters more than browsing. The newer International Hellenic University (IHU) near Thessaloniki deserves a mention even though the headline count sits with the older universities: IHU was Greece’s English-medium pioneer, established explicitly to teach international students in English, and its School runs English-taught bachelor’s and master’s degrees across business, economics, IT and the humanities. If your subject is not on the public-university list, IHU is often the first place the English version exists.

The master’s landscape — where English-taught Greece is deep

Flip to postgraduate level and the picture inverts. Against just 16 English-taught bachelor’s programmes, Greece offers more than 200 English-taught master’s spread across most disciplines and nearly every major university. If you do not speak Greek, this is the part of the system that is genuinely open to you, and it is where most international students who choose Greece actually end up.

Two things drive that depth. First, master’s degrees worldwide are shorter, more specialised and more international by nature, so building them in English is easier and the demand is broader. Second, the fees are low: English-taught master’s commonly cost €1,500–€4,000 in total — not per year — and some are free, which makes a Greek master’s one of the cheapest English-medium postgraduate qualifications in the EU. A one-to-two-year master’s at this price, recognised across Europe, is a serious proposition for a graduate who wants an EU credential without the cost of the UK or the Netherlands.

The practical implication is a sequencing move we recommend to families often. A student whose undergraduate field is not on the 16-programme English list takes their bachelor’s at home or elsewhere, then comes to Greece for an affordable, English-taught, EU-recognised master’s in their specialism. Because the choice is so much wider at master’s level, you can usually find your exact field in English somewhere in the Greek system — the constraint shifts from “does it exist in English” to “which university and which city.” For a like-for-like view of other low-cost European master’s options, our free-tuition Scandinavia guide and study in Portugal guide cover the obvious alternatives.

Fees — what English-taught study actually costs

Be precise about the money, because “study in Greece is cheap” hides a wide range once you are on the English-taught side. The headline tiers, all 2025/26:

• English-taught bachelor’s, most subjects: roughly €4,000–€6,000 a year (QS Study in Greece).
• English-taught medicine: €12,000–€17,000 a year, the most expensive route, over a six-year degree.
• English-taught master’s: commonly €1,500–€4,000 in total, with some free.
• Private (non-state) universities: broadly €6,000–€15,000 a year, a separate sector covered below.

Set against those fees is the number that changes the maths: living costs of about €8,000 a year, which QS calls among the lowest in the European Union. That is what makes the all-in totals so favourable. A typical English-taught bachelor’s student pays roughly €12,000–€14,000 a year including tuition and living; an English-taught medical student, at the top of the fee range, lands around €20,000–€25,000 a year — still less than a single year’s international tuition at a UK university. A master’s student pays little more than living costs. For the full breakdown of living expenses by city, scholarships from the Greek state and Fulbright, and how the totals compare across routes, see the cost section of the main Greece guide.

English-Taught Fees at a Glance

Tuition only, 2025/26. Add living costs of ≈ €8,000/year per QS.

Source: QS Study in Greece guide; European Commission Study in Europe; Hellenic Ministry of Education. Confirm the exact figure on the programme page for your intake year.

Getting in — the English-taught admissions route

The English-taught route is the simpler of Greece’s two admissions paths, and it runs on documents rather than on a Greek-language certificate. You apply through the @SiG (Apply to Study in Greece) platform or directly to the university, and the core file is the same across programmes: your secondary diploma (matura, IB, A-levels or an equivalent — the SAT is accepted by some programmes), proof of English, and, for some courses, a motivation letter, a CV or an interview.

The document that matters most on this route is the English test. Programmes accept TOEFL iBT or IELTS Academic, typically from around TOEFL 79 / IELTS 6.0, with the more competitive programmes — medicine in particular — asking for higher scores. Applicants who are native speakers or who completed secondary school in English are usually exempt, but the rule varies by university, so read the language requirement on the specific programme page. Because there are only 16 bachelor’s programmes and the medical places are heavily contested, the practical advice is to apply early and to more than one programme; windows mostly fall in spring for an autumn start.

Recognition is not an obstacle for European applicants. Greece joined the Lisbon Recognition Convention in 2024, so a Polish matura, a German Abitur or an IB diploma is recognised for admission to an accredited Greek university, and the academic conversion is far gentler than the UK’s — Greek admissions do not demand the 85–95% extended-level matura averages that Oxbridge expects. The visa and registration steps differ sharply between EU and non-EU students, but they are identical to the Greek-taught route and are covered in full in the main Greece guide’s visa section.

English-Taught vs the Free Greek-Taught Route

The genuine decision most students face is not which English programme but English-taught or learn Greek. The honest comparison:

Source: QS Study in Greece guide; Study in Greece (@SiG); Hellenic Ministry of Education foreign-applicant instructions, 2025.

The way the decision usually resolves: if your subject is one of the 16 English-taught bachelor’s programmes, or you want a master’s, take the English route — it is faster and removes the language hurdle, and the fees are modest. If your subject is only taught in Greek and you have the year to invest in the language, the free Greek-taught route opens the whole public system at zero tuition, and Greek B2 becomes the entry ticket rather than a fee. The students who get the financial best of Greece, in our advising experience, are usually those who learned Greek seriously in year one and took the free route where their subject allowed — but for medicine, business, classics and any master’s, English is the practical default.

The private (non-state) English-medium sector

There is one more English-taught option worth understanding, and it is genuinely new. For its entire modern history Greek higher education was exclusively public; a 2024 law (Law 5094/2024) legalised non-state universities, and the first such institutions were licensed to operate from 2025, typically as branches or partners of foreign institutions. Many of these teach in English by design and charge their own fees, broadly €6,000–€15,000 a year — more than the public English-taught programmes but often in fields the public list does not cover.

For an English-medium student the private sector widens the menu, especially if the public programme you want is full or only offered in Greek. Two cautions, though. First, these are not the same tier as an accredited public degree on cost or, for now, on prestige; the public universities remain the obvious choice where they offer your subject in English. Second, check the Hellenic Ministry of Education’s accreditation before you enrol: a degree from an accredited institution is recognised across the EU under the Lisbon Convention, while an unaccredited “college” diploma may not be. Accreditation, not the marketing, is the thing to verify.

How College Council helps

English-taught study in Greece is exactly the kind of thing that is hard to research from the outside: the offering is narrow at bachelor’s and deep at master’s, the same university charges €0 for one degree and several thousand for another, and the new private sector adds options of uneven recognition. Those are the details we map out with families, drawing on the same university data that powers this guide — every Greek university is in our Atlas, with location, programmes and admission data. Start by creating a free College Council account and running your profile through our chances tool to see which English-taught Greek programmes — and which alternatives across Europe — actually fit you.

On the testing side, every English-taught route into Greece runs on a strong TOEFL or IELTS score, and many of our families apply to Greece alongside the US or the UK, where the SAT matters. Our TOEFL app delivers full TOEFL iBT practice tests with AI-graded speaking and writing feedback, and our SAT app runs the full digital SAT with adaptive practice, so you can prepare once and apply broadly. When you are choosing between English exams, our guide to TOEFL versus IELTS for European universities will help you pick the one Greek programmes accept.

Frequently Asked Questions

Summary — is an English-taught Greek degree right for you?

English-taught study in Greece is a real, accredited, and remarkably cheap EU option, with one structural quirk to plan around: the choice is narrow at bachelor’s (16 programmes, mostly medicine, business and classics) and wide at master’s (200+ across most fields). If your subject is on the undergraduate list, or you want a master’s, you get an EU-recognised degree taught entirely in English for €4,000–€6,000 a year (medicine €12,000–€17,000; master’s €1,500–€4,000 total), plus living costs of around €8,000 — less than a single year’s tuition at a UK university. If your field is only taught in Greek, the free Greek-taught route is open to you the moment you reach Greek B2.

Decide the route first, because it dictates everything downstream. Then build a balanced shortlist that weighs Greece against the other great-value English-medium options in Europe.

Next Steps

1. Confirm your field is offered in English — check the 16-programme bachelor’s list and the 200+ master’s; if it is not there, weigh the Greek-taught route or the private sector.
2. Pick your route — English-taught (TOEFL/IELTS, fees) or free Greek-taught (Greek B2); your subject usually decides.
3. Build a balanced shortlist — create a free College Council account and run your profile through our chances tool.
4. Book your English test — English-taught programmes want TOEFL iBT 79+ or IELTS 6.0+; prepare in our TOEFL app and compare exams in our TOEFL versus IELTS guide.
5. Apply early and broadly — places are limited, especially in medicine; spring windows for an autumn start.

Read Also

• Study in Greece: complete guide for international students — the full picture: universities, costs, visa, student life and careers
• Study medicine abroad: complete guide — Greece’s English-medium medical route in context
• Study in Portugal: complete guide for international students — another sunny, affordable English-friendly option
• Study in Scandinavia: free-tuition universities — free or low-cost English-taught study further north
• TOEFL 2026 versus IELTS for European universities — picking the English test Greece accepts

Sources and Methodology

The programme counts, fields and fee tiers are drawn from official Greek-government and EU sources and cross-checked against College Council’s Atlas dataset of Greek higher-education institutions. The English-taught offering is recent and evolving — programme lists, fees and language thresholds change between intake years — so we lead with the verified field clusters and tiers rather than per-programme specifics, and we recommend confirming the exact figure on the relevant programme page before applying. University strengths reference the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026.

1. European Commission — Study in Europe: Greece country profile (24 public universities; 200+ English-taught degree programmes; EU vs non-EU fee position)
2. QS / TopUniversities — Study in Greece destination guide (English BA €4,000–€6,000; medicine €12,000–€17,000; master’s low-cost; living ≈ €8,000/year)
3. Study in Greece (Hellenic Ministry of Education / @SiG) — English-taught bachelor’s programmes (16 English-taught BAs: medicine at NKUA, Aristotle, Patras, Thessaly, Crete; AUEB International Business & Technology; NKUA Ancient Greek archaeology, history and literature) and English-taught master’s programmes (200+ international master’s taught in English)
4. QS / TopUniversities — QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 (NKUA #34 world in Classics & Ancient History; top-100 in Archaeology and Dentistry)
5. Hellenic Ministry of Education — Instructions for foreign applicants 2025 (@SiG vs Ministry-portal routes; English-test requirement; Lisbon Convention recognition; Apostille and translation for the Greek-taught route)
6. Eurydice / European Commission — Greece national student fees (first-cycle public study free; foreign-language programmes bear fees; non-state universities from 2024 law)
7. College Council — Atlas higher-education dataset (Greek HEI identity, location and programme data; Wikidata-keyed canonical records) and internal advising experience with international applicant families