Scholarships to Study in Portugal for International Students

There is a single number on a Portuguese public university’s enrolment page that decides more about an international student’s budget than any scholarship they will ever win, and it is not a scholarship at all. It is the propina — the annual tuition fee — and for an EU student it is fixed by national law at €697 a year, identical at the University of Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra and NOVA. No committee sets it, no essay unlocks it, and you never reapply. Enrol as a non-EU student in the same degree and that number becomes a differentiated international fee of roughly €3,000 to €7,000. Same university, same diploma, a gap of several thousand euros a year that turns entirely on which passport you hold. That is where the real money in Portuguese higher education sits, and it is where any honest funding guide has to begin — because for most students, citizenship outweighs every award on the page.

Here is the bottom line. Portugal does not run a single marquee government scholarship for international undergraduates the way the UK runs Chevening or the US runs Fulbright, so the funding picture splits by level. At doctoral level it is a genuine strength: the FCT studentship (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia) is open to all nationalities on a competitive annual call and pays tuition plus a monthly stipend of roughly €1,310 (2025 reference value) for up to four years — effectively a full ride for a PhD. At bachelor’s and master’s level the deepest named awards sit at NOVA SBE and Católica Lisbon (merit and need-based discounts), topped up by Santander Scholarships, the means-tested DGES ação social state grant (built mainly for EU and resident students), Erasmus+ mobility, and nationality-specific routes such as the Camões Institute for Lusophone students and the Global Platform for Syrian Students for refugees. And underneath all of it, for an EU student, the €697 tuition cap already saves more than most of those scholarships pay out.

This is the focused funding companion to our complete guide to studying in Portugal, which covers the universities, the DGES admissions competition, English-taught programmes, the NIF-and-CRUE formalities and the visa route in full. Here we go deep on money: why your tuition tier matters more than any award, where the FCT funds doctorates, how the private-school and NOVA merit awards actually work, the state and external schemes segmented honestly by who can reach them, and the order to chase funding so you do not waste weeks on awards you were never eligible for. If you are comparing routes, see our scholarships for European universities overview, and our sibling guides to scholarships in Spain and scholarships in Italy.

Scholarships and Funding in Portugal, Key Numbers 2025/2026

Source: DGES and university fee pages; FCT studentship regulations (2025 reference stipend); NOVA SBE and Católica scholarship pages; Santander Open Academy; the European Commission (Erasmus+); and the figures verified in our Portugal hub, 2025/26. Terms change yearly — confirm before applying.

The biggest scholarship in Portugal is your passport, not an award

Before you spend a weekend hunting named awards, understand the structural saving, because for most undergraduates it dwarfs everything else. Public Portuguese universities charge a single legally capped tuition fee, the propina, of €697 a year for EU students across every public institution — University of Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra, and even NOVA University Lisbon, whose famous business school sits inside a public university and so charges its English bachelor’s at the same €697. There is no premium tier for the better-ranked universities, no Russell-Group-style markup. For an EU citizen, that cap is already a larger, more certain saving than almost any named scholarship will ever deliver.

The split that matters is EU versus non-EU. A non-EU “international” student at the same public university pays a differentiated fee of roughly €3,000 to €7,000 a year, set institution by institution and field by field, with medicine and specialist programmes at the top of that band. Holding an EU passport, in other words, is worth €2,300 to €6,300 every single year at a Portuguese public university — and over a three-year licenciatura that compounds to somewhere between €7,000 and €19,000. No merit committee in the country hands out a discount that size, that automatically, that reliably.

I push this framing hard with every family on the public route, because it reorders which scholarships are worth your time. A €1,000 university merit award is almost irrelevant against a €697 EU fee and meaningful against a €7,000 non-EU one. A NOVA SBE need-based discount lands against a private-scale or non-EU fee, which is the one place in the system where a five-figure tuition scholarship moves the number that matters. So before chasing an award, settle two questions: are you paying the €697 EU rate or the differentiated non-EU rate, and if you are non-EU, is that fee the thing a scholarship actually needs to attack? For most EU undergraduates the system has already done the heavy lifting, and the awards are top-ups.

💬 “Families arrive asking which Portuguese scholarship to chase, and for an EU undergraduate on the public route the honest answer is usually ‘none — your passport already won you the biggest one.’ At €697 a year, the structural saving has out-earned almost any merit award before you write a word of an essay. The named scholarships start to matter where the fee is actually large: a non-EU student facing the differentiated rate, anyone at NOVA SBE or Católica, and above all the doctoral candidates, where the FCT changes everything.” — Jakub Andre, Founder, College Council · Indiana University, Kelley School of Business ‘20

FCT doctoral studentships — where Portugal punches above its weight

If there is one place Portugal outperforms wealthier neighbours on funding, it is the doctorate. The Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), the national research-funding agency, runs an annual studentship competition (bolsas de doutoramento) that is open to candidates of any nationality on merit. An FCT studentship covers your tuition and pays a monthly maintenance stipend — a 2025 reference value of roughly €1,310 a month for PhD candidates — plus social-security and insurance contributions, for up to four years. For a research-track international student, that is effectively a full ride, and it is the most valuable single award in the Portuguese system.

The competition is real and selective, judged on your academic record, the quality of your research proposal and the strength of your host institution and supervisor. Two practical things follow. First, the call typically opens in the spring (around March–April) for study starting later in the year, so build your timeline backwards from that. Second — and this is the part newcomers miss — an FCT application is far stronger when a prospective supervisor and research group at a Portuguese university are already behind it. Contact the research group before the call opens, agree a project, and apply with their backing rather than cold.

There is a second doctoral route worth knowing. Individual universities and research institutes fund their own PhD positions attached to specific projects and EU grants, especially in the sciences and engineering at Porto, Minho, Aveiro and Instituto Superior Técnico. These are advertised as positions rather than scholarships and often pay a stipend on the same FCT scale. For a doctorate, the first question is therefore not “which scholarship” but “is there a funded FCT studentship or a funded project position in this research group” — and the answer is found by talking to the group, not by reading a scholarship list.

💬 “Portugal is one of the few European countries where I tell research-minded students to put the doctorate ahead of the master’s in their thinking, because the FCT funding is that good and that open to internationals. The mistake I see is treating it like an undergraduate scholarship form — you submit cold, you lose. The students who win have a supervisor in their corner before the call even opens. Get the research group first, and the funding follows.” — Jakub Andre, Founder, College Council

The honest part — who actually gets funded in Portugal

Portuguese funding is segmented by level and by citizenship, and the listicles that pretend every award is open to everyone are exactly what send students chasing money they were never eligible for. The schemes are real; the question is which ones your passport, your residence status and your study level actually let you reach. In our advising work this is where most of the wasted effort happens — a non-EU family spends a month polishing an ação social plan that was closed to them from the start.

If you are an EU/EEA citizen, the system already does most of the work. Your tuition is capped at €697, and you can apply for the state DGES ação social grant (bolsa de estudo) on the same terms as Portuguese students if you meet the residence and income conditions — means-tested support that contributes to fees and, more usefully, to accommodation and meals. You also have Erasmus+ for funded exchange semesters. For an EU student, the funding answer is largely solved by the structure plus a means-tested top-up.

If you are a non-EU citizen, the options narrow and the honesty matters more. The ação social grant is effectively closed to first-time non-EU applicants (it is built around residence and is generally unavailable to someone arriving fresh on a study visa). Your realistic stack is institutional merit and need-based awards — deepest at NOVA SBE and Católica Lisbon, which publish dedicated scholarship pages and can cut a large fee substantially — plus Santander Scholarships, and, at doctoral level, the FCT studentship, which is open to you on the same merit terms as everyone else.

If you are from a Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) country — Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde and the rest — there are dedicated routes: the Camões Institute and bilateral cooperation agreements fund students from the CPLP nations, and several universities run special-status admissions and fee arrangements for them. If you are a refugee or displaced student, the Global Platform for Syrian Students — founded in Lisbon by former Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio — places Syrian and other displaced students at Portuguese (and partner) universities with emergency scholarships. And many EU students can layer on a national scholarship from their home country or Erasmus+ funding on top of the €697 EU fee, which is a strong combination.

One caution on the external programmes: the Camões/CPLP and Global Platform for Syrian Students routes are powerful but tightly gated by nationality or circumstance, so they are decisive for the students they fit and irrelevant for everyone else. And the €697 EU cap, listed first deliberately, is the only “scholarship” on this table that is certain, applies to every EU student, and asks for nothing but the right passport.

How funding works by level — bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral

Portuguese funding is lopsided by study level: thin at the bottom, where the EU cap already does the work, and deepest at the top, where the doctorate is fully funded. Knowing the shape of that curve before you apply stops you from chasing money that was never concentrated at your level.

At bachelor’s level, the dedicated scholarship market is thin, because the EU tuition is already so low that there is little fee to attack. Your realistic stack is the €697 EU cap (the structural saving), DGES ação social if you are an EU citizen or resident, the occasional university or municipal award, and — if you are aiming at NOVA SBE or Católica — a merit or need-based discount decided with admission. For a non-EU undergraduate, the institutional merit awards and Santander are the levers, set against the differentiated fee.

At master’s level, the picture is similar but the institutional awards loom larger, because master’s fees (especially at NOVA SBE and the private schools) are higher than the €697 undergraduate floor. This is also where Erasmus Mundus joint master’s matter: if a Portuguese university is part of a funded consortium in your field, the scholarship covers tuition, travel and a generous stipend regardless of nationality. A strong international master’s applicant can realistically target an Erasmus Mundus award or a deep NOVA/Católica discount as the primary funding.

At doctoral level, the vocabulary changes from “scholarship” to “studentship or funded position,” and this is Portugal’s best-funded tier. The FCT studentship pays a stipend and covers tuition for up to four years on an open, merit-based call; many PhD candidates are funded instead through university or project positions on the same scale. The practical consequence for an international student weighing levels: a self-funded master’s at NOVA can cost more out of pocket than a fully funded doctorate at Porto or Coimbra, which is why a research-minded applicant is often better served aiming straight at the FCT track than treating the PhD as a distant fourth step.

Funding by Level at a Glance

Source: DGES; FCT studentship regulations; NOVA SBE and Católica scholarship pages; the European Commission (Erasmus+ and Erasmus Mundus). Public tuition is capped by law and changes only by small annual adjustment.

The order to chase funding — a practical sequence

Most families burn their energy on the famous prizes and never bank the certain saving. Reverse it. The sequence that consistently produces the lowest net cost, in our experience advising international applicants, runs from the largest and most certain saving to the smallest and least certain.

First, settle which tuition tier applies to you. If you are an EU citizen, the €697 cap is already banked and your funding job is small — a means-tested ação social top-up and, perhaps, a university award. If you are non-EU, the differentiated fee is the number every other decision should attack, so price it on the specific programme page before anything else. Second, if you are a research-track student, build the doctorate around the FCT — line up a supervisor and a project months before the spring call, because an FCT studentship is the strongest, most open award in the whole system and a funded PhD position is worth more than any undergraduate scholarship. Third, if you are applying to NOVA SBE or Católica, apply in an early round and treat the application as the scholarship application — their merit and need-based discounts are decided with or shortly after admission, and early rounds have more money on the table. Fourth, if you are EU or a resident, apply for ação social — it is means-tested, opens with the academic year, and the accommodation and meal support pulls real weight even when the fee is already €697. Fifth, layer on the top-ups and gated programmes that fit you: Santander through your university, Erasmus+ through your home institution’s international office, the Camões/CPLP routes for Lusophone students, a home-country national scholarship if you have one, and the Global Platform for Syrian Students for displaced applicants.

Worked in that order, the system rewards organisation over luck. The applicant who settles the tuition tier first, builds the FCT case early if research is the goal, and applies to NOVA or Católica in an early round will almost always finish ahead of the one who gambled everything on a single big-name prize and left the certain savings on the table.

Where the Money Actually Comes From

A realistic funding stack for an international student in Portugal, 2025/26.

Source: indicative funding stack from DGES, FCT, NOVA SBE, Católica, Santander Open Academy, the Camões Institute, the Global Platform for Syrian Students and the European Commission; amounts vary by scheme, level, nationality and year.

Want to see real tuition by programme, the EU versus non-EU fee, and admission requirements for any Portuguese university side by side? Our Atlas holds every Portuguese HEI — public and private — with the figures cross-checked against official sources, so you can compare a €697 public licenciatura at Porto against an English bachelor’s at NOVA SBE on the same screen.

How College Council helps

Portuguese funding rewards the families who understand the segmentation, and from the outside it is genuinely confusing: the biggest saving hides in plain sight as a legally capped fee, the state ação social grant is closed to most first-time non-EU applicants, the FCT is quietly the strongest award in the country but only for the research track, and the line between an open merit discount (NOVA, Católica), a top-up (Santander) and a nationality-gated route (Camões, the Global Platform for Syrian Students) is exactly the kind of detail that trips up international families. That is the work we do together — mapping which awards your nationality, level and study plan can actually reach, whether you pay the €697 EU rate or the differentiated non-EU fee, and where an FCT studentship or an institutional discount changes the maths — drawing on the same university data that powers this guide. From the University of Lisbon and Porto to NOVA SBE, Coimbra and Católica, every Portuguese university sits in our Atlas, with tuition, programmes and admission data. Start by creating a free account on College Council and running your profile through our chances tool to see which Portuguese programmes — and which funded alternatives across Europe — actually fit you.

On the testing side, the English-taught programmes that anchor most international applications to Portugal require a strong TOEFL or IELTS result, and that score also strengthens the academic case for an institutional award. Our TOEFL app delivers full TOEFL iBT practice tests with AI-graded speaking and writing feedback — the closest thing to a real mock exam you can do from home, and most students need eight to fourteen weeks to reach the 90+ band the selective Portuguese programmes (NOVA SBE among them) expect. And if you are applying to Portugal in parallel with US or selective-private schools where the SAT is central, our SAT app runs the full digital SAT with adaptive practice, so you prepare once and apply broadly.

Frequently Asked Questions

Summary — how to fund a Portuguese degree

Portugal is the rare destination where the funding question turns on citizenship and study level more than on a hunt for named awards. The largest, most certain saving is structural: for an EU citizen, the €697 legally capped public tuition, which is already worth more than most scholarships hand out; for a non-EU student, the differentiated fee of €3,000–7,000 is the number that should drive every other choice. On top of that, the strongest named award in the system is the FCT doctoral studentship — tuition plus a roughly €1,310 monthly stipend (2025 reference value) for up to four years, open to all nationalities — which makes Portugal a serious option for the research track. At bachelor’s and master’s level the deepest discounts sit at NOVA SBE and Católica, supported by DGES ação social (means-tested, EU/resident), Santander top-ups, Erasmus+ mobility and Erasmus Mundus joint master’s, and nationality-gated routes — Camões/CPLP for Lusophone students, the Global Platform for Syrian Students for refugees.

The trade-off to hold onto is this: Portugal’s public support is built for EU students and residents, so a first-time non-EU applicant from outside the Lusophone and refugee routes should plan around the differentiated fee, institutional merit and, if research-bound, the FCT — not a state grant. Settle the tuition tier first, build the FCT case early if you are research-track, apply to NOVA or Católica in an early round, and never skip ação social if you are eligible — and build the shortlist on real data.

Next Steps

1. Settle your tuition tier first — EU means €697 and a small funding job; non-EU means a €3,000–7,000 differentiated fee that should anchor every other decision. Compare real EU and non-EU tuition in our Atlas.
2. If you are research-track, build the FCT case early — line up a supervisor and project months before the spring call; a funded PhD is the strongest award in the system.
3. Apply to NOVA SBE or Católica in an early round — their merit and need-based discounts are decided with admission, and early rounds have more money on the table.
4. Never skip ação social if you are EU or resident — means-tested, opens with the academic year, and the accommodation and meal support is real value even against a €697 fee.
5. Build a balanced shortlist — create a free College Council account and run your profile through our chances tool to see which funded Portuguese and European options fit.

Read Also

• Study in Portugal: complete guide for international students — the full hub: universities, the DGES competition, English-taught programmes, costs and visas
• Scholarships for European universities — how Portugal’s funding compares across the continent
• Scholarships to study in Spain — the neighbouring Iberian option, and the Fundación Carolina for Portuguese students
• Scholarships to study in Italy — the other low-tuition Southern European route
• Erasmus+ programme: complete guide — the cheapest way to test Portugal before a full degree

Sources and Methodology

Funding figures are drawn from the awarding bodies’ own materials and cross-checked against College Council’s Atlas dataset of Portuguese higher-education institutions and the verified figures in our Study in Portugal hub. We lead with the structural tuition saving — the €697 EU cap and the EU-versus-non-EU split — because for most students it is worth more than any named scholarship. Public tuition is set by national law; the FCT stipend, institutional awards, place counts and deadlines change yearly and are administered by individual schools, the FCT, DGES and foundations, so always confirm the current figure and open call on the awarding body’s official page for your intake year before applying.

1. DGES — Direção-Geral do Ensino Superior (public tuition framework; ação social escolar means-tested grant; international-student admissions competition)
2. FCT — Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, studentships (doctoral and mixed-doctoral studentships open to all nationalities; tuition + monthly stipend ~€1,310 2025 reference + social security; up to 4 years)
3. NOVA SBE / NOVA University Lisbon — merit and need-based scholarship pages for the English-taught bachelor’s and master’s (public-university €697 EU tuition; institutional awards)
4. Católica Lisbon (UCP) — fees and scholarships pages (private market tuition ≈€8,900/year EU; merit and need-based discounts)
5. Santander — Santander Open Academy scholarships (study, mobility, language and research grants at partner universities including NOVA, Porto, Coimbra and Aveiro)
6. Camões Institute — Instituto Camões (cooperation and bilateral scholarships, including for Lusophone/CPLP-country students)
7. Global Platform for Syrian Students — emergency scholarship placement programme (founded in Lisbon by former President Jorge Sampaio; places displaced students at Portuguese and partner universities)
8. European Commission — Erasmus+ programme (funded 3–12-month study/traineeship mobility; Erasmus Mundus joint master’s; Portugal a top host destination)
9. College Council — Atlas higher-education dataset (Portuguese HEI identity, tuition, location and programme data; Wikidata-keyed canonical records) and internal advising experience with international applicant families