Proof of funds for a Danish residence permit: DKK 89,112, and why an apostille is worthless

Denmark asks a student to evidence DKK 89,112 for one year, roughly EUR 11,920. That is the highest proof-of-funds figure among the nine countries we work with, and Denmark also sits at the top of our range for tuition and for living costs. It requires no blocked account. And it will not accept your apostille, which is the most expensive misunderstanding on this page.

Almost every question we get about Danish funds comes from the same confusion: three different numbers being treated as one. Separate them first, then we can get to the real test, which is not about the amount at all.

The three numbers, and why none of them is the others

Conflating them produces two opposite mistakes. Some families read DKK 89,112 as a fee and panic. It is not a fee; it is evidence, and the money remains yours. Others read it as the cost of a year and relax, which is worse, because that figure is not tuition money.

Look at how it sits. Living costs run EUR 800 to EUR 1,200 a month. Take twelve of those months and the range falls either side of DKK 89,112. In other words, the sum you must show is essentially one year of living expenses — and tuition is charged on top of it, separately. Families who treat the funds figure as the whole budget meet the tuition invoice as a second shock.

Here is the monthly breakdown that figure corresponds to.

One more thing most pages leave out: the requirement is set in Danish kroner, and the euro figure is only an approximate conversion. Your real exposure is taka against the krone, not against the euro. Why that matters in three of our nine countries is covered in your budget is not in euros, and what a weakening taka does to a plan is in what a falling taka does to your plan. The full cost picture from Bangladesh is in what studying in Denmark costs.

Get the vocabulary right: this is a residence permit, not a visa

Denmark does not issue a study visa in the ordinary sense. It issues a residence permit, and the decision is taken by SIRI, the Danish agency. Documents and biometrics are given at the VFS centre in Gulshan, Dhaka, so this is not one of the files that has to travel to India.

This is not pedantry. Search for the wrong word and you get the wrong checklist: building a Danish study file from a Schengen visit-visa document list is a common and expensive error here. The route itself, including the ST1 application, is set out in how Denmark handles a Bangladeshi application and study in Denmark from Bangladesh.

The real test: can the money be explained?

This is where Bangladeshi files are won and lost. The authority is not simply checking whether a balance exceeds DKK 89,112. It is checking whether the money is explicable — whether your paperwork answers four questions on its own.

Whose money is it? The student's or the immediate family's raises the fewest questions. The further the relationship, the heavier the evidence required. Who can sponsor you and what that takes is in sponsors and affidavits, and what verification looks like from the other side of the counter is in how embassies verify your financial documents.

How long has it been there? There is no magic number of days, and a page that gives you one invented it. The working standard is whether the statement reads as a history rather than a snapshot.

Where did it come from? This is the central question, and a balance does not answer it. Transactions do.

Is it consistent with this family? Assets that do not match declared income weaken a file even when the total is correct.

What evidences source, and what only evidences amount

That right-hand column is the whole point of this article. A solvency certificate and a bank statement are not the same document: one says what exists today, the other says how it got there. The difference is explained in bank solvency certificate, what an officer actually reads is in bank statements for a European student visa, and what to ask for at the counter is in getting a bank statement in Bangladesh.

The late lump sum: the single most damaging thing you can do

Five months of a moderate balance, then one large deposit shortly before applying. In Dhaka this is described as strengthening a file. It is the opposite.

The logic is simple. That single credit raises the final number while destroying three of the four answers — where the money came from, why it arrived exactly then, and whether it is genuinely the family's. A statement that used to tell a story now poses a question.

And the most common explanation offered, that a relative lent it, makes things worse rather than better: borrowed money is not evidence that a family can support a student, it is evidence of the reverse, because it has to go back. How inflated documents get caught is in why an inflated bank statement gets caught, and the mythology around show money is unpicked in education loans and show money.

An apostille is worthless for Denmark, and that mistake costs the intake

Read this section twice; it is the most expensive warning on the page.

Bangladesh joined the Apostille Convention, in force on 30 March 2025. Since then it has become common in Dhaka to assume that one apostille prepares a document for every destination. For Denmark that is not true. Denmark objected under Article 12, as did Greece and Finland. The Convention therefore does not operate between Bangladesh and Denmark, and an apostille on your documents means nothing to a Danish file. The full consular legalisation chain still applies.

Both halves of that table are load-bearing. Anyone telling you that Bangladesh is now an apostille country and you have nothing to worry about is telling you half the truth, and for Denmark it is the wrong half.

For financial documents the delay is particularly cruel. A solvency certificate and a bank statement carry a recent date. Send them for an apostille, wait, get them back, and only then discover that legalisation was required, and you now have to re-issue the documents and run the chain again — by which point the September or February intake has gone. The order of steps is in document attestation and apostille, which countries refuse it is in Bangladesh's apostille and the countries that refuse it, which layer of attestation applies is in notary, magistrate or MOFA, and the translation and courier time to budget is in certified translation in Dhaka and couriering documents from Dhaka.

What actually sinks a funds file

• A large deposit just before applying with no documented origin.
• A balance certificate with no transaction statement behind it: amount without source.
• A sponsor whose relationship to you is never explained anywhere in the file.
• Assets that do not match declared income — why the tax file matters is in TIN and income tax returns.
• Documents carrying an apostille where legalisation was required.
• An affidavit in a form that embassies do not accept — see affidavits that embassies actually accept.
• A family that has assembled year one and has no answer for the years after it.

Pause on that last one. A file built by selling land to reach exactly one year's figure is lawful and still weak, because the degree is not one year long. Evidence of stable income does more work here than a large one-off balance, and the money questions you should expect to be asked out loud are in visa interview questions about money.

Who should not spend money applying to Denmark

Now the blunt part, which is the most useful thing this page can give you.

Denmark's funds figure is the highest of our nine, and its tuition and living costs sit at the top of our ranges too. For a great many Bangladeshi families, Denmark is not a cost problem to be solved with better planning. It is a threshold they will not clear. That is not a failure; it is arithmetic.

And the right moment to find that out is before you spend anything on the application. The Bangladesh-side spend — BDT 10,000 to BDT 30,000 for attestation, translation and legalisation, BDT 4,000 to BDT 9,000 for courier, BDT 29,600 for IELTS on computer — is not refunded when a permit is refused. SIRI charges its own fee on top; check the current amount on nyidanmark.dk, because we will not print a fee here that changes.

This page is not for you if you are looking for the smallest amount you can show and still pass; or if your plan depends on working in Denmark to pay the tuition, because the permit is decided before you have worked a single hour there; or if your family can assemble year one but has no answer for year two. Applying anyway converts a hard no into an expensive hard no, and the honest comparison of spreading applications across countries is in applying to several countries at once.

This page is for you if your family income has a history that can be read off a statement, you have a few months to build the paperwork properly, and you want to decide with the return in view: 90 hours a month of work from September to May plus full-time in June, July and August, and a three-year job-search right after graduation that comes with the study permit itself.

There is a trap inside that last figure, and it must be checked before you accept an offer: on professional master's and business academy (AP) programmes the stay-back is not three years but six months. Same money shown, same money spent, two very different futures. What the country is genuinely good at is in what Denmark is actually good for, the work rules are in student work rules in Denmark, and the head-to-head is in Sweden versus Denmark.

The general European rules for evidencing funds are in proof of funds for a European student visa, and where blocked accounts do and do not apply is in blocked accounts, and why our nine do not use them.

Last verified: 19 September 2026. The funds requirement is set in Danish kroner and is revised periodically, so confirm the current figure on nyidanmark.dk before you apply. The apostille objection list is taken from the HCCH status table.