Greece's intakes and deadlines: the clock that binds is the document chain, not the form

Greece runs two intakes: October, the main one, and February. Neither of those months is the date that decides whether you make it.

The date that decides is the day your legalised documents come back — and for Greece that route is far longer than almost anyone budgets for, because an apostille does not work here.

Everything else on this page follows from that. Bangladesh joined the Apostille Convention with effect from 30 March 2025, and the news travelled through this market as though one stamp had replaced legalisation across Europe. Greece objected under Article 12, as did Denmark and Finland. An objection is not a formatting technicality: it means the Convention does not operate between the two countries at all, so the full consular legalisation chain still applies. Italy, Cyprus, Hungary, Malta, Sweden and Bulgaria do accept an apostille, which is exactly why the wrong half of this travels so fast. Bangladesh's apostille and the countries that refuse it has the country-by-country position, and the order that matters plus notary, magistrate or MOFA set out who does what.

Five clocks run at once, and most students watch one

There is no single Greek calendar. There are several, published in different places by different bodies, and missing any one costs the intake.

Read the last row again, because one clause in it does all the damage: the 90 days start when the file is complete. An incomplete file does not have a slow clock. It has no clock at all. That is the mechanism by which the document chain, not the application form, ends up being the thing that binds. Where a date is not published we name the body that publishes it rather than inventing one — any page stating a future year's Greek deadline with confidence is guessing.

The route itself adds a delay that no rule describes. The file is submitted in Dhaka and decided by the Greek Embassy in New Delhi, travelling each way — submitted in Banani, decided in New Delhi explains the route, study in Greece from Bangladesh covers the whole process, and which visas are handled in Dhaka and which in Delhi puts Greece beside the other eight.

The squeeze: too early wastes the papers, too late misses the intake

This is what makes Greece different from a country with one published deadline, and it is why this page exists.

Two of your documents run on opposite clocks. Legalisation is slow and cannot be compressed at the end. Financial documents are perishable: a bank statement and a solvency certificate have to be recent when the file is submitted, and once they have aged they must be re-issued — and then legalised again, because the bank papers are caught by the same chain.

So you cannot solve the problem by simply starting everything as early as possible. Collect the money documents a year out and they are stale by submission. Leave them until the last month and the chain will not finish. What actually works is a sequence, not a rush: finish the slow leg on the educational documents first, then issue the financial ones into the gap that leaves. How long each document stays valid is the reference for the freshness question, getting a bank statement in Bangladesh and the solvency certificate, which is not the same thing cover what to ask for, and sponsors and affidavits covers the sponsored file, which has more paper in the chain and therefore more exposure to it.

One more item sits inside the same squeeze. Greek universities generally take at least one third of tuition before the visa, and the enrolment certificate the visa file needs is issued after that payment. Public tuition runs EUR 1,500 to 4,000 a year, so the instalment is real money leaving your account at precisely the moment you are evidencing about EUR 7,200 of funds for the year. Keep the transfer receipt or your own file testifies against you: how to send tuition legally from a Bangladeshi bank.

Working backwards from an October start

This is our planning table. Only two kinds of row in it carry a published date — your university's window and your test centre's dates. Every month figure is our advice, built backwards from the chain, and we say so rather than dressing an estimate up as a rule.

The supporting steps each have their own page: collecting transcripts and certificates, provisional versus original certificates, fixing a name mismatch, getting an e-passport, renewing a passport mid-application, certified translation in Dhaka, couriering documents from Dhaka, the police clearance certificate, health insurance for the visa file and what to carry to the appointment. On the English side, IELTS is usually 5.5 to 6.0 for Greek programmes, with 6.5 typical on English-taught tracks — fees and test dates, registering step by step and how long a score stays valid are the three pages that decide when to sit it.

February: a real alternative, or just a later start?

February is a genuine start, not a downgrade. What it is not is a shortcut: the same file, four months later, buying only time in the chain. The spring intake, and who it actually suits has the cross-country version of this argument.

If you are starting now, what is realistically still open

Rather than a snapshot that rots, the rule is this.

As of this update, September 2026: an October 2026 start is over — not because a form closed, but because the chain and the decision clock cannot both fit into what is left. February 2027 is realistic only if you already hold an offer, have paid the tuition instalment and your documents are legalised. If you are beginning today, October 2027 is your intake, and starting now is not late — it is exactly on schedule. The cross-country version of this calendar is the European application timeline month by month, and from offer letter to boarding pass covers the back half.

Three things this market gets wrong about Greek timing

"Bangladesh has apostille now, so documents are quick." Wrong for Greece, and expensive to learn late. Take the apostille route, have it come back, then start the full chain, and by the time it finishes your bank documents have aged and must be re-issued and legalised again. One wrong route buys two rounds of fees, two courier legs and the one thing you cannot buy back.

"The deadline is the university's deadline." The application form is the easiest object in the whole file. Treating its date as the finish line is what produces the file that is perfect except that it cannot be submitted.

"Greece is cheap, so it must be quick." Cost and speed are unrelated. Greece is genuinely affordable, and what studying in Greece costs from Bangladesh, tuition fees by programme type and what Greece is actually good for set that out honestly. But a low tuition figure does not shorten a legalisation chain or move a decision from New Delhi to Dhaka.

When waiting a year is the better decision

Rushing is how good files get refused, so here is the plain version.

Wait for the next cycle if your certificates have not been issued yet; if the funds landed in the account recently, since a late lump sum answers the amount question and creates the source question in the same movement; if one third of tuition is not affordable this quarter; if you have not sat IELTS; if your passport is close to expiry; or if the only way to make the near intake is to assemble financial documents in a hurry. Where the money comes from and proof of funds for a European student visa are worth reading before anything is arranged, and blocked accounts, and why none of our nine use one explains why Greece leaves the whole burden of proof on your paperwork.

The arithmetic is blunt. A refusal costs roughly BDT 3 to 5 lakh on the Bangladesh side for a file decided in Delhi, including BDT 10,000 to 30,000 for attestation, translation and legalisation and BDT 4,000 to 9,000 for courier, and none of it comes back. Waiting one cycle costs months. Those are not comparable losses.

Greece is also the wrong choice if the plan depends on earning from the first month: a non-EU student needs a separate work authorisation, so working is a permission you apply for rather than something the student permit grants, as student work rules in Greece explains. And before committing, read Greece against Italy, the honest view of funding help that actually exists, and the Greece country guide for the numbers in one place. The study plan document sits beside the financial papers, and checking that an offer letter is genuine is worth ten minutes before any money moves.

One sentence to carry away: in Greece you are not racing an application deadline, you are racing a paper chain that no one will hurry for you — so count backwards from the legalisation, not forwards from the form.