Stipendium Hungaricum from Bangladesh: how to apply, what it pays, and the 2027/28 dates

In short: From Bangladesh you apply in three places, not one, and all three close together in mid-January: (1) the official online application at apply.stipendiumhungaricum.hu, with up to two ranked programmes; (2) the Ministry of Education's own online form; (3) a printed copy of that form, with certificate copies attested by a first-class government officer, dropped in the box beside Gate 2 of the Bangladesh Secretariat. Then comes nomination by the end of February, a university exam or interview between March and May, and the result between late June and mid-July. The award pays tuition, HUF 43,700 a month, a dorm place or HUF 40,000 towards rent, and health insurance. It does not pay your flight.

Stipendium Hungaricum is the Hungarian government's scholarship for students from partner countries, run by the Tempus Public Foundation, and Bangladesh is one of the partners. It is one of the few genuinely full scholarships a Bangladeshi student can realistically reach in Europe — and the one where the most applicants lose their chance to paperwork rather than to competition. This guide is written from the primary documents: the programme's 2026/2027 Call for Applications and Application Guide, its Operational Regulations as amended on 31 August 2026, the Ministry of Education's notice of 2 December 2025, and Hungarian immigration law. Every figure below was checked against them on 21 September 2026.

Where the 2027/2028 round stands

The 2027/2028 call has not been published yet. As of 21 September 2026 the official site still carries the 2026/2027 documents. The programme's standing schedule, set out in its Implementation Guide, publishes the call at the end of October and opens the application system in November. The table gives last round's real dates next to what to expect this time.

Two things follow from it. You have October and November to choose programmes and assemble documents, which is less time than it sounds. And the deadline is in Hungarian time: 2 pm in Budapest is 7 pm in Dhaka, and the Ministry's own form closes at that same hour. Hungary's intakes and deadlines puts this clock next to the self-funded one.

What the scholarship pays, and what it does not

What it does not cover, in the programme's own words: travel — "no financial provisions will be provided for travel expenses by the Hungarian side" — anything for family members, and the full cost of living. The call says plainly that scholarship holders "need to add their own financial resources".

So budget for the gap. Our Hungary cost ranges put food at EUR 120-200 a month, transport at EUR 15-35 and other costs at EUR 50-100. With a free dorm place, that leaves roughly EUR 75-225 a month above the stipend for your family to cover, and renting privately in Budapest widens it considerably. What studying in Hungary costs works through the whole year, and is education free in Hungary explains why "tuition-free" and "free" are different claims.

One more rule is attached to the money, and almost no guide mentions it. In your first year you must attend a free course in Hungarian as a foreign language and pass an exam at the end of the second semester. Skip the course and the stipend stops. Fail the exam and it drops to HUF 30,000 a month. This applies to scholarship holders studying in a foreign language at bachelor's, master's or one-tier master's level; PhD students are exempt.

Who can apply from Bangladesh

Bangladesh's entry on the programme's partner page lists every level "in any field of interest" — bachelor's, master's, doctoral, and one-tier master's "including the field of Medicine and Health Science". The nominating authority is the Secondary and Higher Education Division of the Ministry of Education, and its deadline, the same entry says, "is the same as to Tempus Public Foundation".

If you completed a degree abroad, the Ministry also asks for an equivalence certificate for it. Straight from HSC? Hungary after HSC covers the bachelor's route, and a master's in Hungary the postgraduate one.

The language row deserves a second paragraph, because it is where Bangladeshi applicants misread the rules most often. The Ministry's notice says English proficiency is given importance in nomination — and, as the selection section below explains, your place on the Ministry's list carries as much weight at allocation as your university result. A medium-of-instruction letter can satisfy the university; a test score is what moves you up the Ministry's list. If your programme accepts either, sit IELTS anyway. Studying in Hungary without IELTS and the medium of instruction certificate cover the university side, and IELTS from Bangladesh the test itself.

How to apply, step by step

Step 1 — Choose up to two programmes (October to November)

The programme list lives only inside the application system — about 900 programmes at 30 Hungarian universities in the last round. You may choose up to two, at the same university or at two different ones, in order of preference. Three rules make this the most consequential decision in the whole application:

1. 1The order is locked at the deadline. You cannot change programmes, their order, the language or the study mode afterwards.
2. 2First choices are examined first. The call says your chances are "relatively higher" for the programme you rank first.
3. 3Medicine only works as a first choice. The call warns that most universities fill their medical places from first-choice applicants and will not consider medicine chosen second.

Two more facts shape the choice. Allocation gives priority to STEM+ fields — natural sciences, technology, engineering, mathematics, agriculture and health sciences — and crowded programmes, medicine among them, may cap how many applicants they take from any one country. Choose two programmes whose entry requirements you meet, in fields connected to what you have already studied, that you could defend at an interview. Which Hungarian universities are worth applying to and what Hungary is actually good for help with the shortlist, and the smaller cities — Debrecen, Szeged and Pecs — stretch the stipend much further than Budapest.

Step 2 — Register on the official portal and complete the application

The system is at apply.stipendiumhungaricum.hu and runs on DreamApply, the same software many Hungarian universities use for self-funded admission, so our DreamApply walkthrough will look familiar. Register with an email address you check every day. The call specifically warns against Hotmail and Yahoo, because its letters to those accounts usually land in spam, and against a university email address that may change.

Fill in every section in English, attach each document to its task, then press submit. A saved application is not an application — only a submitted one is considered. Until the deadline you can still edit it, add or remove a programme and change the order; after the deadline, only missing documents can be added.

Step 3 — Upload the documents

The full list is in the checklist below. Every file must be 4 MB or smaller, and nothing is posted to Hungary: Tempus requires no hard copies at all.

Step 4 — Fill in the Ministry of Education's online form, by the same deadline

This is the step that makes the Bangladesh route different. The Ministry runs its own online form, separate from the Hungarian portal, and its link is printed in each year's notice on shed.gov.bd. In the last round it closed at 7 pm on 15 January 2026 — the same moment as the Hungarian portal. The form's web address has changed from one round to the next, so use only the link printed in the current notice, never one copied from an old post.

On submission the form emails you an ID and a password, and you activate the application from that email; check your spam folder if it does not arrive. You then log in with your tracking number to edit and print it. The form asks for things the Hungarian portal does not, including your percentage of marks in each examination rather than a GPA — a worked example is shown under the form, so follow it rather than inventing a conversion — and any IELTS or TOEFL score. Master's and PhD applicants are also asked about current employment, experience, training, a proposed research title and publications, and PhD applicants for a statement of acceptance from a Hungarian supervisor.

Step 5 — Deliver the hard copy to the Bangladesh Secretariat

Print the completed Ministry form and put it in an envelope with copies of all your certificates, mark sheets and other documents, each attested by a first-class government officer, plus a passport-size photo and a list of what is enclosed. The envelope must show the sender, the addressee — the Secretary, Secondary and Higher Education Division, Ministry of Education, Bangladesh Secretariat, Dhaka — your online tracking number and the programme level.

It goes into the box in the reception room beside Gate 2 of the Bangladesh Secretariat, between 10 am and 5 pm. The notice is explicit that applications delivered anywhere else will not be considered, and that incomplete applications are not accepted. In the last round the hard-copy deadline was 5 pm on 16 January 2026, a day after the online deadline, later extended to the 18th.

The attestation is simpler than it sounds: a first-class government officer's signature and seal on each photocopy. It is not the education board, foreign ministry or apostille chain. Whether your university asks for that chain at enrolment is its own rule; our attestation guide explains how it works.

Step 6 — Nomination (by the end of February)

Tempus first checks every application for completeness and eligibility and forwards the eligible ones to the Ministry. A committee at the Ministry then ranks and nominates, and sends its list — with a reserve list — to Hungary by the end of February. Applicants hear about nomination around the end of February or the beginning of March. Only nominated applicants, including those on the reserve list, go on to the universities; if you are not nominated, no Hungarian university ever assesses you.

Step 7 — The entrance exam or interview (mid-March to May)

The universities you chose then check your file against their entry requirements and examine you. The date and format vary by university — a written test, an interview, or both — and each university contacts you directly. You are scored out of 100, and nobody below 56 can receive a scholarship. A pass is not an award: the call says it "only means that the applicant met the minimum entrance requirements". Prepare for a subject interview, not a conversation about why you like Hungary. Preparing for a scholarship interview and the online English interview some universities run cover the format.

Step 8 — The result, your acceptance, and the visa

Results arrive by email between the end of June and mid-July, and the status is one of four: approved, conditionally approved (a document is still missing), pending, or rejected. There is no appeal. If you are approved, you must accept within the deadline in that email — usually about a week — and no later than 1 August.

Then start the visa at once. The call says a visa "may take 30 days" to be issued and reminds you that scholarship status "does not automatically guarantee a visa"; Hungary's immigration authority gives itself 60 days to decide a study residence permit. Bangladeshi students apply through the Dhaka Office of the Embassy of Hungary in New Delhi, booking by email, with VFS Global in Dhaka as its application centre — see where Bangladeshi students apply for a Hungarian visa and how long the permit takes.

What goes in the file surprises winners. Tempus sends a Letter of Award, and your university issues a letter of acceptance; both go in. But the Dhaka centre's study checklist, reissued in April 2026, also asks for original documents: school certificates, a birth certificate, a family registration certificate and a police clearance certificate, each with an apostille, plus a sponsor's bank statement for the last 13 months with proof of income and an affidavit of support, travel insurance covering your travel date, proof of accommodation and a flight booking. It makes no exception for scholarship holders, even though Hungary's immigration authority accepts a scholarship certificate as proof of means — so prepare the full file. Hungary also exempts scholarship holders from its administrative fees for the permit, and the immigration authority's fee page names Stipendium Hungaricum; the centre's own fee page does not mention it, and its service charge is a separate private fee, so take the Letter of Award with you and ask. Tell your university's coordinator your arrival date 15 to 30 days ahead, and arrive and enrol by 30 September.

That checklist is why the weeks after nomination matter: an apostille and a police clearance take time to obtain, and there are only a few weeks between a July result and a September arrival. Police clearance in Bangladesh and attestation and apostille explain both.

The document checklist

Two things applicants add that are not required: a CV, and recommendation letters for a bachelor's or master's. The Application Guide says none is needed "except in special cases". The motivation letter is the document that separates comparable applicants; writing a scholarship motivation letter shows the structure that works.

The medical certificate. For 2026/2027, winners brought a certificate on the programme's own form, issued no earlier than 1 November of the application year: a chest X-ray or Quantiferon test for tuberculosis and blood tests for HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C, all within three months, plus vaccination records. Typhoid vaccination is compulsory after arrival for students from typhoid-endemic countries, which include Bangladesh, unless they are already vaccinated. The Operational Regulations were amended on 31 August 2026 so that the ministry now "may order" the screening, so check the 2027/2028 call before booking any tests. Medical certificates and vaccinations for Europe covers the practical side.

If you are in your final year. An HSC candidate or a final-year undergraduate may upload a signed, self-written declaration by the deadline and the certificate itself by 1 August; the same applies to a language result you are waiting for, and to a passport. Check how the Ministry treats this before relying on it. Its 2026/2027 notice says incomplete applications are not accepted and says nothing about declarations, while earlier rounds were explicit the other way: the 2025/2026 notice refused provisional certificates, and the Ministry's own FAQ for 2023/2024 told HSC examinees they could not apply on a declaration. Silence in the current notice is not permission. Applying while you wait for your HSC result covers the general case.

How the decision is actually made

The last row holds the most useful fact in this article. The programme's Implementation Guide says that at allocation your place on the Ministry's nomination list and your university result are weighed equally. The Ministry's ranking is not a formality you get through on the way to the real test; it is half of the real test. That is why the English score, a complete hard copy and the percentages you enter on the Ministry form matter as much as they do.

The budget also caps the number of awards each year, and applications beyond it are rejected. Why Stipendium Hungaricum applications fail goes through what goes wrong at each stage.

The honest numbers

The Ministry publishes its list of final awardees every summer, usually in July, and the counts are steadier than the rumours:

Nomination is the wider gate. For 2025/2026 the Ministry nominated 280 applicants — 130 for bachelor's, 100 for master's, 20 for one-tier master's and 30 for doctoral programmes — and 98 of them won the final award, so even a nomination is roughly a one-in-three chance rather than a result. Worldwide, the 2025 round works out at about one award for every 18 applications. Nobody publishes a Bangladesh-specific success rate for applicants, and anyone who quotes you one has invented it. The 140 places are also a ceiling, not a promise: every award still needs a university score of at least 56 and room on the programme you chose. The one figure that has grown is the number studying at any one time — 69 Bangladeshi scholarship holders in Hungary in autumn 2019, 258 in autumn 2025 — because each yearly cohort of roughly 100 stays for a multi-year degree, not because more places are being awarded.

Things that are not true

"You need an agency to apply." The application is free, and the call itself says: "we highly suggest not to apply through any agencies." Universities are not allowed to charge you anything during the application process, and nobody — ourselves included — can influence the Ministry's nomination or the Board's decision. Where outside help genuinely helps is in choosing the two programmes, the motivation letter and the interview; where to find European scholarships without an agent is worth reading either way.

"The medical certificate goes in with the application." Not in the last round. Only winners needed it, and they carried it to Hungary.

"You need a CV and two recommendation letters." Not for a bachelor's or master's. A PhD needs one recommendation letter.

"IELTS is compulsory." Not for the scholarship, and often not for the programme. In Bangladesh it counts at nomination.

"The Ministry's deadline is earlier than Hungary's." It is the same deadline; only the hard copy was due a day later.

"You can apply for three programmes, or for a bachelor's and a master's at once." Two programmes, one level. A second level cancels your application with the Ministry.

"The scholarship covers everything, including the flight." It pays tuition and contributes to living costs. The flight, the gap between the stipend and real costs, and any family are yours to fund.

"Passing the entrance exam means I have the scholarship." A pass only means you met the programme's minimum. The award is decided in June or July.

The rules you sign up to if you win

• Credits. Bachelor's, master's and one-tier master's scholarship holders must complete at least 18 credits a semester on average over their last two active semesters, or lose the scholarship.
• The Hungarian course in the first year, as described above.
• Living in Hungary. Stay away for more than 30 days and the living and housing allowances stop until you return.
• Work. Hungarian law — section 55(8) of Act XC of 2023, repeated in the scholarship's own regulations — lets a student work up to 30 hours a week during the semester and full time for up to 90 days a year outside it. Student work rules in Hungary covers the practical side.
• Family. A student residence permit does not allow family reunification, and the scholarship gives nothing towards accompanying family.
• Turning up. Accept, then neither arrive nor withdraw by 15 October, and you are barred from applying again for three years.
• What you do not owe. The programme's rules contain no obligation to return to Bangladesh, to work for anyone, or to repay the stipend.

Who should not build a plan on it

Stipendium Hungaricum is the best-value route to a European degree for a student with strong results and a modest budget. It is the wrong single plan for anyone who cannot afford to lose a year, because results arrive in late June or July, after several other countries have closed. It is a poor fit if your family cannot send a monthly top-up, or if you are not prepared to sit a year of Hungarian classes. And for PhD applicants it sits alongside a wider market: PhD funding in Europe explains the salaried positions that compete with it.

Run it next to a second plan: the self-funded route to a Hungarian university, Hungarian university scholarships beyond Stipendium, or another country altogether. Erasmus Mundus is the other genuinely full scholarship open to Bangladeshi master's applicants, and our Hungary guide covers the country as a whole.

Before you act on any date here, check the current call on stipendiumhungaricum.hu and the current notice on shed.gov.bd. Both are reissued every year, and the details change.