Your budget is not in euros in three of the nine, and it used to be four

Why this article has an out-of-date name

You will find "four of the nine" written in older guides, including some on this site, and it was correct when written. Bulgaria adopted the euro on 1 January 2026, so the count is now three. The page keeps the address it was planned under and corrects the number here, because the change itself is the most useful thing on it - a student reading a 2025 article about the Bulgarian lev is reading something that no longer applies.

The three that remain are Hungary (forint, HUF), Denmark (krone, DKK) and Sweden (krona, SEK).

What that actually means for a budget

Every euro figure this site publishes for those three is an approximate conversion, not a price. The university bills in the local currency, the immigration authority sets its funds requirement in the local currency, and the rent contract is written in it.

The important split: only two of the three carry real risk

This is the decomposition that most articles miss, and it changes what you should worry about.

Denmark is barely a currency risk at all. The krone is held under a fixed-exchange-rate policy against the euro, with a central rate of 7.46038 kroner to the euro and a permitted band of 2.25 per cent either side. In practice it trades in a much narrower range than that. So when Denmark's permit requirement of DKK 89,112 is quoted as "about EUR 11,920", that euro figure is roughly right this year, next year and the year after. The number that moves for a Danish plan is the taka, not the krone.

Hungary and Sweden do float. One euro bought roughly 350 forint at the start of 2021 and has traded in the 380-410 range through 2024 and 2025. One euro bought about 10.1 Swedish kronor in early 2021 and roughly 11 to 11.7 through 2023 to 2025. Those are ten to fifteen per cent movements on multi-year budgets, in both directions.

Take the daily figures from the central banks themselves - the Hungarian National Bank, Sveriges Riksbank and Danmarks Nationalbank all publish them - rather than from a comparison site.

Which way does it cut?

Both ways, and this is worth being honest about rather than alarming.

When the forint weakens against the euro, a Hungarian tuition fee priced in forint becomes cheaper for someone converting from a euro-denominated saving - but a Bangladeshi family is not converting from euros, it is converting from taka, and the taka has weakened against both. So the practical experience is that a forint fee quoted at "about EUR 3,500" three years ago is a different number of taka today, mostly because of what the taka did rather than what the forint did.

That is the real point. For a Bangladeshi student, the exchange rate that matters most is taka against the euro, not the euro against the forint. The three local currencies add a second, smaller layer of movement on top. What the taka has done, and how to plan around it, is in what a falling taka does to your plan.

The practical rules

1. 1Get the number in local currency and convert it yourself, on the day. A university's fee page in forint is the fact. The euro figure in any article, including ours, is a derived number with an expiry date.
2. 2Build the budget in the currency you will actually spend. If you are going to Sweden, plan in kronor. Converting once, at the start, and then thinking in euros hides the drift.
3. 3Add a margin on the non-euro three. Five to ten per cent on a Hungarian or Swedish plan is a reasonable buffer for a year. Denmark needs less, because of the peg.
4. 4Do not time the market. Nobody sending tuition to Europe once or twice a year can usefully forecast a currency. Send when the bill is due, through a proper student file, and stop watching the rate.
5. 5Check the funds requirement in its own currency. Denmark's is DKK 7,426 a month and Sweden's is SEK 10,656 a month, both revised annually. A euro conversion of either can drift out of date between the article and the appointment.

What Bulgaria's changeover means in practice

Bulgaria joined the euro on 1 January 2026 at BGN 1.95583 to the euro, the rate its currency board had held since 1999. Because the rate was fixed rather than floating, nothing about the real cost of studying in Bulgaria changed on the day - a fee that was BGN 5,868 became EUR 3,000, and it bought the same thing. What changed is administrative: fees, rents and the funds requirement are now quoted in euro, and older articles quoting lev figures should be read as history.

Bulgaria also became a full Schengen member on 1 January 2025. Those two facts are separate and often conflated. Neither implies the other - Cyprus, for example, is in the EU and uses the euro but is not in Schengen.

What to do next

1. 1Open the fee page for your programme and note the figure in local currency.
2. 2Convert it at the central bank's published rate, on today's date, and write both numbers down.
3. 3Add five to ten per cent to a Hungarian or Swedish plan as a currency buffer.
4. 4Compare the countries on one screen in the comparison tool or price a year in the cost calculator.