Erasmus Mundus Scholarships 2027 (Fully Funded Joint Masters in Europe)

Last verified: 11 August 2026

You have your bachelor’s degree in hand, you want a master’s in Europe, and there is no realistic way to pay European tuition out of your own pocket. That is the exact situation the Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters scholarships were built for.

These scholarships are funded by the European Union through the Erasmus+ programme. They cover your participation costs, pay you a living allowance while you study, and contribute towards your travel and visa expenses. You do not sit in one lecture hall for two years either. You move between several universities in different countries and walk out with a degree issued by all of them. Applications for programmes starting in the 2027 academic year are expected to open around October 2026, and most consortia close by January.

How the Erasmus Mundus application actually works:

This is the part that trips up more applicants than any eligibility rule, so it belongs at the top rather than buried near the bottom.

There is no central Erasmus Mundus application portal. You do not create one profile, upload one set of documents, and press submit. Every joint master’s programme is run by its own consortium of universities, and each consortium runs its own application, sets its own deadline, and picks its own students.

That means the work is in choosing programmes first and applying second.

The five steps from catalogue to submitted application

Open the official Erasmus Mundus Catalogue and browse the programmes currently supported by the European Union. You can filter by country, university, field of study, and course length.
Shortlist the programmes that genuinely match your academic background and your career direction. Three or four well chosen options beat ten random ones.
Go to the official website of each programme on your shortlist. The catalogue entry links to it. Everything that matters lives there: the participating universities, the entry requirements, the full document list, and the deadline.
Read the admission requirements and the scholarship criteria separately. They are not always identical, and mixing them up costs people places every year.
Submit your application directly to the consortium running the programme, before its own deadline.

If anything on a programme page is unclear, write to the consortium coordinator. Their contact details are published on the programme website, and they are the only people who can give you a binding answer about admissions or scholarship availability.

Two things to check on a programme page before you invest any effort

Not every programme in the catalogue is offering a scholarship

The catalogue lists master’s programmes carrying the Erasmus Mundus name, but the European Commission is explicit that some of them do not currently offer scholarships. A programme may be reaching the end of its funding period, or it may have been granted temporary permission to keep using the Erasmus Mundus name after its funding ended.

So before you spend three weeks polishing an application, confirm on the programme’s own website that scholarships are available for your intake. This single check saves a lot of wasted effort.

Nobody will ever charge you a fee

The European Education and Culture Executive Agency has publicly warned about repeated attempted frauds targeting Erasmus Mundus applicants. Their guidance is short and worth memorising:

Be cautious about any advertisement inviting you to apply for an EU funded scholarship.
Verify that the information comes from a trustworthy source before you hand over personal data.
Be wary of any message asking you to pay a fee to be selected as a scholarship holder. EU scholarships are not granted for a fee.

If a page, an agent, or a message on social media asks for money in exchange for an Erasmus Mundus place, that is your signal to walk away. Cross check every opportunity against the official catalogue.

Who can apply, and the bar you actually need to clear:

Erasmus Mundus is open to students from every country in the world. There is no nationality restriction and no requirement to already live in Europe.

Here is the checklist:

You hold a bachelor’s degree, meaning a first degree, or
You are in the final year of your bachelor’s studies and will graduate before the master’s programme starts.
You may also apply if you can demonstrate a level of learning equivalent to a bachelor’s degree, provided that level is officially recognised under the national legislation and practice of the country that awarded it.

Beyond that baseline, each consortium sets its own academic and language requirements depending on the field. A data engineering master’s and a cultural heritage master’s will not ask for the same background, so the entry requirements on the programme page are the ones that decide your case.

What the scholarship pays for:

Scholarships go to the best ranked students worldwide, and they are attached to the programme rather than handed out centrally. Coverage includes:

Participation costs, which is the fee you would otherwise pay to study on the programme
A living allowance for the duration of your studies
A contribution towards your travel costs
A contribution towards visa costs

Read the word “contribution” carefully, because it is doing real work in that sentence. Travel and visa support is a contribution, not necessarily a full reimbursement of whatever you end up spending. Budget for a gap, especially if you are flying from outside Europe and paying for document attestation, translation, and medical checks along the way. The exact amounts are published by each consortium, so take your figures from the programme you are actually applying to.

How long the programme runs and what degree you end up holding

Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters run for one to two academic years. In the catalogue you will see three standard formats:

12 months, worth 60 ECTS credits
18 months, worth 90 ECTS credits
24 months, worth 120 ECTS credits

Every programme involves at least three higher education institutions from at least three different countries, plus associated partners drawn from the academic world and from industry. Study periods, research, traineeships, and thesis preparation and defence are typically spread across those institutions.

At the end you receive either:

A joint degree, which is one single certificate issued on behalf of at least two of the participating institutions, or
Multiple degrees, meaning at least two separate certificates issued by two institutions in the consortium

You will agree the specifics when you sign your study agreement with the consortium at the start of your studies, so read that document properly rather than skimming it.

The timeline for the 2027 intake

A fresh batch of selected Erasmus Mundus Masters joins the list every year, and the catalogue is updated annually. Applications for programmes beginning in the following academic year are usually submitted between October and January.

Working backwards from that window is the difference between a rushed application and a competitive one:

August and September 2026: shortlist programmes, read entry requirements, email coordinators with any questions.
September 2026: ask your referees, give them your CV and a summary of the programme, and agree a date well before the deadline.
October 2026 onwards: applications begin opening. Submit as each one goes live rather than waiting.
November 2026 to January 2027: most deadlines fall in this stretch. Deadlines differ for every programme, so track them individually.

Do not treat January as a universal cutoff. Some consortia close in November or December, and a missed deadline cannot be appealed.

Documents to start collecting now

Requirements vary by programme, but this list covers what most consortia ask for:

Bachelor’s degree certificate, or proof that you are enrolled in your final year
Academic transcripts
Curriculum Vitae
Letter of motivation or statement of purpose
Letters of recommendation
Proof of English language proficiency, where the programme requires it
Passport or national identification document

Some programmes also request:

A research proposal
A portfolio
Evidence of relevant work experience
Additional documents specific to that programme

Transcripts and degree certificates are the items that take longest to obtain, particularly if your university is slow or your documents need translation. Start that process before you start writing anything.

How to make your application stand out:

Selection is competitive and the consortium is reading hundreds of files. What separates a strong application:

Keep your academic record as strong as you can, since it is the first filter most consortia apply.
Write a fresh motivation letter for every programme. A recycled letter with the programme name swapped in is obvious within two paragraphs.
Name specific modules, laboratories, or supervisors at the participating universities and explain why they matter to your plans.
Ask for recommendation letters from people who taught or supervised you closely, not from the most senior person you can find.
Highlight leadership roles, volunteering, research work, internships, and extracurricular activity, because Erasmus Mundus places real weight on more than grades.
Show a clear line between your background, this specific programme, and what you intend to do afterwards.
Submit early. Systems get slow near deadlines and uploads fail at the worst possible moment.

Fields of study available

The catalogue groups programmes into these areas, which shows how wide the choice really is:

Agro
Art
Chemistry
Economic Sciences
Education
Environmental and Geosciences
Geo
Information Science and Engineering
Information Technology
Law
Life Sciences
Literature
Mathematics
Medicine
Physics
Political Science
Psychology
Social Sciences and Humanities
History

Universities across France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries and many more take part, and a number of programmes include mobility periods at partner institutions beyond Europe.

Also Check: How to Write a Winning Scholarship Motivation Letter

Erasmus Mundus in numbers:

Almost 50,000 students have taken part in Erasmus Mundus since 2004. That scale is worth knowing for two reasons. It tells you the programme is established rather than experimental, and it tells you that a large alumni network already exists in most countries, including yours. The Erasmus Mundus Association connects those alumni and runs events with national volunteer representatives, which is the cheapest source of honest advice you will find.

Official links worth bookmarking

Frequently Asked Questions:

Can I apply to more than one Erasmus Mundus programme in the same intake?

Applications are handled separately by each consortium, so nothing stops you from preparing several. What you should check is whether an individual programme limits how many of its own tracks or specialisations you may apply to, since some do and the official Erasmus+ pages do not set one universal rule. Confirm with each coordinator before you submit, and remember that quality drops fast if you spread yourself across too many.

What happens if a programme admits me but does not select me for a scholarship?

Admission and scholarship selection are two separate decisions. Every programme website explains its application process both with and without a scholarship, which means self funded study is normally an option even when the scholarship does not come through. Look up the participation cost on the programme page before you apply, so an admission offer without funding does not catch you unprepared.

My bachelor’s degree took three years rather than four. Does that rule me out?

Not automatically. The official requirement is a bachelor’s degree, meaning a first degree, or an officially recognised equivalent level of learning. Programme length is not the deciding factor by itself. Individual consortia do set their own credit and background requirements though, so check the entry requirements on the specific programme page and contact the coordinator if your case sits near the boundary.

There is a gap of a few years between my bachelor’s degree and now. Is that a problem?

The official eligibility rules set no time limit between finishing your bachelor’s degree and applying. Work experience gained in that gap often strengthens an application, particularly for professionally oriented programmes. Use your motivation letter to explain what you did with those years rather than leaving the reader to guess.

Who do I contact if I think my application or my scholarship was handled unfairly?

EACEA operates a complaints procedure for Erasmus Mundus applicants and scholarship holders. You can raise a complaint about the way your scholarship application was dealt with, or about the way your mobility or scholarship has been managed, through the contact form on the EACEA website. This is a formal route and it is separate from simply asking a consortium to reconsider an academic decision.

Are British students treated differently after Brexit?

For master’s programmes selected before 2021, British students count as Programme country students. For programmes selected from 2021 onwards, the distinction between Programme countries and Partner countries no longer exists, and all students receive the same scholarships regardless of nationality. Since the 2027 intake sits well inside that later group, this makes no practical difference to a new applicant today.

Erasmus Mundus rewards preparation more than luck. The people who succeed are not the ones who found a secret shortcut, they are the ones who opened the catalogue in August, shortlisted properly, asked their referees early, and wrote a different letter for every programme.

Your next step this week is small and concrete. Open the Erasmus Mundus Catalogue, filter by your field and your preferred course length, and save three programmes whose entry requirements you already meet. Then go to each programme’s own website and write its deadline in your calendar. Everything else follows from that.

Official Erasmus+ Website