Universities in Spain

Every university on this page accepts applications from students living in Africa, and almost every step - accrediting your school certificate, applying and paying the fees - happens online, from home. Spain has some fifty public universities and around forty private ones, and this page holds three kinds. Public universities - Granada, Valencia, Oviedo, Rovira i Virgili, Carlos III and Rey Juan Carlos - teach most degrees in Spanish, partly in Valencian or Catalan at Valencia and Rovira i Virgili, at fees set by the regional government. Private universities - Navarra, CEU San Pablo, Nebrija, San Jorge and IE University - set their own fees and admissions. And international business and specialist schools - Esade, the Barcelona School of Economics, TBS Education, GBSB Global, Harbour.Space, Schiller, EUM and Marbella Design Academy - teach mostly in English and award official Spanish degrees, their own diplomas or degrees from France, Malta, the UK and the US.

Spanish degree names tell you what you are buying. The grado is the bachelor’s: four years and 240 ECTS in most subjects, five for dentistry, pharmacy, veterinary science and architecture and six for medicine, while a doble grado combines two degrees - law and business is the classic pair - in five or six years. The official master’s, the máster universitario, takes 60 to 120 ECTS, usually one year; some are habilitante, the required step into a regulated profession such as law practice, secondary-school teaching or industrial engineering. Next to them sit the university’s own degrees, the títulos propios - at master’s level now called máster de formación permanente - which can teach valuable skills but are not official degrees. Every official grado and máster is listed in the Ministry’s RUCT register.

Choose the university by subject, not by the name of the city. Granada, founded in 1531, teaches almost every field and is best known for translation and interpreting, computer science and the health sciences, with campuses in Ceuta and Melilla on the North African coast. Valencia is strong in medicine, psychology, chemistry and physics, Carlos III in economics, law, business and aerospace engineering, much of it taught in English, and Oviedo in mining, energy and industrial engineering and geology. Rovira i Virgili pairs chemistry and chemical engineering, next to southern Europe’s largest chemical cluster, with oenology. Among the private universities, Navarra is known for medicine, communication and architecture, CEU San Pablo for journalism and the health sciences and San Jorge for health sciences and computing, while IE, Esade and the Barcelona School of Economics lead in business, economics and finance.

Expect a different way of teaching. Large lectures (clases teóricas) alternate with seminars and lab sessions (clases prácticas), and most courses use continuous assessment: coursework, mid-term tests and attendance count towards your mark alongside the final exam. Every course is marked out of 10 - 5 is a pass, 7 a notable, a good result, and 9 a sobresaliente - and the matrícula de honor goes to at most 5% of a class. Each enrolment gives you an ordinary and an extraordinary exam sitting, but the number of attempts per course is capped, most universities require first-year students to pass a minimum number of credits to stay on the degree, and at public universities a failed course costs more each time you re-enrol in it.

The price of a Spanish public university depends on its region and your residence status, not on its reputation. A student permit is legally a stay, not residence, so most regions charge non-EU students more: in 2026-27 Carlos III bills them €113.71 a credit for business, law or economics - about €6,800 a year - and Valencia doubles its resident price, while Andalusia keeps one price, about €760 for a first year at Granada. Private universities and business schools charge from about €6,000 to more than €25,000 a year. State grants are closed to students on a stay permit, so funding comes from the universities - Carlos III offers master’s tuition scholarships to every nationality - and from Erasmus Mundus joint master’s, several taught partly at Oviedo and Granada.

Use this page in that order. Start with the university list above to compare every Spanish university in our catalog by city and number of programmes, then use the subject tiles to see which of them teach your field. Open a university to read each programme’s language of instruction, tuition, duration and intake, and its student reviews, or jump into UniFinder to compare programmes across all of them. Then read the Study in Spain guide for the rules that apply everywhere - homologación, UNEDasiss, the student visa and the cost of each city - before you pay a single application fee or deposit.

Bachelor’s admission runs through regional rounds, and the early ones suit applicants abroad. File your homologación first: its receipt lets you apply while the decision is pending. Carlos III runs its own Early Admission for students from foreign school systems, open from 5 October 2026 to 2 April 2027 and decided mainly on your school grades, for 8% of its places; Granada fills places through Andalusia’s phase for foreign students each March, ranked by your homologated mark. Everywhere else the main preinscripción opens in June and closes in late June or early July, with the first lists around 10 July. Private universities and business schools admit on a rolling basis from around October of the year before, with their own test or interview.

Master’s applications go to each university on its own calendar, and the first round is the one to aim for. Granada takes holders of foreign degrees in Andalusia’s phase 1, in late January; Carlos III closes its first round at the end of January, Valencia’s first phase runs from late March into April, and Esade, IE and the Barcelona School of Economics admit in rounds from October. Your degree is checked for level, not homologated, and almost every programme starts in September. With the admission letter in hand, book your visa appointment at once, and within a month of arriving apply for your TIE residence card. Work back nine to twelve months from the September you want to start.