National Scholarship Programme of the Slovak Republic (NSP)

Who can apply

Citizens of any country except Slovakia
Students: enrolled outside Slovakia, at master's level or with at least 2.5 years of university study completed, coming for a 1-2 semester mobility stay, not a full degree
PhD students and researchers: based outside Slovakia, coming for a 1-10 month stay
Does not fund full bachelor's, master's or doctoral degrees taken entirely in Slovakia
Cannot combine with another publicly funded mobility scheme (e.g. Erasmus+, Visegrad Fund, CEEPUS) for the same stay
Must not have spent 15 or more months in Slovakia in the prior 36 months
A 2-year gap is required between a previous NSP-funded stay and reapplying

A mobility scholarship, not a route into a Slovak degree

This is a mobility scholarship, not a route into a Slovak degree. You stay enrolled at your home university and come to Slovakia for a defined stretch, one to two semesters for master’s-level students, up to ten months for PhD students, researchers, teachers or artists, to study, research or teach at a Slovak institution before returning to finish your degree at home.

The stipend scales with academic stage, plus a distance-based travel grant

The stipend scales with your academic stage: 620 euros a month for a master’s-level student, 1,025.50 euros for a PhD student or an early-career researcher, rising to 1,470 euros for a researcher with a PhD and more than a decade of experience. A separate travel grant, paid as a lump sum based on distance, adds up to 1,500 euros for applicants travelling from more than 7,000 km away, a detail that matters if you’re applying from outside Europe rather than a neighbouring country.

Eligibility gates worth checking before you plan around this

A few eligibility gates are strict enough to check before you plan around this: you can’t already have spent 15 or more months in Slovakia in the prior three years, you can’t combine this with another publicly funded mobility scheme like Erasmus+ for the same stay, and if you’ve held an NSP award before, at least two years have to have passed since that stay ended. Two rounds run every year, 30 April and 31 October, with the online application opening roughly six weeks ahead of each deadline.

A state-budget programme running since 2005

The programme itself dates to 2005, when the Slovak government approved establishing the National Scholarship Programme to support exactly this kind of mobility for students, PhD students, university teachers, researchers and artists. It’s funded directly from the Slovak state budget through the Ministry of Education, Research, Development and Youth, and administered under a formal contract by SAIA, n.o. (the Slovak Academic Information Agency), based in Bratislava, rather than run in-house by the Ministry itself.