03.08.2026 · 5 min
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The state pays part of your tuition: who gets a grant and how much.
Maksym’s mother saw the headline “State-funded places are being abolished, now there will be grants” and panicked: her son scored 156 in Ukrainian and 162 in mathematics, and the family was counting on free tuition. Sound familiar? Breathe out. Nobody has abolished state-funded places. And a grant is an extra lifeline for those who missed out on a state-funded place but did well on the NMT. Let us take the grant system apart molecule by molecule: who gets it, how much money it is, what you have to do and where the catches are hidden.
A state grant is targeted, non-repayable financial support from the state budget that pays fully or partly for fee-paying study. That is how the Ministry of Education and Science defines it. In plain words: you enroll on a fee-paying place, and every year the state transfers a certain sum to the university on your behalf. The difference (if there is one) is paid by your family.
Grants appeared as an experiment in 2024, launched by Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 822 of 18/07/2024. Over two years tens of thousands of fee-paying students have received grant support, with an average of around 23,000 UAH a year.
An important distinction: the current grant system (the one operating now) is not the same thing as the “big grant reform” from draft law No. 10399 that the media write about. The reform has not been finally adopted; its main model is due to start working from 2027. What applies to you, a 2026 applicant, is the current system. That is what we are talking about here.
Definitely. This is fear number one in parents’ chats, and it is groundless: in 2026 the national order works as it always has, the state-funded places have been allocated and the competition for them is running as usual. The Ministry and the relevant parliamentary committee have directly denied the rumours that state-funded places are being abolished.
The logic is this:
Grants were introduced in addition to the national order, not instead of it.
Here a simple table of levels applies (the conditions approved by a government resolution in July 2025):
Note: what counts is the “raw” NMT scores in the individual subjects, not the competitive score with its weighting coefficients.
The base amount is then multiplied by a field coefficient:
And one more bonus — a regional coefficient of 1.5: if you received your school certificate in the Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, Kharkiv or Mykolaiv region and are entering an institution in those same regions.
An example. Sofiia scored 172 and 175 on the NMT and enrolled on a fee-paying place in an engineering specialty: 25,000 × 1.5 = 37,500 UAH a year. If the tuition costs 45,000, the family pays only 7,500 on top.
Two limits people often forget:
An honest warning. As of July 2026 the government has not yet approved, in a separate resolution, the grant amounts specifically for 2026 applicants — the Ministry advises using last year’s conditions as a reference. So the figures above are a baseline that may still be refined. Watch for updates on the Ministry’s site.
The best part: you do not have to do anything while applying. There is no separate “grant application” in the EDBO account. The mechanics (per the 2025 model, which the Ministry describes here):
A detail that can become a problem: confirming requires Diia. If you have a paper passport booklet and no digital documents, sort that out in advance.
A grant is not a one-off. It carries over to the following years automatically, provided you:
You can lose a grant if you are expelled, transfer to part-time study, take academic leave or change to a specialty that does not meet the conditions. But even then, the money already paid does not have to be returned. And working the grant off is not required: no “three years of assigned placement”.
By the way, if you transfer to a state-funded place during your studies, the grant simply stops, because from then on the state pays for you in full. That is a normal scenario, not a breach.
Mistake 1. Turning down a recommendation for a state-funded place. If the system recommended you for a state-funded place and you turned it down (“wrong university”, “changed my mind”), your right to a grant is lost. The state asks the logical question: we offered you a place completely free, you turned it down — why should we pay towards your fee-paying place? So order your priorities very carefully: do not put a state-funded offer you would not actually take above the fee-paying place you dream of.
Mistake 2. Missing the confirmation in Diia. The certificate sits in the app for a limited time. Fail to confirm it and the grant is not awarded, and calls to the Ministry will not help. Set a reminder for September–October.
Mistake 3. Signing a fee-paying contract and hoping for the best. The contract is concluded for the full cost of the tuition. The grant is a compensation that comes later. If your scores fall short of a grant (say, 148 in one subject) and the family can only manage the tuition “with a grant”, that is a risk. Work out both scenarios in advance: with the grant and without it.
Does the grant apply at a private university?
Yes, if the institution has signed an agreement with the Ministry to take part in the programme. In the 2024/25 academic year there were 196 participating institutions. Check with your university’s admissions committee.
I am applying for part-time study. Will I get a grant?
No. Grants are only for the full-time and dual forms of study.
Are a grant and priority-category benefits the same thing?
No. A grant depends only on your NMT scores. Benefits (quotas, transfer to a state-funded place for defenders’ children) are separate mechanisms; we covered them in the guides on quota 1 and quota 2 and on benefits for combat veterans and defenders’ children. Incidentally, defenders’ children have a separate programme of full tuition compensation — do not confuse it with a grant.
What will happen to grants next year, once the reform is adopted?
Draft law No. 10399 envisages a new model: academic, social and special grants, and “grants for heroes”. The main part is due to start working from 1 January 2027. But that does not affect your 2026 admission — the current rules apply.
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