How to Apply to Universities in Spain: Requirements, Deadlines and Portals

Work out which entry route applies to you

Spain treats applicants differently depending on where you finished secondary school. If you hold an EU, EEA or Swiss Bachillerato-equivalent qualification, you compete for a public university place on the same terms as Spanish students. If your secondary education comes from outside that group, you need an extra accreditation step before you apply anywhere.

Get your school qualification recognized

The UNEDasiss portal, run by the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), handles this recognition for foreign applicants. If you come from an EU or EEA country, UNEDasiss reviews your school record and issues a credencial de acceso once it confirms your qualification matches the Bachillerato. This lets you compete for a public university place without sitting a separate Spanish entrance exam.

If your school system falls outside the EU/EEA, UNEDasiss requires you to sit the Pruebas de Competencias Específicas (PCE), a set of subject exams graded out of 14 points. Your PCE result combines with your school average to produce a final admission mark, the same way the Bachillerato average combines with the EBAU/PAU score for home students.

If you already hold a university degree from another country and want it recognized in Spain for a regulated profession or further study, that is a separate process, homologación or declaración de equivalencia, run through the Ministry of Universities' Valida-TE portal . Start this early since it commonly takes several months to process.

Sit the entrance exam if your route requires one

Spanish school leavers sit EBAU, PAU or EvAU (the name changes by region) in the first weeks of June, with a resit sitting in July or September. The exam covers four or five subjects, graded 0 to 10, and your final admission mark blends 60% from your Bachillerato average and 40% from the exam score, per Eurydice . If you apply through UNEDasiss instead, plan around its own PCE exam calendar, published on the UNEDasiss site each year, since it does not run on the same dates as EBAU.

Apply through the right admission portal

Once you hold your credencial de acceso, PCE result or recognized Bachillerato equivalent, you apply to universities through the preinscripción (pre-enrollment) system of the autonomous community where you want to study. Each region runs its own coordinated portal and ranks applicants by admission mark against the places available on each degree program. Programs such as medicine or psychology need much higher marks than others, so check the previous year's cut-off mark (nota de corte) for your target program before you build a shortlist.

Private universities run their own admission process outside this coordinated system. They typically ask for your school transcripts, an interview or entrance test, and proof of your qualification's equivalence, without a regional cut-off mark to compete against.

Documents you will need

• Valid passport or national ID

• Official school transcripts, translated and legalized or apostilled if issued outside Spain

• Proof of qualification equivalence: your UNEDasiss credencial, PCE result, or homologación decision

• Passport-style photos for your university file

• Proof of funds and, for non-EU applicants, a student visa or residence permit

Enroll and pay your first tuition installment

Once you receive an offer, you complete matrícula (enrollment) directly with the university, choosing your subjects for the year and paying the first tuition installment. EU/EEA/Swiss students pay the same public tuition as Spanish nationals. Non-EU students usually pay a higher, region-set rate. See our guide to tuition and living costs in Spain for the numbers.

Settle in once you enroll

After matrícula, non-EU students register for a foreigner identity number (NIE) if they have not already done so for their visa, and every student registers their address with the local town hall (empadronamiento), a step landlords and universities often ask for. Most universities run an orientation week before classes start, covering your student card, library access, health services and, at many universities, a buddy or mentor program for new international students.

Application fees and selection rules

Public universities charge a small preinscripción or matrícula administrative fee alongside your tuition, set by each autonomous community and published on the region's admission portal each year. Selection for high-demand programs runs purely on your admission mark against available places, so two applicants with identical grades in different regions can still see different outcomes depending on how many places their target program offers that year.

Key dates to track

Dates shift by autonomous community and by year, so confirm the exact 2026-27 calendar on your target university's admissions page as soon as you pick a program.

If you want to switch university after starting

Students who start at one Spanish university and later want to move to another apply for a traslado de expediente, transferring their academic record and any passed credits to the new institution. The receiving university sets its own conditions, usually requiring you to have passed a minimum number of credits at your current university first, and runs its own admission window for transfer applicants separate from the main preinscripción calendar.