Search for Polish scholarships from Bangladesh and you will find page after page urging you to apply for the Banach NAWA programme — fully funded, tuition waived, a monthly stipend. What almost none of those pages mention is that when you open the Polish government's own call document and read the list of eligible countries, Bangladesh is not on it.
That is an uncomfortable thing for a consultancy to publish, and it is exactly why we are publishing it. This guide sets out what Poland's flagship scholarship actually offers, who can have it, what genuinely remains open to Bangladeshi students for the 2027-2028 intake, and what a Polish degree costs if you pay for it yourself.
The Banach NAWA scholarship pays PLN 2,500 a month with tuition waived at Polish public universities, but its 2026 call lists 36 eligible countries and Bangladesh is not among them. Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters, by contrast, is explicitly open to students worldwide. Minimum tuition for non-EU students at Polish public universities is about EUR 2,000 a year, with typical rates of EUR 2,000-6,000.
What does Poland's flagship scholarship offer?
The Stefan Banach programme is run jointly by Poland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Agency for Academic Exchange, NAWA, as part of Polish development aid. On paper it is genuinely generous.
It funds full-time second-cycle studies — master's level — and pays a scholarship of PLN 2,500 per month, roughly ৳80,050 at the rate on 28 September 2026. It exempts holders from tuition fees at public universities. It includes a preparatory course funded by NAWA for the Polish-language track, and a Polish language and culture course for those studying in English.
Language requirements are set by track: Polish at B1 for the preparatory course or B2 for direct entry to Polish-taught studies, and English at B2 for English-taught programmes. No age limit is specified in the call announcement.
Is Bangladesh eligible for Banach NAWA?
No — not under the 2026 call. The programme covers countries on Poland's development-aid list, and the call for applications names them. Here is the published list in full.
| Region | Eligible countries |
|---|---|
| Asia | India, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Mongolia, Palestine, Philippines, Vietnam |
| Central Asia | Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan |
| Caucasus | Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia |
| E. Europe | Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine |
| Balkans | Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia |
| Africa | Angola, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Tunisia |
| Americas | Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru |
| Pacific | Papua New Guinea |
| Bangladesh | Not listed in the 2026 call |
India and the Philippines are there. Bangladesh is not. The 2026 application deadline was 8 May 2026 at 15:00 Warsaw time, or earlier if country-group quotas filled.
This list is from the Banach 2026 call for applications. Country lists on development-aid programmes are reviewed periodically, so a future call could differ. No 2027 or 2027-28 Banach call had been published when we checked on 28 September 2026. If Bangladesh is ever added, the call document is where it will appear first — check there rather than on any agency's summary.
Why does this matter more than one closed scholarship?
Because of what gets sold around it. A scholarship a student cannot legally apply for is a powerful marketing hook, and a student who is told to "apply for Banach" may spend months on documents, translations and language certificates for an application that cannot succeed.
Ask for the call document — the official PDF or page published by the funding body — and find the eligible-country list yourself. Not a summary, not a blog, not a WhatsApp forward. If nobody can produce the call document, treat the offer as unverified. This one check would have saved every student who has come to us after a wasted Banach attempt.
What is genuinely open to Bangladeshi students?
Several routes, and one of them is large.
Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters is the strongest. It is funded by the European Union rather than by any single country, and the European Commission's own page states plainly that "students from all over the world are welcome" — there is no nationality restriction. The scholarship covers participation costs and contributes to travel, visa and a living allowance, and courses are delivered across several European universities, often including Polish ones. Applications generally run from October to January for courses starting the following academic year.
The European Commission page we read does not publish specific euro amounts for the living allowance or travel contribution, and each joint master's sets its own figures and deadlines. We are not going to quote a number we could not source. Take the amounts from the individual programme's own website, which the Commission directs applicants to.
Doctoral colleges are the second route, for anyone looking further ahead. Poland's official study portal states that doctoral colleges offer tuition-free education and also provide a scholarship for all doctoral candidates in a full-time programme — with no nationality condition attached to that statement.
University-level funding is the third, and the least visible. Individual Polish institutions set their own fees and their own discounts, and the national portal notes that institutional agreements may specify different conditions from the published minimums. This is where a direct email to an admissions office is worth more than a week of searching.
NAWA runs several other programmes for incoming students besides Banach. We were not able to open and verify the eligible-country list for each of them at the time of writing, so we are not claiming Bangladesh is excluded from all Polish scholarships — only that it is not on the Banach 2026 list, which is the programme most often marketed here. Check each programme's own call document.
Before you commit to any Polish funding application, make sure you can tick every line below.
- You have opened the current call document yourself and found Bangladesh on the eligible-country list
- Your degree level matches what the programme funds — Banach, for example, funds master's study only
- You meet the language threshold for your track, in Polish or in English
- You can meet the application deadline, which for funded routes is far earlier than ordinary admissions
- You have confirmed the university appears on Poland's official list of recognised institutions
- You know what the programme does not cover, so you can budget the remainder
What will a Polish degree cost if you self-fund?
This is the number that actually matters for most Bangladeshi families, and Poland compares well with Western Europe.
| Level | EUR / year | Approx BDT |
|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's / master's minimum | 2,000 | ৳2.80 lakh |
| Typical range | 2,000-6,000 | ৳2.80-8.40 lakh |
| Postgraduate / internships | 3,000 | ৳4.20 lakh |
| Preparatory Polish course | 2,000 | ৳2.80 lakh |
| MBA programmes | 8,000-12,000 | ৳11.2-16.8 lakh |
| Doctoral colleges | Tuition-free | Plus scholarship |
Conversions use EUR 1 = ৳140.06, the rate on 28 September 2026, and are our arithmetic. Fees are set by each institution and may not fall below the actual cost of education, so treat the minimums as a floor rather than a price.
One clarification worth making, because it is widely misunderstood: full-time studies taught in Polish are free — but only for Polish citizens, EU and EEA citizens, Polish Charter holders, and foreigners admitted on the same terms as Polish citizens. A Bangladeshi student learning Polish does not become eligible for free tuition by doing so.
Does a Bangladeshi apostille work for Poland?
Yes, and this is a genuine advantage Poland has over several of its neighbours. Poland has been a party to the Apostille Convention since 14 August 2005, and it is not among the states that objected to Bangladesh's accession.
Because Poland raised no objection, a Bangladeshi apostille is legally effective there. Your certificates can go through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs e-Apostille service rather than the longer embassy legalisation chain. Neighbouring Czechia, Austria, Germany and Lithuania all objected, so the same set of documents behaves differently depending on which country you apply to.
How should you plan for the 2027-2028 intake?
Decide early whether you are pursuing funding or accepting the cost, because the two calendars are different. Erasmus Mundus applications cluster between October and January, far ahead of ordinary university admissions. Self-funded applications can move much later.
If you are chasing funding, build your shortlist from call documents outward — find the programmes whose eligible-country lists include Bangladesh, then look at what they teach. Doing it the other way round, picking a course and hoping a scholarship exists for it, is how students end up in the Banach situation.
What we see at Eduvisa is that students are rarely short of ambition or grades. They are short of accurate eligibility information, and by the time the gap shows up, an intake has usually gone. We would far rather tell a student in October that a scholarship is closed to them than watch them find out in May.
Related guides: Poland student visa from Bangladesh · Bangladesh apostille for study abroad documents
Official sources used in this guide: the NAWA Banach programme pages and 2026 call, study.gov.pl on tuition fees, and the European Commission's Erasmus Mundus scholarship page.
Verify before applying. Figures, country lists and deadlines here were read on 28 September 2026 at the sources named above. Scholarship calls change every cycle. Always open the current call document before preparing an application.
Want to know which scholarships you can actually apply for?
Bring us your profile and we will go through the eligibility lists with you, programme by programme, and tell you plainly which doors are open and which are not. We would rather give you a short honest list than a long hopeful one.
Book Free Consultation →