Scholarships to Study in Italy
Italy is unusual: the main scholarship system is not run by universities at all. It is run by regions, assessed on family income, and open to international students on the same basis as Italians. That is why a student who plans well can end up paying no tuition and receiving a grant toward rent and meals.
The catch is documentation. Income assessment requires a legalised paper trail from India, and it is slow. Start it before you have an offer.
The four funding routes
Most students combine DSU with a fee waiver; the national and merit awards stack differently.
DSU Scholarship Guide
The regional right-to-study grant — how income assessment works and what it actually pays.
Read the guide →Italian Government (MAECI)
The national scholarship offered by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Read the guide →Invest Your Talent in Italy
Masters programme combining study with an internship at an Italian company.
Read the guide →University Merit Scholarships
Institution-level awards based on academic record rather than income.
Read the guide →Document Services
The legalisation chain your income and academic documents must pass through.
Read the guide →Education Loans
Where a scholarship does not cover everything, how loan funding fits alongside it.
Read the guide →Why DSU matters more than the others
DSU — the regional right-to-study benefit — is the scheme that changes the economics of studying in Italy. It is administered region by region, so Lombardy, Lazio, Emilia-Romagna, Sicily and the rest each set their own income thresholds, grant amounts, accommodation rules and deadlines. Two students with identical finances can receive materially different outcomes purely because they chose universities in different regions.
That makes region a genuine factor in choosing where to apply, and it is the part of the decision most applicants overlook while comparing university rankings.
The documents that decide your assessment
- Family income and asset certificates from Indian authorities, translated and legalised.
- Academic documents legalised through the HRD and MEA apostille chain.
- Declaration of Value or CIMEA statement establishing equivalence of your qualification.
- Certified translations into Italian, prepared to the standard the region accepts.
Regional deadlines usually fall before university enrolment completes, which is the trap: students wait for an admission result, start documents afterwards, and miss the scholarship window for that year. Prepare the file in parallel with the application, not after it.
Frequently asked questions
Straight answers to what students and parents ask us most.
Can Indian students really study in Italy for free?
What is the DSU scholarship?
Do scholarship amounts differ by region?
Can I apply for a scholarship before I get admission?
Can I hold more than one scholarship?
Talk to a counsellor who has placed students there
Free one-to-one counselling at our Bhubaneswar and New Delhi (Dwarka) offices, or online. No obligation, no sales script.