Find your place with a study voucher

The study voucher is a method of payment that you can use to pay for open studies taught through Finnish or Swedish at Finnish higher education institutions from 5 August on.

You can use the study voucher to pay for open studies worth a maximum of 30 ECTS credits in Finnish universities and universities of applied sciences. The study voucher is valid for two years from the date on which all the results of the joint application process are confirmed in August. You can use it at your own pace – you do not need to use the entire voucher at once.

The study voucher is a temporary pilot project of the Ministry of Education and Culture that will run from 1 August 2026 till 31 July 2030.

You can receive a study voucher on or after 5 August 2026 if

• you completed your first upper secondary qualification (matriculation examination, vocational upper secondary qualification or further vocational qualification) after 1 December 2025
• you are under 29 years old on the day you graduate with an upper secondary qualification
• and you applied for a study place in the joint application process of spring 2026, but were not admitted or did not accept the place you received in a higher education institution.

Please note that you can also receive a study voucher later, as long as you apply in the joint application processes of autumn 2026 or spring 2027 and meet the above criteria.

Check if you are entitled to a study voucher and activate the voucher for yourself.

Under study voucher legislation, young people who have completed their first upper secondary qualification in Finland while aged under 29 between 1 December 2025 and 31 July 2028 are entitled to a study voucher. The purpose of the study voucher experiment is to speed up recent graduates' transition to higher education, and the target group has been limited to those young people who have been able to apply for a place in higher education for the first time in the joint application process of spring 2026.

If you are eligible for a study voucher, you can activate it in Opin.fi on or after 5 August 2026, once the results of the higher education institutions' joint application process are confirmed and admission from the waiting lists has also ended. Identify yourself in the service using Suomi.fi e-Identification.

You do not need to apply for the study voucher separately, and its activation is not binding on you. You can choose which studies to register for and use the voucher at your own pace – you do not need to use the entire study voucher at once.

Go to study voucher activation.

The person entitled to the study voucher must register for studies within two years of the date on which they became entitled to the voucher. The entitlement to a study voucher starts when all results of the higher education institutions' joint application process have been announced and admission from the waiting lists has also ended.

You can use the study voucher as a method of payment when registering for most open higher education studies in Opin.fi that include teaching in Finnish or Swedish. The service offers thousands of open studies in more than 30 Finnish universities and universities of applied sciences.

Studies particularly suitable for upper secondary graduates have been collected under the study voucher theme. Discover studies in the study voucher theme here.(Opens in a new tab)

You can use the entire study voucher in one go, or use it in smaller parts during its validity period. You can complete a total of 30 ECTS credits with a study voucher over a two-year period.