Sanctuary Scholarship

We offer scholarships for forced migrants to the UK. The Sanctuary Scholarship is open to people who wish to study any undergraduate or postgraduate taught (Masters) degree.

The scholarship covers the full cost of tuition fees and £10,000 a year towards study costs. If you receive the Sanctuary Scholarship, you won’t need to pay the money back. In addition, you may be offered a place on an optional pre-sessional language course (6 or 10 weeks in Summer 2025) which will enable you to meet any language requirements attached to your offer to study.

There are a limited number of scholarships available and you must apply. If your application is successful, we will invite you to an interview. Not everybody who applies is invited for an interview.

Applications to the Sanctuary Scholarships for the 2025/26 academic year closed at 12pm on Monday 7 April. As this deadline has passed, we are unable to accept further applications.

Degrees you can study

You can apply for this scholarship if you have an offer or if you have applied for any of the following degrees, full-time or part-time:

Any 3 or 4 year Undergraduate degree (including Foundation degrees and degrees with an Integrated Masters) starting in September or October 2025.
Any Postgraduate Taught degree (Masters) which is not 100% online with the Digital Education Service, starting in September or October 2025.

Unfortunately, you cannot apply for Sanctuary Scholarship funding for postgraduate research and PhD study.

Are you eligible to apply?

To apply for this scholarship you must:

Be a forced migrant to the United Kingdom. This means you are a person displaced from your homeland or place of residence for political, economic, ethnic, environmental, or human rights pressures. You must have one of the residency statuses listed in the next section.
Be unable to access mainstream funding, for example from Student Finance England or a local authority grant.
Have already applied to study at the University in the 2025/26 academic year.
Not have a degree from a UK university of the same level or higher than the course you want to study at Leeds in 2025/26.
Be eligible for paying tuition fees at the UK rate. If you receive an offer to study that states you must pay tuition fees at the International rate, make sure you use the fee assessment process to confirm if this is correct.

Eligible residency statuses

Your residency status must be either:

Asylum Seeker – currently seeking asylum within the UK or Refused Asylum Seeker where your application for refugee status has been denied and a fresh claim is in process.
Limited or Discretionary leave to remain.
Indefinite leave to remain.

Your status may also be one of the following, which are only eligible if you already have a degree of the same level you wish to study at Leeds gained from a University outside of the UK - therefore making you ineligible for mainstream student funding:

Refugee status or the spouse or child of someone with refugee status.
Humanitarian Protection status or the spouse or child of someone with Humanitarian Protection status.
Section 67 Leave or the dependent child of someone with Section 67 Leave.
Calais Leave.
Stateless Person Leave or the spouse or child of someone with Stateless Leave.
Granted leave in the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) or the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS).
Granted leave in the UK under the Ukraine Family Scheme, the Homes for Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme or the Ukraine Extension Scheme.

We can only award the scholarship if your immigration status allows you to study for the duration of your course. If your immigration permission changes so that you are not allowed to study, we may have to cancel the scholarship.

Please be aware that if you have decided not to receive student finance for faith reasons, this does not make you eligible for the Sanctuary Scholarship. For Sharia-compliant funding opportunities, please see our page on financial support for Muslim students.

Offers to study

To apply for the Sanctuary Scholarship, you must have already applied for your course but you do not need to have an offer of a place yet. If your application to study is rejected at any time, then your application for or offer of a Sanctuary Scholarship will be withdrawn.

How to apply