Amsterdam Excellence Scholarship 2027: What Replaced It, and How to Win the AMS
The University of Amsterdam no longer lists the Amsterdam Excellence Scholarship. Its non-EU master’s award is now the Amsterdam Merit Scholarship (AMS), run separately by each faculty — and most 2027 deadlines fall on 15 January 2027.
ScholarshipUnion Editorial
3 min read
Updated Oct 6, 2026
If you searched for the Amsterdam Excellence Scholarship (AES), you are looking for a name the University of Amsterdam (UvA) has retired. UvA’s own master’s scholarships page now lists only the Amsterdam Merit Scholarship (AMS) and faculty scholarships. The AMS is the same idea — a merit award for outstanding students from outside the EU/EEA — but it is no longer one university-wide €25,000 package.
From one AES to many faculty AMS awards
The old AES was a single, well-known award, widely advertised at €25,000 for one year. That page is no longer online. Today the central Amsterdam Merit Scholarship page says plainly that “deadlines for the AMS differ per Faculty or Graduate School” and sends you to nine faculty pages for the rules.
In practice that means nine slightly different scholarships under one name. Each faculty decides the amount, the number of awards, the documents and the deadline. Some pay a fixed sum. Some pay the equivalent of the tuition fee. One — the Law School — picks its single winner by lottery. You must read the page for your faculty, not a generic summary.
Blogs still quote “AES: €25,000, tuition and living costs”. That figure belongs to the old scheme. Current faculty pages publish different amounts, and several say the 2027–28 amount is still “to be announced”. Use the faculty page as your source of truth.
What the AMS pays in 2027
Funding →These are the published figures on 6 October 2026. Where a faculty has not yet posted 2027–28 numbers, we say so.
€26,125, one award for the whole faculty for the September 2027 start. Paid monthly; not a tuition waiver. Source.
Tuition fee + €5,000, one year without prolongation. 12 awarded last year. 2027–28 amounts published “in late autumn”. Source.
Four awards of €37,500 for 2026–27. The page is being updated for 2027–28. Source.
Equal to the tuition fee, paid in monthly instalments. Two awards in 2025 (1.5% of applicants). Source.
One award, chosen by lottery among eligible applicants. Amount for 2027–28 “to be announced”. Source.
Part of the tuition fee. Psychology gives two awards; Communication Science one or at most two. Source.
Full details, including Child Development and Education and Medicine, are on Faculties & Awards.
The 2027 calendar in one line
Deadlines →Economics and Business opens AMS applications at the beginning of October, and most faculties close them on 15 January 2027. The big exception is the Graduate School of Social Sciences, which closes on 15 February 2027, 23:59 CET. The crucial point: the scholarship deadline is usually earlier than the normal non-EU programme deadline. If you plan to apply for the AMS, your master’s application must be in by the scholarship date — not 31 January or 1 April.
Who it is for
Every faculty page agrees on the core: you hold a non-EU/EEA passport, you are not eligible for Dutch study finance (DUO) or the lower EU fee, you are starting a master’s at UvA for the first time, and your grades put you near the top of your class. Science and Economics & Business explicitly mention the top 10%. Law asks for a GPA comparable to 4.0 (USA), first-class honours (UK) or 8.0 (Dutch).
Where to go next
Nationality, first master’s, GPA bars and a quick checker.
The scholarship box in your master’s application, faculty by faculty.
300, 500 or one page: write to your faculty’s limit.
Leiden, TU Delft, the NL Scholarship and wider Europe.
Start on the official site
This is an independent guide. UvA changes amounts every year and states that “no rights can be derived from information about previous years”. Start at the Amsterdam Merit Scholarship hub, open your faculty’s page, and come back here for the parts the pages leave implicit.