How to apply for exchange studies at Tampere University

The academic year at Tampere University is divided into two semesters consisting of two teaching periods each. All new exchange students are required to attend the Welcome Week programme in the beginning of the semester.

Autumn semester 2023 (August - December 2023)

• Arrival period: 1 Aug - 20 Aug
• Welcome Week: 21 Aug - 27 Aug
• Teaching period I:  28 Aug - 15 Oct
• Teaching period II: 23 Oct - 10 Dec

No contact teaching: 16 - 22 Oct 2023, 11 - 21 Dec 2023. Public holidays: 6 Dec, Christmas 22 Dec - 1 Jan

Spring semester 2024 (January - May 2024)

• Welcome Week: 2 Jan - 5 Jan
• Arrival period: 2 Jan - 5 Jan
• Teaching period III: 8 Jan - 25 Feb
• Teaching period IV: 4 Mar - 31 May

No contact teaching: 26 Feb - 3 Mar 2024, 29 Apr - 12 May. Public holidays: 1 Jan, 27 Mar - 2 Apr, 1 May, 9 May

Tampere Summer School 2023 has been cancelled and the next one might be organised in August 2024. For more information, please see: Tampere Summer School. Summer school courses are free of charge for exchange students of Tampere University.

After you submit your application, don’t assume you are accepted until you receive an official Letter of Acceptance from Tampere University. The decisions on acceptance of exchange students are made by the International Mobility Services. The admission process will be finished approximately one month after the application period has ended.

Successful applicants will receive an electronic Letter of Acceptance from the University. Accepted students will be able to download and print the Letter of Acceptance themselves from the Mobility-Online, an application portal, we will not send hard copies (nor official invitation letters) unless requested. Unsuccessful applicants will be notified by email.

A letter of invitation from a representative of your study programme is not sufficient to grant you the right to study as an exchange student at Tampere University.

Students need to fill in the online application form and submit it with all the required application documents before the deadline.

Student exchange application periods:

• 1 April - 30 April for autumn semester and full academic year applications
• 16 September - 15 October for spring semester only

Please note that the application is complete and will be processed only after you have followed all the steps of the application system and entered all the required information. Before filling in the online application form, please read carefully the list of required documents and language requirements.

The nomination deadline for the home university is two weeks before the application deadline. For detailed nomination instructions, please see the information provided below in the Nomination instructions for partner institutions section.

Tampere University has three campuses: the city centre, Hervanta and Kauppi in Tampere. The city centre campus is a hub for education, business and management studies, politics, communication and social sciences. The Hervanta campus and the surrounding area constitute a major technology hub and is a main campus for engineering students. The Kauppi campus is located near the Tampere University Hospital and is the home base for medicine and health sciences. Read more: Campuses of Tampere University.

Incoming Erasmus+ students are expected to select the majority of courses in the subject fields stated in the respective IIAs. All other exchange students are expected to select the majority of their courses from one hosting campus, faculty and study field related to their studies at home university.

• Faculty of Built Environment (BEN) - Hervanta campus
  • Architecture (limited acceptance)
  • Building and Civil Engineering
• Faculty of Education and Culture (EDU) - City centre campus
  • Educational Studies
• Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences (ENS) - Hervanta campus
  • Biology and biochemistry
  • Chemistry
  • Electricity and energy
  • Electronics and automation
  • Engineering (Automation engineering)
  • Environmental Sciences, Ecology
  • Life Science
  • Manufacturing and processing
  • Materials Science
  • Mathematics
  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Physics
• Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences (ITC) - City centre campus and Hervanta campus
  • City centre campus
    • Communication Sciences (Journalism and Media)
    • Information Studies
    • Computer Sciences
    • Computer Sciences, Human-Technology Interaction
    • English Language
    • Finnish Language and Culture
    • French Language
    • German Language
    • Language Studies
    • Mathematics and Statistics
    • Russian Language
    • Scandinavian Languages
    • Theatre Arts (limited acceptance)
  • Hervanta campus
    • Computing
    • Engineering (Electrical engineering)
• Faculty of Management and Business (MAB) - City centre campus and Hervanta campus
  • City centre campus
    • Business Studies
    • Administrative Studies
    • Politics
  • Hervanta campus
    • Business with Technology
    • Engineering (Industrial engineering and management)
• Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology (MET) - Kauppi campus and Hervanta campus
  • Kauppi campus
    • Biotechnology
    • Biomedical sciences
    • Medicine (limited acceptance)
  • Hervanta campus
    • Medical Technology
• Faculty of Social Sciences (SOC) - City centre campus and Kauppi campus
  • City centre campus
    • History
    • Literary Studies
    • Logopedics
    • Philosophy
    • Psychology
    • Social Sciences
    • Social Work
  • Kauppi campus
    • Health Sciences

If you are applying to Tampere University's Pori unit (UCPori), please see: UCPori Interdisciplinary Exchange Programme.

You are eligible to apply if you are studying as a degree student at a university which has a valid agreement on student exchange (such as Erasmus+, Nordplus, ISEP, north2north, QSEP, Erasmus+ ICM, or bilateral student exchange) with Tampere University (including active agreements with the former University of Tampere, UTA, and Tampere University of Technology, TUT).

Our Erasmus+ code is SF TAMPERE17.

Once we have received online nominations from our partner universities or exchange programmes, we will send the link to the online application form to the nominated students by email.

Special restrictions:

Studies within the Degree Programme in Architecture on Hervanta campus are almost exclusively on master's degree level and intended only for exchange students who major in architecture. Applicants should therefore have completed their bachelor's degree in architecture (or be at least in their 4th year of study) when starting their exchange study period at Tampere University.

For courses within the Degree Programme in Languages, specialisation in English Language on the city centre campus, the English language proficiency requirement is C1 and, applicants are required to take and pass a language proficiency evaluation test organised by the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences (ITC) during the Welcome Week.

For other restrictions and studies in other languages, please see the special requirements on the Courses for exchange students at Tampere Universite website.

Visiting or non-degree freemover students:

You can participate in an exchange only if there is an official exchange agreement between your home university and Tampere University. Unfortunately, Tampere University does not accept students outside of these agreements (usually known as visiting or non-degree freemover students). If your university does not have an agreement with Tampere University please inquire your own International Office about what other universities your university has agreements with, or about developing an agreement with Tampere University. More information: International Tampere University & Tampere Universities.

Exchange students from Russia:

Tampere University has suspended all mobilities and cooperation with Russian universities and research institutions until further notice with accordance of the recommendation of The Ministry of Education and Culture in March 2022.

Tampere University offers support to students who need individual study arrangements to make effective progress towards their studies. Our individual study arrangements policy promotes equality of opportunity by enabling reasonable adjustments to be made to help all students undertake and demonstrate learning. If you have a diagnosed illness, learning difficulty or disability, please include this information in your application form. For more information on available services, please see: Accessibility and individual study arrangements for student.

Students coming to Tampere University through the Erasmus+, Nordplus or north2north exchange programmes also have the opportunity to apply for an accessibility grant. Please contact your Erasmus+, Nordplus or north2north coordinator of your home university for more information.

Students coming to Tampere University through the Erasmus+ ICM programme, are eligible for a special needs and inclusion grant awarded by the Finnish National Agency for Education (EDUFI). Read more: Special Needs and Inclusion Grant in Higher Education Exchange Programmes.

If you come to Tampere University through an other agreement, please inquire about the possibility of applying for an accessibility grant from your home university. If you have special requests concerning student housing, please contact directly the Tampere Student Housing Foundation (TOAS).

The required level of knowledge of English at Tampere University is B2 on Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) and C1 in the Degree Programme in Languages, Specialisation in English Language.

How to prove my knowledge of English?

No proof of knowledge of English is required if you have taken or you are studying for:

• A bachelor's degree in English in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom or the United States, excluding online degrees, with having stayed in the respective country when studying for the bachelor's degree
• Secondary education in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom or the United States.

Also those applicants who are not required to take a language test must have a knowledge of academic English corresponding to the level of our language test score limits.

All Erasmus+ and other exchange students must submit certificates by the application deadline as follows:

• a certificate of knowledge of English (B2-C1) written by university staff, preferably your English teacher

             OR

• a score report of one of the following language tests:
  • TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) - 92/iBT (incl. Home Edition), with no sections below 20
  • IELTS Academic (International English Language Testing System) - 6.5 with no individual score below 5.5 (incl. IELTS Online)
  • Duolingo English Test (DET) - 115

Copies of the test scores are accepted. Please keep in mind that test results are valid only for two years.

If you apply to the Degree Programme in Languages, Specialisation in English Language or a non-English degree programme on the city centre campus (Finnish, Swedish, Russian, French or German), please see the additional requirements.

Detailed instructions

For detailed instructions with screenshots, please see the PDF file:

Quick instructions

1. Register to Mobility-Online
   • Once your nomination has been accepted by the International Mobility Services, you are asked register to the application system Mobility-Online by creating a login name and a password through the link you have received by email
   • After registration, you will receive a new email with the personal login link to the Mobility-Online application portal (at the bottom of the email). Please save this email, as it includes a link for future access to Mobility-Online
2. Log into Mobility-Online and complete the application
   • Complete your application by following all the necessary steps in your application workflow
   • Please upload the required application documents to Mobility-Online.
   • For more details about the required application documents and language certificate requirements, please see the Required application documents section above.
   • For more details regarding your preliminary study plan, please go to Preliminary study plan for exchange students
3. Submit your application
   • Don't forget to submit your application after you have completed all the steps and uploaded all the required documents before the given deadline. It is recommended to submit your application as early as possible if you have to apply for residence permit for studies
4. Information about the acceptance of the application will be sent to applicants by email approximately a month after the application period has ended. 
   • Successful applicants will receive an electronic Letter of Acceptance, which they will be able to download and print from Mobility-Online. Rejected applicants will be notified by email, too.

NB! If you do not receive the emails from Mobility-Online, please make sure to check your junk email folder.

All applicants must be officially nominated by their home university or student's exchange programme coordinator in the Mobility-Online nomination form. Emailed nominations are not accepted.

We will send our nomination instructions and a link to our online nomination form to all partners a few days before our nomination period starts. If you have not received the link or you need more information, please contact us at mobility.tau [at] tuni.fi.

Applicants study field information is required in the nomination

Erasmus+, Erasmus+ ICM, Nordplus, Nordlys and faculty-level bilateral agreements: please nominate students to study in the field of study included in the exchange agreement. Exchange students have a host unit, which means that they need to select at least 50 % of their courses from one faculty or study field specified in the agreement.

The link to the online application form will be sent to the nominated students by email after we have reviewed your nomination. All nominations are usually processed at the end of the nomination period and not earlier.

Nomination periods:

• 1 March - 15 April for autumn semester and full academic year applications
• 1 September - 30 September for spring semester only

Please note that spring semester nominations will be processed only during the nomination period in September.

All required documents have to be submitted in English, Finnish or Swedish, or an official translation into one of these languages must be included. All required documents must be uploaded into the online application portal by the application deadline. For programme-specific requirements, please read the Eligibility criteria.

Exchange students must upload the following documents:

• An official academic transcript of your university records issued by your home university. The document should be either digitally certified or signed and stamped by a university official and cover the the full length of your studies. If you have completed your bachelor's degree and you are applying for master's level studies, please upload your bachelor's degree transcript as well
• A motivation letter (max. 1 page). Tell us why and what you wish to study at Tampere University. Write about your knowledge in the subjects you have taken in your previous studies with reference to the studies you are applying for. Describe your objectives for studying at Tampere University and your goals after your study period in Tampere. Provide any further information that you feel may be relevant to your application. The language of the motivation letter is English. However, if you apply to the study module of Finnish Language and Culture, please write your motivation letter in Finnish. If you apply to the Degree Programme in Languages, specialisation in Scandinavian Languages, please write your motivation letter in Swedish
• A preliminary study plan. Please list the preliminary courses you are interested to take at Tampere University in the application portal. Your final admission to the courses can be confirmed after your arrival only. Exchange students are expected to select the majority of their courses from the hosting faculty and campus. Acceptance to courses of other fields of studies and faculties cannot be guaranteed, and usually some prior studies in these fields are required. More instructions: Preliminary study plan for exchange students
• A proof of knowledge of English according to the language requirements of Tampere University
• Other documents (if applicable). Students of architecture on our Hervanta campus need to attach a portfolio (.pdf) to the online application. The portfolio should give a clear and concise summary of your skills. Your portfolio should start with the most recent project and include projects in a variety of scales, preferably from urban planning or design to architectural details. Building design projects should have clear plans and sections in addition to perspectives or other visualisations. The portfolio layout should be legible on most common computer screens