Czech Republic

First, the restriction on Russian citizens

Czechia restricts visa services for Russian and Belarusian nationals under Government Decree No. 200. The Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs notice on this was updated in February 2026, and Czech visa centres in Russia stopped accepting applications after 29 September 2025.

The exemptions are narrow: certain family members of EU citizens, certain third-country nationals, certain Belarusian students, and opponents of the regime. Russian students are not named among them.

We lead with this because it is decisive: in practice, a Czech study visa is not currently obtainable on a Russian passport through normal channels. If you hold Russian citizenship, this needs checking case by case with the Czech MFA rather than assuming the standard process. For citizens of other countries — Kazakhstan, India, African and Latin American states — the direction works normally.

Why Czechia is worth considering

Charles University states it plainly: study in Czech is free of charge, with a fee arising only if a student exceeds the standard duration of study by more than one year. The key point is that this applies to all nationalities, not only EU citizens, because it flows from the law rather than from resident status.

English-taught programmes are paid, and the range is enormous — from token amounts up to medicine at the top end. Check the figure on the specific programme's page: there is no meaningful national average here, and aggregator numbers diverge sharply.

Where "free study in Czechia" is usually mis-sold

Free study means study in Czech. That means passing an entrance examination in Czech, which in practice almost always requires a paid one-year preparatory language course first. So "free" applies to the degree itself, not to the road that gets you there.

Czechia does have a government scholarship — Government Scholarships for Developing Countries, run by the Ministry of Education (MŠMT) — but it covers master's and doctoral study and is open only to citizens of specific countries on an approved list. Russia is not on that list.

UNIPROFI and Czechia

We are opening the Czech direction primarily for applicants outside Russia, for whom the visa route is open, and telling everyone else honestly rather than selling preparation for an unreachable goal.

Write to us and mention your citizenship — we will tell you straight away whether this route is realistic for you, rather than spending your time on it.