How Much Does It Cost to Study Medicine in Latvia and Lithuania? 2026 Figures

How much is tuition for English-taught medicine in Latvia and Lithuania in 2026?

Between €77,340 and €84,600 for the whole six-year degree, depending on the university. Per year that is €11,850 to €14,610 at the University of Latvia, a flat €13,500 at Rīga Stradiņš University, €12,800 rising to €13,300 at the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences in Kaunas, and a flat €14,100 at Vilnius University. All four figures are the ones published for the 2026/27 academic year.

All four are structured the same way: six years, 360 ECTS credits, taught in English, ending in a qualification as a medical doctor. What differs is the payment schedule. Rīga Stradiņš University and Vilnius University charge one rate for all six years; the other two step the fee upward as the student moves into the clinical years.

The University of Latvia is the clearest case of that. Year one costs €11,850 and year six costs €14,610 — a €2,760 difference between the cheapest and most expensive year of the same degree. A student who budgets six times the first-year figure will be short by roughly €6,240 by graduation.

Tuition as published by each university for the 2026/27 academic year. Dentistry is priced separately: €15,500 per year over five years at Rīga Stradiņš University, and €13,600 rising to €14,100 per year over five years at the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences.

Do Latvian and Lithuanian universities charge non-EU students more than EU students?

Not at any of these four. The University of Latvia states the point explicitly — €11,850 for European Union, European Economic Area and Swiss citizens, and €11,850 for citizens of other countries. Rīga Stradiņš University, the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences and Vilnius University publish a single tuition table for their English-taught programmes with no second column for non-European applicants.

That is worth stating plainly, because in several other European destinations the non-EU rate is a multiple of the domestic one. Here the English-taught programme is priced as its own product, and everyone in it pays the same. Two first-year students in the same anatomy hall in Kaunas pay €12,800 each, whichever passports they hold.

Where nationality does show up is in the one-off charges around admission and immigration, and these are small by comparison. Vilnius University charges a €100 application fee and a €200 entrance examination fee, and applies a €1,000 non-refundable deposit — counted towards tuition — to applicants from Norway and Sweden for medicine and dentistry. The University of Latvia charges a €170 application fee and asks non-EU and non-EEA applicants for a one-off €500 deposit covering immigration costs.

What does it cost to live in Riga as a medical student?

Plan on €700 to €900 a month once you have left the dormitory. University halls in Riga — the stock shared by Rīga Stradiņš University, the University of Latvia and Riga Technical University — ran €90 to €200 per person per month in 2026. A room in a shared flat cost €300 to €600, a central studio €500 to €800.

Above that level Riga gets expensive fast. Market data compiled in July 2026 from Arco Real Estate and Cenu Banka listings put a one-bedroom flat in the centre at €950 to €1,250 a month and one outside the centre at €550 to €950, with long-term rents averaging €13 to €15 per square metre. Very few students rent alone. Almost all of them share.

Utilities are billed separately by private landlords and add €50 to €120 a month in Riga, the Latvian komunālie maksājumi. That range is not spread evenly across the year. Dormitories and the newer co-living residences quote rents with utilities and internet already inside the price, which is one reason first-year students overwhelmingly start there.

What does it cost to live in Kaunas or Vilnius?

Less than Riga, in almost every line. The Lithuanian University of Health Sciences runs nine residence halls in Kaunas; its own price list, confirmed in December 2023, put a place at €38 to €232 a month depending on the building and room. The three halls used most by international students sit at €81 to €117 (Dormitory 5), €101 to €144 (Dormitory 8) and €150 to €250 (Dormitory 1), and the Dormitory 1 rate covers heating, water, power, internet and use of the shared kitchen.

Vilnius University prices its halls even more simply: €130 a month per person in a double room and €90 in a triple, for stays over two months, against an arrival deposit of at least €150. Across Lithuania as a whole, figures published in 2025 put a room in a shared flat outside the centre near €285, a central studio near €415, food and groceries at €150 to €250 a month, and utilities in a private tenancy at €80 to €140.

Then there is the transport line, which is the single most lopsided item in this comparison. A monthly public transport pass with a student ID costs about €6 in both Vilnius and Kaunas. In Riga a general monthly pass runs closer to €30 by 2026 cost-of-living data. Over six years that difference alone is roughly €1,700.

Why does paying in euros matter across a six-year budget?

Because it removes a variable that no student can control. Latvia adopted the euro on 1 January 2014 and Lithuania on 1 January 2015. A tuition invoice of €13,500 in Riga is €13,500 to anyone else earning or saving in euros, in year one and in year six, with no conversion spread and no bank margin taken off the top twice a year.

Six years is long enough for currency movement to matter. A degree priced in a non-euro currency can swing by a double-digit percentage over that span, in either direction, and the student carries that risk. On a €78,300 tuition bill, a ten per cent adverse move is €7,830 — more than the entire spread between the cheapest and most expensive programme here.

Same money, both countries. For anyone funding the degree in euros, that line comes off the spreadsheet entirely, and it also makes this particular comparison unusually clean: every figure here sits side by side without a single conversion.

What does six years in Latvia actually add up to?

Around €134,000 all in, on realistic assumptions. Below is one worked example: a student at Rīga Stradiņš University who takes a dormitory place for the first two years and moves into a shared flat for the clinical years four onwards. Tuition is the published 2026/27 figure. Everything else is a planning assumption, stated so you can change it.

Swap Rīga Stradiņš University for the University of Latvia and the same student's total drops to €130,680, because the tuition line falls from €81,000 to €77,340. Everything else in the table is unchanged — same city, same rent, same transport pass.

What does six years in Lithuania actually add up to?

Around €123,000 on the same assumptions. The example below is a student at the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences in Kaunas, again two years in a residence hall and four in a shared flat, with tuition at the published 2026/27 rate of €12,800 for years one to three and €13,300 for years four to six.

A student at Vilnius University pays €84,600 in tuition rather than €78,300, and Vilnius rents sit above Kaunas rents, so the same profile lands closer to €131,000. Kaunas is the cheaper Lithuanian city by a clear margin. Vilnius buys a capital city.

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What do comparable articles on Baltic medicine costs leave unanswered?

Almost all of them stop at tuition. That is the smaller part of the divergence. On the worked examples above, Riga costs €10,908 more than Kaunas across six years — but only €2,700 of that gap is tuition. The remaining €8,208 is rent, transport and utilities, three lines that rarely appear in a headline comparison and that no university publishes on its fees page.

Three items in particular get skipped:

In our placements at Medschool Experts, the students who run out of money mid-degree are rarely the ones who misjudged tuition. Tuition is published, invoiced and predictable. It is the fourth-year move out of the dormitory into a private flat, with a deposit, a heating bill and a landlord's utility statement attached, that catches people who budgeted from a fees page. You can see how that plays out in practice in our student stories.

Where can you work with a medical degree from Latvia or Lithuania?

Across the European Union, by automatic recognition. Latvia and Lithuania both joined the European Union on 1 May 2004, and basic medical training in both countries is listed in Annex V of Directive 2005/36/EC on the recognition of professional qualifications. A degree that satisfies the directive's minimum training conditions is recognised by the competent authority in every other member state without a separate equivalence assessment of the curriculum itself.

What still applies in the destination country is registration and language. A graduate moving to another member state registers with that country's medical regulator, demonstrates the language competence that regulator requires, and completes whatever supervised or provisional registration period national law sets. The directive removes the question of whether the diploma counts. It does not remove the paperwork of joining a national register.

Outside the European Union the route runs through the relevant national body: the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates for the United States, the General Medical Council for the United Kingdom, MEBEKO for Switzerland. All four universities in this comparison are listed in the World Directory of Medical Schools, which is the listing the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates checks. The Lithuanian University of Health Sciences also holds international WFME accreditation. You can compare programmes on our universities page.

When does the money actually leave your account?

Not evenly, and not when most people expect. The budget year has a shape: a large tuition payment before matriculation, a quiet autumn, an expensive winter, and travel costs clustered around two points in the calendar. Mapping it once saves a lot of improvising later.

Three points follow. Residence hall places in Kaunas and Vilnius are limited and allocated in spring, so the cheapest housing is gone by August. The first tuition instalment is normally payable in full before matriculation, which puts the largest single transfer of the year before you have set foot in the country. And the winter heating premium lands in the same months as the heaviest exam block — a reason to hold a cash buffer rather than run the account to zero each month.

Can earlier study reduce the number of years you pay for?

It can, and this is where the total cost of a Baltic medical degree changes shape entirely. A student who already holds a degree in dentistry, veterinary medicine, pharmacy, biomedical science or a related health field, or who has completed semesters of medicine elsewhere, is not necessarily starting at year one. Credit recognition is assessed against the actual content of what you have already studied.

Medschool Experts is the world's leading specialist in credit-recognition placements for healthcare graduates, and regularly achieves year 4 or year 5 entry at top universities worldwide. Every year removed from the front of a six-year programme takes both a tuition payment and a full year of living costs out of the total — on the Kaunas example above, that is over €20,000 per year. The assessment depends entirely on your transcripts, so it is done individually rather than from a table. Start with a free consultation.