Studying Medicine in Kragujevac (Serbia): Costs and Recognition

Studying medicine in Kragujevac at a glance

The Faculty of Medical Sciences of the University of Kragujevac offers human medicine and pharmacy in English. Medschool Experts has been placing students at this location since 2021. The table below summarises what defines it as of August 2026.

What does studying medicine in Kragujevac cost?

Human medicine in English costs 3,000 euros per semester in Kragujevac, and pharmacy 1,500 euros per semester (as of 2026). Over an academic year that is 6,000 and 3,000 euros respectively. On top come living costs of about 400 to 500 euros a month.

Anyone who wants to know what the degree really costs has to add the fee to daily life. Our own estimate, as of August 2026, assumes 150 euros in rent, 250 euros in living costs, and 40 euros in study materials per month, plus 500 euros a year for trips home. That puts human medicine at around 70,700 euros over six years and pharmacy at around 43,900 euros over five years. For comparison: in Romania the fees alone are 8,500 to 10,000 euros per academic year. Kragujevac therefore comes in around 29 per cent below the cheapest Romanian location.

A note on figures circulating online: several agency websites still give 5,000 euros per academic year for Kragujevac. Those figures date from 2024 and 2025 and are out of date. The amount has been revised since. We give the 2026 figure here, and add that fees can change.

I studied in Sofia from 2015 to 2021 and learned there that the fee table is rarely the point at which study plans fail. It is the incidental costs nobody thought about in advance: the deposit, the flight at the start of the semester, health insurance, books. Anyone who includes these items from the outset avoids an unpleasant surprise in the third semester.

Who is behind the Faculty of Medical Sciences in Kragujevac?

The Faculty of Medical Sciences in Kragujevac was founded on 17 November 1977 and belongs to the University of Kragujevac. The university itself was established in 1976 and traces its roots to the Lyceum of the Principality of Serbia, founded in Kragujevac by Prince Miloš Obrenović on 1 July 1838. Today the university has around 20,000 students and 1,200 academic staff.

The faculty trains doctors, dentists, pharmacists, and nurses, and alongside teaching maintains a substantial research profile. It holds cooperation agreements with a number of European and non-European universities, among them the University of Bern, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the University of Salerno, the University of the Algarve, and the University of Cyprus. Serbia has held programme country status in the Erasmus programme since 2019, which makes exchange semesters within Europe practically possible.

What characterises the location: anatomy is taught partly on plastinated specimens, the faculty has its own laboratories for practical courses, and the cohorts in the English-language programme are small. Seventy-eight places in human medicine is a manageable cohort. In pharmacy there are 24.

Which subjects are available in English, and which are not?

Human medicine and pharmacy can be studied in English in Kragujevac. Dentistry, psychology, and veterinary medicine are not offered there in English. Anyone looking for one of those subjects needs a different location.

Within Serbia this produces a sensible division of labour. Kragujevac covers human medicine and pharmacy, while Niš adds dentistry. Which of the two locations fits your plans depends less on price than on your subject and your timetable. We clarify that in a free consultation.

How is the programme in Kragujevac structured?

Human medicine in Kragujevac is organised as an integrated programme over six years and twelve semesters, concluding with 360 ECTS. Pharmacy comprises five years and leads to the Master of Pharmacy. Both programmes are single-tier; there is no separate bachelor's stage.

Pharmacy is more strongly oriented towards later work in industry, regulatory authorities, and care provision. Alongside the classic subjects, the curriculum includes pharmacotherapy, treatment adherence in chronic conditions, biotechnological medicines, pharmacovigilance, and medical devices, plus bioethics, genetics, epidemiology, and clinical pathology.

What does Serbia's WFME recognition since May 2025 mean?

On 5 May 2025 the World Federation for Medical Education granted the Serbian accreditation agency NEAQA recognition status for ten years. For students in Serbia this is the most important development of recent years, and so far it is barely mentioned in guides written for a German-speaking audience.

The background: since 1 January 2023 the US body ECFMG has required the medical school to be accredited by an agency that is itself recognised by the WFME. Without that chain, the route to the USA stays closed. Serbia closed the chain in May 2025. Anyone who begins in Kragujevac today and graduates in the normal way can therefore in principle apply for ECFMG certification and thus for a residency post in the United States.

One caveat belongs with this: the recognition applies to the agency, not automatically to every individual faculty. What matters is that the specific programme is accredited and listed in the World Directory of Medical Schools. That is the norm at Serbian state faculties, but it should be checked before a decision, not afterwards.

Where may you work as a doctor with a degree from Kragujevac?

Serbia is not a member of the European Union. A Serbian medical degree therefore does not fall under the automatic recognition provided for in Annex V of Directive 2005/36/EC. Instead, a separate procedure applies in each destination country. The overview below shows which.

One point that often worries German applicants and need not: language examinations. Anyone who holds German citizenship or completed their schooling or vocational training in German in Germany has thereby demonstrated their language skills. The general language examination and the specialist language examination are waived entirely in that case. They apply to applicants without a German-language school or training background.

The second point worth knowing is Article 3(3) of Directive 2005/36/EC. Under it, a diploma from a third country that an EU member state has already recognised can be treated in other member states like a European diploma, provided the person has subsequently practised medicine in that member state for three years. In this way, with time and an intermediate step, a third-country degree becomes European professional access. That is not automatic and takes time, but it is a route set out in law.

On Switzerland I will put it plainly, because I live there myself: I am a Swiss-licensed dentist and know the route via an EU diploma from my own experience. For diplomas from third countries this direct route does not exist. Anyone set on Switzerland from the outset should therefore choose an EU location, or plan a later move to the EU from the start. That is uncomfortable, but it is the truth, and it belongs before the decision rather than after it.

And as a pharmacist, dentist, psychologist, or veterinarian?

The same basis applies to pharmacy as to medicine: pharmacists are a sectoral profession in the EU under Annex V of Directive 2005/36/EC, but automatic recognition applies only to degrees from member states. A Serbian pharmacy degree therefore goes through an equivalence assessment in Germany. A specialist language examination is not added for German applicants if schooling or training was completed in Germany.

Dentistry is not offered in English in Kragujevac. Anyone wanting to study dentistry in Serbia will find the English-language programme in Niš; there too, the equivalence assessment applies rather than automatic recognition. Psychology and psychotherapy are not harmonised at European level at all; in Germany, access is governed solely by the Psychotherapists Act. Veterinary medicine is not available in Kragujevac; the most affordable locations for it are in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, both within the EU and therefore with automatic recognition.

Career paths after graduation

A medical degree is an international entry ticket, and the figures show how heavily that is used. In Switzerland, around 43 per cent of practising doctors held a foreign diploma in 2025. In the United Kingdom, of 328,149 licensed doctors in the 2024 data year, 138,405 were internationally qualified, that is 42 per cent. Across the OECD, the share of foreign-trained doctors averages 19.6 per cent, and in Germany 15.0 per cent.

For the USA, the figures from the 2026 matching process are instructive: 44,344 posts against 53,373 registered applicants, with a match rate of 70.0 per cent for US citizens who studied abroad and 56.4 per cent for non-US graduates who studied abroad. Internal medicine, family medicine, and paediatrics take on the most internationally trained doctors. We have set out the individual country routes in detail in the article Career paths with a medical degree.

For Kragujevac this means, concretely: the route into the English-speaking world and into the USA has been clearly describable since May 2025. The route to Germany and Austria runs through a recognition procedure that is predictable but takes time. The route to Switzerland runs via a detour. Anyone who knows these three sentences before the first semester is making a deliberate decision.

Will Serbia really join the EU soon?

This question comes up in every consultation about Serbia, and it is a fair one, because accession would turn the recognition procedure into automatic recognition. Some information material about Serbian universities still says Serbia would conclude negotiations by the end of 2024 and join in 2025. That did not happen.

The position in August 2026: Serbia submitted its accession application on 22 December 2009, has been a candidate country since 1 March 2012, and has been negotiating since January 2014. Of 35 negotiating chapters, 22 have been opened and two provisionally closed. The Serbian government now itself names 2030 as its target, and the 2025 EU enlargement report records backsliding on democracy and the rule of law. Our assessment: anyone deciding on Kragujevac should do so on the basis of today's legal position, not on the basis of accession. If Serbia joins during your degree, that is a stroke of luck. It is not a basis for planning.

What is life in Kragujevac like?

Kragujevac is Serbia's fourth-largest city, the administrative seat of the Šumadija district, and lies on the Lepenica, surrounded by the Rudnik, Crni Vrh, and Gledić mountains. The 2011 census recorded 179,417 inhabitants. Belgrade is around 140 kilometres away.

Historically the city is more significant than its size suggests: Kragujevac was the first capital of modern Serbia, the first constitution in the Balkans was proclaimed here in 1838, and in the nineteenth century the country's first grammar school, first higher education institution, first theatre, first pharmacy, and first library were established here. The first newspaper printed in Serbia also came from here.

For students, what counts is daily life. According to the faculty, a furnished flat costs 120 to 150 euros a month and food around 150 euros. Realistically we budget 400 to 500 euros a month for everything together. The city is compact, distances are short, and the pace of life is calmer than in Belgrade. Anyone looking for a large metropolis will not be happy here. Anyone who wants to study affordably and with focus for six years will find good conditions.

Who is Kragujevac the right choice for?

Kragujevac suits you if you want to study human medicine or pharmacy in English, if a low price matters to you, and if your later goal is Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom, or North America. Pharmacy in particular stands out: 1,500 euros per semester is the lowest semester figure in our entire portfolio of locations.

Kragujevac is a less good fit if you want to study dentistry or veterinary medicine, if you are aiming for Switzerland from the outset, or if automatic EU recognition matters to you. In those cases an EU location is the more honest suggestion, and we say so even when it is more expensive.

What we can contribute from our own practice: we have been placing students in Kragujevac since 2021 and support them on the ground. The processes at the faculty, the level of supervision, and the path through the recognition procedure are therefore familiar to us first-hand and not only from documents. What nobody can promise in general terms is the individual case: recognition is always decided by the competent state authority. Whether Kragujevac fits your timetable and your career goal is something we assess together in a free consultation.