We list 8 undergraduate Scholarships Open to Nigerian Students in Australia, with the deadline, study level and eligibility of each one taken from the award's own terms. 2 of them are fully funded. Awards with a known closing date are listed soonest first.
Written from the 8 awards on this page — every figure below is counted from what the awards themselves state. 6 min read.
This page collects 8 undergraduate scholarships in Australia that are open to Nigerian students. Every award here is at bachelors level, every one is in Australia, and every one either names Nigeria or its region as eligible, or sets no nationality restriction at all. That is the whole point of the collection: you should not have to open an award page only to find out at the bottom that it is reserved for citizens of another country.
The list is built from three filters: level (Bachelors), country (Australia) and eligibility (Open to Nigerian Students). If you are also considering postgraduate study, the same set of Australian awards appears at other levels — 8 at Masters, 2 at PhD and 1 at Postdoctoral — but the pages below are the ones you can use with a secondary school result.
Funding is not uniform across the 8. Two are labelled fully funded and two are labelled partially funded. The remaining four do not state a funding label on the award text, so treat those as unknown until you read the individual page.
Where the awards do spell out what they cover, the pattern is:
These are the benefits the awards themselves state in writing. They are not a promise of what you will receive, and a tuition-only award still leaves you paying for flights, visa costs, accommodation and living expenses in Australia. Read the benefit wording on each award page before you build a budget around it.
All 8 awards are open to Nigerian applicants. Of those, 1 names Nigeria or the region directly in its eligibility text, and the other 7 carry no nationality restriction. No award on this page leaves eligibility unstated.
That distinction matters when you apply. An award with no nationality restriction is open to everyone, which usually means a larger applicant pool and a stronger emphasis on academic merit. An award that names Nigeria or West Africa is targeted, and the competition is narrower. Both routes are worth your time, but the second is where a Nigerian application has a structural advantage.
Australia is a realistic destination for Nigerian students. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics recorded 2,385 Nigerian students in Australia in 2024, placing Nigeria seventh among sending countries. You would be joining an established group, not arriving alone.
The requirements stated across these awards are modest in number but specific in kind:
The admission-offer requirement is the one that trips up most first-time applicants. If an award asks you to hold an offer of a place before you can be considered for the scholarship, then your university application and your scholarship application are not two separate tasks — the second depends on the first. Start the admission process early, because Australian universities issue offers on their own timelines and you cannot compress that stage by working harder on the scholarship form.
Where an award asks for a minimum degree class, that wording is aimed at applicants who already hold a tertiary qualification. For a bachelors scholarship, your entry document is your senior secondary result — WAEC, NECO, NABTEB or SSCE — and each award page quotes its own entry requirement. Read that line carefully rather than assuming your grades clear it.
Of the 8 awards, 2 carry a fixed date and 2 are still open. Six are undated on the award text, and 2 are recurring, meaning the deadline repeats on a cycle rather than falling once. The busiest months for closing dates are April and May, with one award closing in each.
The two closing soonest are:
Two deadlines are not the whole picture. The undated awards are not necessarily open indefinitely; they simply do not publish a date on the award text, which usually means the deadline is tied to your intake or to the university's own admission rounds. The Deakin Vice-Chancellor's International Scholarship, for instance, closes one month before you commence study — a moving target that depends entirely on when you start. The University of Queensland award runs August to November. Neither of those is a fixed calendar date you can diarise once and forget.
The 8 awards come from six providers. Deakin University accounts for 2. The rest appear once each: Participating Australian Institutions, Queensland University, University of Adelaide, Swinburne University of Technology and Griffith University.
Some of these are institution-wide schemes open across faculties, and some are named scholarships tied to a particular university's international strategy. The spread of subjects reflects that: Arts & Humanities, Business & Management, Energy & Environment, Engineering, Medicine & Health Sciences, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences each appear once across the collection. If your intended field is not among those, it does not mean the award excludes it — it means the award page does not name it as a priority area. Check the individual page before ruling anything out.
Awards on this list include the University of Queensland (UQ) 2027, the Deakin Vice-Chancellor's International Scholarship 2026, the Swinburne University of Technology Scholarship 2026-2027 and the Griffith University Scholarships 2027 Fully Funded.
Where the awards state a duration, they vary. One runs for 1 year, one for 1 academic year, one for 4 years, and one is described as undergraduate for 4 years and master's for 2 years. The others do not state a duration on the award text.
This is worth checking before you apply. A one-year award against a four-year degree leaves three years of fees and living costs to fund from somewhere else. A four-year award that covers tuition for the full degree is a different proposition entirely. If the duration is not stated, ask the university's international office directly rather than assuming it matches the length of your programme.
Start with the two dated awards, because they are the only ones on this page with a clock running. The Australia Awards Scholarships close 30 April and the University of Adelaide scholarships close 31 May. Both are far enough away that you have time to gather documents properly rather than rushing a courier at the last minute.
Then work through the undated awards and treat their deadlines as unknown rather than distant. For each one, confirm three things on the award page: whether it is fully or partially funded, what it actually covers, and whether it requires an admission offer before you can apply. If it does, your first task is the university application, not the scholarship form.
Finally, be honest about the funding gap. Two awards here are fully funded and two are partially funded, and four do not say. Tuition is named by 5 awards, accommodation by 2, living costs by 1. Budget for the difference yourself, in naira and in Australian dollars, before you commit to anything. A scholarship that covers tuition is a real reduction in cost — it is not a full ride, and the awards that do not state their funding terms should be read as unknown until the university tells you otherwise.
Australia remains one of the most sought-after study destinations for Nigerian students — known for its high-ranking universities, multicultural campuses, and globally recognized degrees. Yet, the cost of studying abroad often becomes a significant barrier for many deserving students.
Fortunately, numerous fully funded and partially funded scholarships are available specifically for Nigerian students, covering everything from tuition fees and living expenses to travel and health insurance. These opportunities aim to attract talented individuals and support their academic, professional, and personal growth in Australia.
In this comprehensive guide, we've curated the Top 10 Scholarships in Australia for Nigerian Students for 2026. These include generous government-funded programs like the Australia Awards Scholarships, as well as merit-based and research-focused grants offered by top institutions such as the University of Melbourne, Monash University, and the University of Sydney.
Whether you're pursuing an undergraduate degree, a Master’s, or a PhD, these scholarships can significantly reduce your financial burden — and even provide long-term pathways to career development or migration.
Let’s explore the best scholarship options that can turn your dream of studying in Australia into reality.
*UNESCO Institute for Statistics, inbound internationally mobile students from Nigeria, 2024.
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