We list 16 fully Funded Arts & Humanities Scholarships for Nigerian Students, with the deadline, study level and eligibility of each one taken from the award's own terms. Most are held in China (4), the United States (3) and Australia (2). 10 state eligibility that includes Nigerian applicants. Awards with a known closing date are listed soonest first.
These awards do not restrict the field of study, so arts & humanities applicants can apply too.
Written from the 16 awards on this page — every figure below is counted from what the awards themselves state. 6 min read.
This page collects 16 fully funded scholarships in arts and humanities that are open to Nigerian students. Every award here is labelled fully funded by the body offering it, so you are not filtering through partial tuition waivers or stipend-only awards. The list covers ten countries and five study levels, from Bachelors through to a single Postdoctoral fellowship.
Arts and humanities is the largest field on this page by a clear margin. The same awards also sit under other subject headings: 10 of them are listed under Engineering, 9 under Medicine and Health Sciences, and 8 under Business and Management. That overlap matters. Several of these scholarships are university-wide funding packages, so an arts student and an engineering student may be competing for the same pot of money through different departments.
Fully funded means different things at different institutions, and the brief shows exactly how the 16 awards describe their own benefits. Seven state that tuition is covered. Seven state that living costs are covered. Five name accommodation, four name travel, four name research or training costs, and three name health insurance.
Read those numbers carefully before you shortlist. An award that names tuition and living costs but says nothing about flights leaves you paying for a Lagos to London or Abuja to Beijing ticket yourself, and that is a real cost in naira. Where an award names health insurance, check whether it also covers dependants, because many do not.
None of the 16 awards leave their funding status unstated. Every one of them is on this page precisely because it calls itself fully funded.
Of the 16 awards, 10 are open to Nigerian applicants. The breakdown is worth understanding properly, because it is often misread.
In other words, Nigerian eligibility on this page comes from awards that are open to international students generally, not from a scheme designed for Nigeria or for Africa. That is neither good nor bad on its own, but it changes how you apply. You are one of a large international pool, and your statement has to explain your Nigerian context rather than assume the reader already knows it.
For the remaining 6 awards, the brief does not state eligibility on the award itself. That does not mean Nigerians are excluded. It means the information is not on the page, and you will need to check the awarding body's own eligibility page before you spend money on a transcript or a courier.
The list is weighted towards postgraduate study.
Those figures add up to more than 16 because a single scholarship can fund more than one level. Stanford University Scholarships, for example, is listed for both Masters and PhD. The Sir James McNeill Postgraduate Research Scholarship at Monash University is listed for Master's and PhD as well.
If you are finishing a B.Sc or HND and looking for a taught Masters abroad, the 12 Masters awards are your realistic starting point. If you already hold an M.Sc and want to move into research, the 9 PhD awards are where your proposal will be read closely. The 5 Bachelors awards are relevant if you are applying straight from WAEC or NECO, though competition at that level tends to be heaviest.
China appears most often, with 4 awards. The United States follows with 3, then Australia with 2. Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Qatar, Romania, Switzerland and the United Kingdom each have 1.
Named providers on the page include Stanford University, Peking University, the University of Tasmania, and a Canadian institution with a quota to host Vanier scholars. Shanghai universities and Beijing universities also appear as grouped listings, which means you should open the individual entries to see which institution is actually awarding the funding.
That spread is useful if you are weighing more than prestige. Cost of living, visa processing times and whether you can work part-time during study vary enormously across these ten countries, and none of that is captured in a funding label.
This is where most Nigerian applicants lose time. The brief records what each award states as a requirement.
Nine awards asking for recommendation letters is the single most common requirement on this page. Approach your referees early. A former lecturer who has moved institutions, or who is handling a strike-affected semester, needs weeks rather than days, and a generic letter costs you.
Five awards state an English test requirement. That means the other awards on this page do not state one, which is not the same as waiving it. Some universities accept a degree taught in English as evidence of proficiency. Confirm this in writing with the admissions office before you book a test date, because an IELTS or TOEFL fee is a significant outlay.
Five awards ask for a research proposal. If you are targeting those, start drafting before you start filling forms. A proposal written in a week reads like it was written in a week.
Three awards state a minimum degree class. Nigerian transcripts use the classification system, so a Second Class Upper or First Class is the usual threshold. Two awards require you to hold an admission offer before you can be considered for funding, which reverses the order most people work in. For those, the university application comes first and the scholarship application second.
Nine of the 16 awards carry a specific date, and all nine are still open at the time of writing. Seven are undated. Nine are recurring, meaning the cycle returns each year even if the current window has closed.
The busiest month is October, with 4 deadlines, followed by December and March with 2 each. If you are planning a cycle, October is the month to prepare for.
The five closing soonest are:
One further entry with a date is the Doha Institute For Graduate Studies Scholarship 2026-2027 (Fully Funded) in Qatar, which closes 15 January.
Start with the five awards above if their deadlines are still ahead of you. Open each entry, read the eligibility section in full, and note whether the award requires an admission offer before funding. That single detail decides whether you apply to the university first or submit both together.
Then work backwards from the deadline. Recommendation letters take the longest to secure, so request them before anything else. If an English test is required, book it early enough that the result reaches the university before the closing date. Order transcripts and plan for courier timelines, since these are costs you carry yourself and delays are common.
For the 10 awards where no nationality restriction is stated, treat your personal statement as the place to explain your Nigerian academic background on its own terms. For the 6 where eligibility is not stated on the award, contact the provider directly before committing money to documents.
The list is small enough to work through properly. Sixteen awards, ten of them open to you, and nine with dates still ahead. Read each one rather than skimming the titles, because the funding label is the same across all 16 but what each award actually pays for is not.
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