We list 10 partially Funded Undergraduate Scholarships for Nigerian Students in the United Kingdom, with the deadline, study level and eligibility of each one taken from the award's own terms. 7 state eligibility that includes Nigerian applicants. Awards with a known closing date are listed soonest first.
Written from the 10 awards on this page — every figure below is counted from what the awards themselves state. 5 min read.
This page collects 10 partially funded undergraduate scholarships in the United Kingdom open to Nigerian students. Every award here is for a bachelor's degree, and every one is partial rather than full: the award covers part of your costs, and you or your family meet the rest. That distinction matters before you start, because a partial scholarship changes the size of the bill, not the fact of it.
Seven of the ten are also listed at master's level, so a few providers appear on both this page and our postgraduate pages. If you are still deciding between a first degree and a master's, read the entry requirements on each award page carefully — the level listed tells you which intake the award is for.
Seven of the ten awards are open to Nigerian applicants. Of those seven, one names Nigeria or the wider region in its own eligibility text, and six state no nationality restriction at all. For the remaining three, the award page does not state nationality eligibility either way, so you would need to confirm directly with the provider before spending money on an application.
That split is worth reading twice. An award that names no nationality restriction is not the same as an award that names Nigeria. Both can work in your favour, but only one of them tells you the selection committee is actively thinking about West African applicants. Where the brief shows a named region, treat it as the stronger signal.
Partial funding in the UK usually means a contribution towards tuition, sometimes a fixed sum, sometimes a percentage, sometimes a set of benefits such as accommodation priority or a equipment grant. Four of the ten awards name tuition in their own text. One names research or training costs. The other awards do not spell out what the money covers on the page itself, so you should not assume.
None of the ten carries a stated cash value in this listing. That is not a gap in the page; it is how many UK partial awards are written. The value is often set by the department, varies by course, or is confirmed only after you hold an offer. Plan your funding on the assumption that you will carry the larger share, and treat the award as reducing that share.
The requirements across these ten awards are lighter than a full scholarship round, but they are not nothing. One award asks for an English test score such as IELTS or TOEFL. One asks for a minimum degree class. One asks for work experience. One asks you to hold an admission offer before you apply.
Those four requirements sit on different awards, not on all of them, so check the individual page rather than assuming a single standard. For a Nigerian applicant the admission-offer requirement is usually the one that sets the pace: you cannot apply for the scholarship until the university has already assessed your WAEC or NECO results and made you an offer. Start the admission application first, then work backwards to the scholarship deadline.
Where an English test is named, check whether your secondary schooling qualifies you for a waiver. Many UK universities accept WAEC or NECO English at a stated grade in place of IELTS, but the rule is set by each university and each award page quotes its own entry requirement. Do not assume a waiver applies because a friend got one at a different institution.
Six providers account for the ten awards. The named ones are the University of Kent, Kingston University, the University of Exeter, Cardiff Metropolitan University, University College London and the University of Brighton.
Only one award on the page states a number of awards: the Cardiff Metropolitan sports scholarship names 32. The rest do not publish a count here, which is common for partial funding tied to a department or a sport.
The awards cluster around a few subject areas. Business and management appears twice, and medicine and health sciences appears twice. Arts and humanities, economics and finance, and engineering each appear once. The remaining awards are not tied to a single field in this listing.
If your intended course is not in that short list, the page is not closed to you. Sports scholarships, for instance, sit alongside any degree programme, and general university awards often apply across faculties. Read the individual award page to see whether the funding is restricted to a department or open across the institution.
Three of the ten awards carry a specific closing date, three are still open, and seven are undated in this listing. Three run on a recurring cycle. The busiest months are May, June and July, one award each.
The three closing soonest are the ones to diarise first. Kingston closes 10 May, Cardiff Metropolitan closes 30 June, and the UCL Denys Holland Scholarship closes 7 July. All three are in the United Kingdom and all three are linked above.
Beyond those, the pattern is uneven. Kent's undergraduate awards sit in March. Exeter runs rounds, with the undergraduate round closing 22 April 2026. Brighton's sports scholarships take applications from January to July. Because seven awards carry no date on this page, treat the absence of a deadline as a prompt to check the provider's own page rather than as an open window.
Start with the three dated awards, because they give you a fixed point to work towards. Read each one in full, note what it asks for, and check whether you already meet it or need to act. If an award requires an admission offer first, the university application is your real deadline, not the scholarship date.
Then work through the undated awards and confirm the current cycle directly with the provider. Document costs add up quickly — transcripts, courier fees and test fees are paid before any award decision is made — so apply where you are a genuine fit rather than everywhere at once.
For context on the size of the Nigerian presence in UK higher education, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics recorded 71,756 Nigerian students in the United Kingdom in 2023, the largest group from any single country. You are applying into an established pipeline, not an unusual one. The awards on this page are partial, the competition is real, and the paperwork starts with your secondary school results.
Studying in the UK is a dream for many international students, offering world-class education, global exposure, and prestigious degrees. But the cost can be a major barrier. Thankfully, numerous scholarships are available specifically for Nigerian students that can fund tuition, living expenses, and even travel. In this post, we’ll explore the Top UK scholarships for international students in 2025–2026, including eligibility, benefits, deadlines, and how to apply.
*UNESCO Institute for Statistics, inbound internationally mobile students from Nigeria, 2023.
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