Medicine (Master, professional qualification Physician), taught in English

About the course

A six-year Master’s in Medicine taught entirely in English (ten semesters plus a one-year state clinical internship of 310 days), with the same curriculum as Bulgarian students. Graduates receive a Master’s degree with the professional qualification of physician.

Entry requirements for Irish students

• The university assesses the Irish Leaving Certificate individually and does not publish a fixed Irish requirement. Contact admissions to confirm. On its non-EU page the university ranks applicants by the official-language grade from the school diploma plus the Biology and Chemistry test results multiplied by three (maximum 42); we could not confirm whether the same formula applies to EU applicants.
• Entry tests in Biology and Chemistry, taken online in English. Each lasts 1 hour 30 minutes and has five sections (multiple choice, gap filling, matching, true/false, definitions and explanations).
• English: the university’s non-EU page exempts school leavers from Ireland from an English certificate if their diploma shows English at ‘Very good’; otherwise it accepts IELTS Academic 6.5, TOEFL iBT 90, PTE Academic 61 or Cambridge CAE/CPE 176. Confirm the rule for EU applicants with admissions.

Working in Ireland afterwards

Because your medical degree comes from an EU/EEA country, the Medical Council of Ireland can recognise it automatically under EU Directive 2005/36/EC, as long as it is listed in Annex V (point 5.1.1). If that listing says the degree must come with an internship or state-exam certificate from your home country, you need to have that too, and you must also show your current professional standing and meet the English-language requirements. Graduates of EU/EEA medical schools may apply to the HSE for Irish intern posts, but only if their home-country degree does not already count as complete training. In older HSE intern guides (e.g., the 2022 guide), only graduates from medical schools in Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Iceland and Slovenia could apply. Graduates from other EEA countries (and Italians holding the ‘abilitante’ degree) were told they are not eligible, because they qualify directly for General registration. Applicants who need no work permit were matched before those who do. Please check the current eligibility list in the HSE intern guide for the year you apply. We could not confirm it for the July 2027 intake because the current HSE guide pages are password-protected.

How to apply

1. Register onlineCreate an account on e-application.mu-varna.bg and pay the EUR 340 fee no later than one week before your chosen test date (2026 dates were 4 Apr, 16 May, 13 Jun, and for EU applicants only 16 Jul and 3 Sep).
2. Sit the entry testsTake the online Biology and Chemistry tests in English. The university offers a paid preparatory course (EUR 600 in 2026).
3. Send documentsSend your Leaving Certificate and other documents, legalised and translated into Bulgarian, to the Office of Admissions in Varna for NACID verification. You are only ranked once your paper file is complete.
4. Enrol and payIf admitted, enrol and pay the first-semester fee (EUR 5,000 in 2026/27) no later than two weeks after the semester starts. Confirm the enrolment steps and 2027 dates with the university.

Costs

• EUR 10,000 a year for Years 1-2 (EUR 5,000 per semester), EUR 9,100 a year for Years 3-4 and EUR 9,000 a year for Years 5-6 (2026/27 rates). The English-taught programme is a paid form of education. Fees for foreign students are set each May by decree of the Bulgarian Council of Ministers. One-off non-refundable application fee of EUR 340; retaking a test costs EUR 150 per test. Fees can be paid at once or in two equal instalments, no later than two weeks after the semester starts; 80% of the semester fee is refunded if you withdraw before the academic year begins, nothing after.

At a glance