MULTICOM Erasmus Mundus 2027 — Fully Funded Master's

MULTICOM is the first joint master's degree built around the data science of human multimodal communication: how people actually communicate using speech, gesture, gaze, facial expression and posture, and how that behaviour can be recorded, annotated and modelled at scale. It is an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master co-awarded by the universities of Murcia in Spain, Lund in Sweden and FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany, and the consortium is recruiting its next intake now.

The 2027 round opened on 1 November 2026 and closes on 12 February 2027. Between ten and fifteen Erasmus Mundus scholarships are planned for the edition, which makes this one of the better-funded routes into a field that sits between linguistics, cognitive science and machine learning.

What it covers

A MULTICOM scholarship pays the full participation costs, insurance and administrative charges, and adds a living allowance of EUR 1,400 per month for up to 24 months. The consortium also ranks applicants for partial funding, so a weaker file can still receive something. Without a scholarship the published fee estimate is around EUR 17,000 per year, or EUR 34,000 for the two years, and the programme itself advises applicants to budget at least EUR 35,000 of personal costs across the degree for travel, visas, residence permits, accommodation and health insurance. The gap between those two numbers is why the scholarship round matters so much.

The degree is genuinely mobile rather than a single campus with an exchange semester. Term one is in Murcia, term two in Lund, term three in Erlangen, and term four is a thesis that can be based at any of the three universities or with an associated partner elsewhere. A professional internship of at least six weeks sits between the second and third terms.

Who can apply

MULTICOM is explicitly built for people with a language or linguistics background who want to add technical skills, not for computer science graduates who want a humanities top-up. The consortium says so directly, and it shows in the entry requirements.

You need a bachelor's degree of at least 180 ECTS or a master's of at least 60 ECTS from an institution listed in the German anabin database. You need at least 30 ECTS of undergraduate training in language, communication and thought — general and theoretical linguistics, philosophy of language, psycholinguistics, language acquisition, sociolinguistics, corpus and computational linguistics, cognitive science and similar — or a master's in those areas, or at least three years of professional work where language or multimodal communication was central. You also need basic quantitative skills, normally shown by an introductory statistics course worth about 5 ECTS or equivalent professional data work. English is set high: C1 for speaking and writing and C2 for comprehension, which in practice means IELTS 7.5 or TOEFL iBT 105, unless you hold a degree taught in English in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand or Singapore, or five years of full-time work conducted entirely in English.

There is no age limit and no work-experience requirement. Anyone who has already held an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master scholarship cannot receive a second one. One structural rule matters more than applicants expect: no more than six candidates of the same nationality are admitted in any edition, and no more than ten per cent of scholarships may go to one nationality across the 2026–2030 period. Applying early in the window does not change that quota, but it does mean your file is complete if documents need re-uploading.

Run this eligibility self-check before starting the form.

- Do I hold at least 30 ECTS in linguistics, language or communication, or three years of directly relevant professional work? - Can I show a statistics or quantitative methods course, or documented data work in a job? - Is my degree from a university listed in anabin? If not, can I document equivalence? - Can I reach IELTS 7.5 or TOEFL 105, or claim one of the listed exemptions? - Am I comfortable moving country three times in two years? - Have I held an Erasmus Mundus scholarship before?

Deadline and how to apply

The application period runs from 1 November 2026 to 12 February 2027 through the consortium's own portal. Every valid application is automatically considered for Erasmus Mundus funding; there is no separate scholarship form, though there is a separate financial-aid route that does not affect how your application is evaluated.

Prepare the following before you open the portal.

- Degree certificate, or proof that the degree will be completed by registration - Full transcript of records with all grades - English language certificate, or evidence for an exemption route - CV of no more than two pages - A recorded motivation video of no more than 90 seconds - A one-page statement if you are relying on professional experience rather than coursework - Passport or identity document

The 90-second video is the item most applicants underestimate. It is short enough that a scripted, generic answer is obvious within ten seconds. Speak about one concrete problem in multimodal communication you want to work on and why your background prepares you for it.

Tips to win

Count your ECTS before anything else. Fewer than 30 in the relevant areas is the most common reason a file fails the first screen, and no motivation letter fixes it. If you are close but short, the professional-experience route is legitimate and the one-page statement is where you make it.

Then connect your quantitative evidence to the programme's actual content. A candidate who has annotated a corpus, cleaned gaze data or run a small classifier is far stronger than one who lists a statistics course and nothing else. The selection committee is looking for people who can survive term three in Erlangen, which is the machine-learning term.

Common mistakes

Writing a video about your admiration for Europe rather than about the research. Listing coursework in linguistics without showing the credit total. Assuming a MOOC certificate counts as the statistics requirement without checking. Submitting an IELTS One Skill Retake that does not meet the combined minimum. And treating the thesis term as a holiday: the consortium expects a supervisor arrangement by the end of term three.

Read the official admissions page for the current document list and English test table.

https://multicom-em.eu/?p=6285

Our other Erasmus Mundus guides show how the funding rules compare across consortia.

https://www.oeacnetwork.com/index.php?page=post&id=154

https://www.oeacnetwork.com/index.php?page=post&id=18

https://www.oeacnetwork.com/index.php?page=post&id=123

Stuck on any part of this application? An OEAC advisor can check your eligibility, review your documents and help you plan the timeline before the deadline — write to info@oeacnetwork.af and quote the name of this scholarship.

Last updated: 10 November 2026