You will need a residence permit if you are coming to Finland to study for a period longer than three months and you are not a citizen of the EU, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Norway or Iceland.
You should apply for a residence permit as soon as you receive a letter of acceptance from a Finnish educational institute. To enable you to receive a quicker decision, we recommend that you submit your application online. At best, handling of the application will take no more than a few days.
Check the status of your application online
After you have submitted your application through e-services, you can check its status online.
You can follow the progress of student application processing on the Finnish Immigration Service website, where the status of student application processing queues is updated on a weekly basis. Information on applications that cannot be processed prior to the commencement of studies, on exceptional situations and on any changes to processing times are published on our website.
Applications are processed in the order they arrive, and emailing or calling the Finnish Immigration Service will not speed up the processing of your application. The Finnish Immigration Service processes all applications for students’ residence permits as high-priority applications.
The e-services offered by the Finnish Immigration Services and the police for residence permits will be revised in spring 2015. The revision aims to make it easier and simpler to submit applications for residence permits, citizenships and EU registrations of right of residence. Customers of the agency have also contributed to the planning of the new service.
Your application will only be processed after you have verified your identity at a Finnish embassy or consulate
After you have completed your application, you must visit a Finnish embassy or consulate to verify your identity and present original copies of the attachments required for your application. Your application will only be processed after you have given your fingerprints for the biometric residence permit card.
If you are granted a residence permit, your residence permit card will arrive at the embassy in 1 to 2 weeks on average. It may take slightly longer for the card to arrive at some embassies.
Checklist for students applying for a residence permit
