🇮🇸 7 universities · 19,528 students · 578 programmes
Iceland's seven universities — one student in eight holds a foreign citizenship.
How many study at each university, how that has changed since 2011, and every programme with the number of students on it in 2025/26 — from Statistics Iceland.
Students, 2025/26
19,528
Foreign citizens
12.3%
2,393 students
At the four public universities
71.6%
Studying by distance
32.5%
What it costs, and what isn't here
Iceland's four public universities charge no tuition, but may charge an annual registration fee of up to ISK 100,000 per student under the Public Higher Education Institutions Act (No. 85/2008, art. 24); the University of Iceland's rules set it at ISK 100,000. That is not the whole picture for students from outside the EEA: an amendment in force since 1 July 2026 allows public universities to charge them tuition, and the amounts had not been set when we checked — ask the university. The three private universities set their own tuition, which is not published as data.
No entry requirements, application numbers or graduate outcomes are published per university, so this is not a matcher.
The seven universities
Counts are students registered in the autumn; each student is counted once, even if studying at more than one school. A further 93 tertiary students are at music schools and in the University of Iceland's continuing education.
| University | Students | Programmes | By distance | Doctoral |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| University of IcelandHáskóli Íslands · Public · Reykjavík | 10,655 | 369 | 21.2% | 610 |
| Reykjavik UniversityHáskólinn í Reykjavík · Private · Reykjavík | 3,193 | 73 | — | 88 |
| University of AkureyriHáskólinn á Akureyri · Public · Akureyri | 2,964 | 56 | 75.7% | 9 |
| Bifröst UniversityHáskólinn á Bifröst · Private · Bifröst | 1,647 | 31 | 100.0% | — |
| Iceland University of the ArtsListaháskóli Íslands · Private · Reykjavík | 671 | 28 | — | 5 |
| Agricultural University of IcelandLandbúnaðarháskóli Íslands · Public · Hvanneyri | 204 | 13 | 48.5% | 10 |
| Hólar UniversityHáskólinn á Hólum · Public · Hólar | 101 | 8 | 61.4% | — |
Students in Iceland, 2011–2025
Where foreign students come from
Citizenship of students in 2025/26, for the whole country — not published per university.
- United States217
- Germany193
- Philippines177
- Poland141
- Nigeria123
- Ghana115
- Pakistan113
- Italy92
- China83
- Denmark81
“Legal residence abroad” is where a student is registered as living, not their citizenship — it is much smaller than the number of foreign citizens, which Statistics Iceland publishes only for the country as a whole.
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Source: Statistics Iceland (Hagstofa Íslands), tables SKO00003, SKO00004 and SKO04106a, under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Sums, shares and the selection of years are CollegeMatcher's own calculations, not Statistics Iceland's. English names, public/private status, seats and websites added by CollegeMatcher. Programme names are Statistics Iceland's, in Icelandic.