📖 About the university

The University of Macau (UM) is the leading public research university of the Macau Special Administrative Region, founded in 1981 as the University of East Asia and reorganised under its present name in 1991 when it became a public institution. Since 2013 it has occupied a spacious new campus on Hengqin Island, physically located beside Zhuhai but administered under Macau law and connected to the peninsula by an undersea tunnel, making it far larger than the territory's older sites. UM adopts English as its main teaching medium and follows a distinctive residential college system alongside its faculties of Arts and Humanities, Business Administration, Education, Health Sciences, Law, Science and Technology, and Social Sciences. Ranked 285th in the QS World University Rankings 2026, it is especially strong in business, computer and information science, microelectronics, Chinese-Portuguese bilingual studies, and Chinese medicine, and it hosts state key laboratories in microelectronics and Chinese medical sciences. Its bilingual and multicultural environment reflects Macau's unique Sino-Portuguese heritage and its role as a bridge between China and the Portuguese-speaking world. With generous scholarships and a growing international enrolment, UM suits students seeking an English-medium education with strong research facilities in a compact, safe city.

🎯 Fields of study

🏛️ Colleges & schools

🌆 About Macau

Macau is a Special Administrative Region on the western side of the Pearl River estuary, a former Portuguese enclave that returned to China in 1999 and is today the only place in the country where casino gaming is legal. Compact and densely populated, it is famous for a UNESCO-listed historic centre where baroque churches, cobbled squares, and Chinese temples stand side by side, most iconically the Ruins of St. Paul's. The territory has a humid subtropical climate with hot, humid summers and mild winters, and Cantonese, Portuguese, and increasingly English and Mandarin are all in use. Its economy, built on tourism and the integrated resorts of the Cotai Strip, gives it one of the highest per-capita incomes in the world and funds generous public services and student scholarships. Macau is linked to Hong Kong and Zhuhai by the record-breaking Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge and has its own international airport on Taipa island. For an international student, Macau offers a uniquely East-meets-West Sino-Portuguese culture, small class sizes, strong tourism and hospitality programmes, and a safe, walkable environment.

💰 Fees & costs

💡 General estimates for international students in China; they vary by major and university, and the official figure is always on the university website.

🛂 Visa requirements by nationality

These are the general steps for the China student visa (X1/X2); details vary by the Chinese embassy in your country.