The United Kingdom is among the world's most popular destinations for international students, regularly placing within the top four countries for hosting international students alongside the United States, Canada and Australia. Data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency indicates that students from the three countries of India, China, and Pakistan together account for just under half of all international students enrolled at higher education institutions in the UK.
In the 2024/25 academic year, there were 685,565 international students studying at UK higher education institutions, equivalent to 23.9% of all higher education students in the UK – ranging from 14.6% in Wales to 25.7% in Scotland. This represented a 6.1% decrease in international students from the previous year (2023/24: 729,850, 2022/23: 758,855 and 2021/22: 679,790).
The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) estimates that the number of international students will continue to increase with international applications to study at British universities expected to increase by 60%, from around 150,000 in 2022 to 240,000 in 2030. As of 2023, 58 current world leaders have been educated at a higher education institution in the United Kingdom, second in the world only to the United States' 65.
Classification By sending countries and regions The top 15 countries and regions sending students to the United Kingdom in 2024/25 are listed below. RankPlace of originNumber of StudentsPer cent of TotalYoY Change1146,48021.4%2143,20020.9%348,3557.1%438,0405.5%524,4353.6%623,5653.4%715,7552.3%811,8001.7%911,5301.7%109,8001.4%119,7351.4%128,8751.3%138,1051.2%147,8401.1%157,3701.1%Others170,68024.9%Total685,565100%
In January 2026, Times Higher Education reported that UK institutions have overseen a record fall in the number of international students, largely as a result of fewer postgraduate taught students. The previous three largest cohorts of international students at British universities - India, China and Nigeria - all recorded reduced enrolments, with the number of Nigerian students more than halving from 2022 to 2024. However, not all regions recorded fewer students, with the number of students from Nepal at British universities 15 times higher in 2024 compared to four years ago.
By number of international students
The mainstream universities with the highest number of international students for 2024/25 are listed below: Rank Institution EU Students Non-EU Students Total International Students 1 University College London 2,735 23,880 26,610 2 University of Hertfordshire 225 19,085 19,310 3 University of Manchester 1,055 17,460 18,515 4 University of Edinburgh 2,105 14,135 16,235 5 King's College London 2,385 13,305 15,690 6 University of Glasgow 1,210 12,670 13,880 7 Coventry University 415 12,885 13,300 8 University of East London 130 13,100 13,230 9 University of Birmingham 460 12,025 12,485 10 University of the Arts London 1,040 11,345 12,385
By proportion of international students
The mainstream universities with the highest proportion of international students for 2024/25 are listed below: Rank Institution International Students Per cent of Student Body 1 London School of Economics 8,225 63.5% 2 University of Hertfordshire 19,310 57.5% 3 University of the Arts London 12,385 54.0% 4 Imperial College London 11,905 52.9% 5 University College London 26,610 51.9% 6 University of East London 13,230 49.5% 7 University College Birmingham 3,180 47.0% 8 Roehampton University 5,560 46.6% 9 University of St Andrews 5,370 46.1% 10 Coventry University 13,300 45.1%
By number of international undergraduate applications British universities received a total of 605,495 international applications in the 2023–24 application cycle. Fifteen universities received more than 10,000 applications, accounting for over half of the total (310,735). These were:
Institution Number of international applications Percentage of applications Number of international acceptances Percentage of acceptancesUCL43,23055.2%4,59050.4%Manchester36,99040.0%3,63036.4%King's32,09046.8%2,64534.0%Edinburgh29,28043.1%2,67035.4%Imperial19,76559.9%1,52546.8%Bristol18,58029.4%1,46019.5%Leeds18,13526.7%1,75020.6%Warwick17,48038.8%1,57026.0%LSE16,53058.6%95049.0%Arts London16,00046.3%2,28539.6%Birmingham14,92525.9%1,81521.2%Southampton13,68531.5%1,11521.5%QMUL12,48029.4%89018.6%Durham11,28532.4%1,14520.5%Sheffield10,28023.7%86515.4%
Graduate route for international students
On 14 October 2019, the Home Office confirmed that graduates of the country's higher education institutions will be eligible for the two-year Graduate Route visa from summer 2021.
In July 2020, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy revealed that international students who complete a PhD from Summer 2021 can stay in the UK for 3 years after study to live and work with the Graduate Route visa, as opposed to 2 years for undergraduate and postgraduate students. The UK Home Office also confirmed that dependants of postgraduate international students with a Graduate Route post study work visa from 2021 will retain leave to remain and the right to work in the UK provided they were in the country with them during the international student's postgraduate studies.
In May 2025, the newly-elected Labour government released its immigration white paper containing its proposals to reduce migration. Measures included reducing the term of the graduate visa to 18 months, new English language requirements for dependants of students and a new levy and tougher requirements for sponsoring institutions. Proposals to limit the graduate route by the Home Office were spurred by concerns over the number of international students moving into the asylum system and the number entering low-paid work. The Migration Advisory Committee found that 60 per cent of people on a graduate visa earned less than £30,000 after 12 months on the scheme, although its investigation also concluded that there was "no evidence" of the scheme being abused and recommended that the scheme should be kept.
In February 2026, data released by the Office for National Statistics found that the re-introduction of the graduate visa significantly changed the behaviour of international students. By June 2025, 62 per cent of non-EU students and their family members who arrived within the past two years had transitioned to a new visa to stay in the UK, which was significantly up compared to the 17 per cent recorded for the period between June 2018 and June 2020. The proportion of students from EU countries who switched to a new visa was largely unchanged in the same period at about 13 per cent.
International education strategy
In 2019, the UK government's International Education Strategy set a target to recruit 600,000 international students in higher education and to increase the value of higher education exports to £35 billion by 2030.
The recruitment target was met a decade earlier - in only one year. In January 2026, the newly elected Labour government released its new International Education Strategy which set to increase education exports to £40 billion by 2030, equivalent to an extra £7 billion in four years. Unlike the 2019 strategy, this strategy did not include a target to recruit a specific number of students and instead committed to the sustainable recruitment of “high-quality international students”. The new strategy identified transnational education, where students study for a UK qualification outside of the country through a branch campus or online, as a focal point.
Economic impact of students
In the UK government's 2026 International Education Strategy paper, education exports were worth £32.3 billion in 2022 – placing it ahead of other sectors such as automotive and food and drink. As raising tuition fees for UK students or increasing direct support from the government is politically difficult, successive governments have swung between encouraging universities to recruit students from other countries to make up the shortfall in their budget from the underfunding of UK students and discouraging foreign students to reduce immigration.
London Economics, a policy and economics consultancy, has estimated one first-year cohort of international students in 2018/19 to deliver £25.9 billion net benefit to the British economy over the course of their study. They upgraded this figure to a net benefit of £37.4 billion for the 2021/22 academic year. University College London's revenue from international tuition fees alone was worth over half a billion pounds – the equivalent of a third of the annual overseas earnings of the entire UK fishing industry. This figure has grown about 56% in three years to £780 million in the 2024/25 academic year. International students were found to make the greatest impact in the cities of Glasgow, London, Sheffield, Nottingham and Newcastle.
According to data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency for the 2021/22 academic year, higher education institutions in the UK received tuition fees and contracts worth £9.99 billion from international students (£1.06 billion from EU students and £8.93 billion from non-EU students). International tuition fees made up the largest proportion of tuition fees income at the following mainstream universities with all ancient universities of Scotland and London members of the golden triangle featuring:
Rank Institution Total non-UK fees (£m) Total tuition fees income (£m) Non-UK fees as % of tuition fees income 1 University of Glasgow 290,304 380,717 76.3% 2 Imperial College London 301,355 423,195 71.2% 3 University of St Andrews 96,539 137,407 70.3% 4 University College London 543,844 778,553 69.9% 5 University of Edinburgh 341,988 496,955 68.8% 6 University of Aberdeen 61,808 89,923 68.7% 7 London School of Economics 180,270 265,772 67.8% 8 University of the Arts London 206,757 326,337 63.4% 9 University of Manchester 394,981 638,205 61.9% 10 King's College London 369,904 610,493 60.6%
A study in 2025 by Public First and the University of York found that higher education of international students contributed a gross export value of over £20 billion annually and that, due to the presence of international students, higher education was the biggest export in 26 of the UK's 650 parliamentary constituencies and one of the top three exports in 102 constituencies. The direct and additional exports supported by international students made up over a quarter of all exports from seven constituencies: East Ham (home to the University of East London, Streatham and Croydon North, Ilford South, City of Durham (home to Durham University), Edinburgh South (home to the University of Edinburgh), Manchester Rusholme (home to the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University), and Hendon (home to Middlesex University London).
Controversies and concerns Asylum claims In March 2026, Shabana Mahmood, Home Secretary of the Labour government, announced that study visas would begin to be halted for students from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan owing to the high number of students from the four countries moving into the asylum system, either during studies or after their study visas expired. Collectively, 3,880 international students from the four countries were enrolled across British universities in the 2024/25 academic year, the equivalent of 0.57% of international students in the United Kingdom (Myanmar: 2,665, Cameroon: 575, Afghanistan: 355, and Sudan: 285). Since 2021, 95% of students from Afghanistan have applied for asylum after entering the United Kingdom through a study visa, while rates for asylum claim have increased 16-fold for students from Myanmar and by more than 3-fold for students from Cameroon and Sudan.