VisaStudents in Gaza should check university referral after the UK’s October deadline
The published 31 October university deadline has passed; a scholarship or visa application alone does not establish inclusion in exit support.
Official source date: 2026-07-15
Last verified against linked sources:
Edited and checked by the VisaWand editorial team
Ask the university whether it supplied your details in time
The UK’s Gaza scholarship-support policy required universities to provide eligible students’ details by 31 October 2026. Ask the university whether it supplied your details and which follow-up is required. No general extension was established.
Eligibility requires age eighteen or over, compliance with the Immigration Rules, a university-sponsored Student visa application and a verified scholarship covering tuition and living costs for a course starting by 31 December 2026. The policy does not guarantee exit from Gaza or onward travel.
Check the CAS and normal application evidence with the sponsor
The ordinary Student visa document guide requires current passport or other valid travel documentation and a Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies, known as a CAS, from the course provider. Ask the university’s visa team to check the actual CAS rather than treating a general admission letter or scholarship email as interchangeable with it.
Depending on circumstances, the guide also identifies financial evidence, an Academic Technology Approval Scheme certificate where course and nationality require one, tuberculosis test results and financial-sponsor consent if tuition and living-cost sponsorship was received within the preceding twelve months. These items are conditional; the public document list does not establish that every Palestinian applicant must supply every item. Identify which applies to the individual course and funding arrangement before commissioning tests or certificates. If identity or other records are unavailable, explain that gap to the university and the officials handling the supported case rather than inventing a replacement document.
Distinguish the older caseworker guidance from the 2026 policy
The published Home Office Gaza-process caseworker guidance is version 6.0, dated December 2025. Its scholarship section still refers to courses starting by 31 December 2025, whereas the newer scholarship policy expressly addresses 2026–27 and a December 2026 course limit. Read those dates together: the older document does not establish a new 2026 referral deadline or reopen the October cut-off.
The older student section recognises that documents may be unavailable because of emergency displacement or destruction. It permits clear colour digital supporting copies without notarisation and discusses alternative identity evidence, while retaining the applicant’s responsibility to establish identity. That is relevant public evidence about the supported process, but it should not be presented as a blanket waiver of every current Student visa requirement. Ask the handling team which arrangements apply to the 2026 case. The newer policy’s continuation does not by itself prove that every operational instruction in the older version has been updated.
Budget for the visa and observe its actual travel dates
The current Student visa overview lists £558 for an application from outside the UK. It also says a visa fee is payable for each joining dependant and that the healthcare surcharge is an additional part of the application. Confirm what the scholarship provider will pay: coverage of tuition and living costs is not, by itself, an itemised promise to meet every immigration charge.
The ordinary visa guide allows applications from abroad up to six months before the course starts. It permits arrival up to a month before courses longer than six months, or a week before shorter courses, but never before the start date printed on the visa. These are UK visa travel conditions, not an assessment that a route out of Gaza is available. A university start date should not be treated as permission to travel before the visa allows it.
Calculate the healthcare surcharge from the visa duration
The government’s separate surcharge guide lists £776 per year for students and their dependants. The total depends on the visa length, which can exceed the course length. For more than six months but less than a year, the guide charges a full year; for a visa exceeding a year but lasting no more than eighteen months, it charges a year and a half.
For illustration, that latter charging band at the published student rate is £1,164, separate from the £558 visa fee. This is a fee calculation, not a prediction of the permission a particular student will receive. Check the duration assessed in the application and who will fund the resulting payment. The reviewed material did not establish an automatic general fee waiver for every student included in the Gaza support policy.
