Document Recognition for Montenegro: School Diploma and Translations

Fee figures: catalogue of 6 October 2026.

To enrol in a Montenegrin university with a school diploma from another country, you must have that diploma recognised. The University of Montenegro states this plainly: foreign citizens enrol on the same conditions as Montenegrin citizens, but they need to have their diplomas recognised. This guide explains how the procedure works, using the Ministry's rulebook of 2025.

The law and the rulebook

Recognition is regulated by the Law on Recognition of Foreign Educational Documents and Equalisation of Qualifications (Official Gazette 57/11, 42/16 and 60/25). Under Article 16 of that law, the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation issued a rulebook on the way to submit a request, the documents needed and how to collect the decision.

Who decides

The rulebook separates two purposes:

Recognition to continue education. You submit the request directly to the school or higher education institution where you want to continue. For a university applicant, that means the university or faculty.
Recognition for employment. You submit it electronically through the Ministry's portal, eservisi.edu.me. This is not the route for applying to a university.

What to submit for continuing education

For secondary-school documents, the request has a prescribed form, and it asks for your personal data, the data on the document, the issuing school, and the place and country of issue. The documents depend on where your diploma was issued.

Diplomas from Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina:

a certified copy of the diploma, in three copies;
proof that you paid the administrative fee;
a copy of any Montenegrin school document, if you attended school in Montenegro before.

Diplomas from other countries:

a certified copy of the diploma;
a translation of the diploma certified by an authorised court interpreter, in three copies;
proof that you paid the administrative fee;
a copy of any Montenegrin school document, if you attended school in Montenegro before.

The rulebook asks for a certified copy (ovjerena kopija). It does not say whether your country's apostille or legalisation is also needed, so ask the school which form of certification it accepts. The administrative fee is set by the law on administrative fees and is not stated in the rulebook. A 2025 call for foreign applicants at the Faculty of Economics listed €50 for this, but confirm the current amount.

Conditional enrolment

Recognition can take longer than the application deadline. The University of Montenegro therefore allows this: if you have submitted the request but the procedure is not finished by the deadline, you can apply and enrol conditionally with a certificate that the procedure has started. Three points matter:

If recognition is not complete by the start of the academic year, the enrolment is treated as void.
The same happens if the request is refused, or if the recognised document does not give the right to enrol on the chosen programme.
In the 2025 call for MONTEB, the English-taught programme, students with foreign diplomas had conditional status until recognition was done.

We found no official statement of how many days the procedure takes. Start as early as you can, and ask the school for its own advice on timing.

Translations and other documents

The rulebook asks for sworn translations of documents from outside Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Universities also ask for your passport or ID, school certificates for each year and, if you did not take the Montenegrin matura, a test in two subjects. See how to get into a university in Montenegro. Some universities also ask for proof of the language of instruction.

ENIC-NARIC

Montenegro belongs to the ENIC-NARIC network, which Europass lists as the contact point for recognition of qualifications. It is useful for general questions, but for university entry the request goes to the school or university as described above.

Where to look next

Official sources

Always check current information on the official website of the university before you apply.