PhD/Masters Funding for Lebanese Students Abroad (2026)

Search for PhD or Masters funding for Lebanese students abroad and most lists repeat the same handful of names, Fulbright, Chevening, Commonwealth, without checking whether any of them actually fit. Two of those three don't apply to Lebanese citizens at all, and the one that does is a master's-only grant, not a PhD one. The programs that genuinely do exist for Lebanese applicants work on narrower, more specific terms than generic scholarship roundups suggest, and at least one widely cited historical program's current status is genuinely unclear. Here's what's actually verifiable, what isn't, and where the professor-funded route fits in as the option that doesn't depend on any of it.

Fulbright Lebanon: real, current, and master's-only

The Fulbright Foreign Student Program for Lebanon is a genuine, currently running scholarship, administered by AMIDEAST on behalf of the US Department of State through the US Embassy in Beirut. The most recent cycle we found covers up to two years of non-clinical master's or academic study at a US university, with benefits including roundtrip airfare, tuition and mandatory fees, a monthly stipend, limited health coverage, and location-based allowances. Eligibility requires Lebanese citizenship or eligible permanent residency and continuous residence in Lebanon throughout the process; earlier cycles also extended eligibility to Palestinian refugees holding Lebanese-issued travel documents. US citizens and green card holders are excluded, and a completed bachelor's degree is required by the program's start date.

The detail that matters most for a doctoral applicant: this is explicitly a master's-level grant. We found no PhD-specific Fulbright track for Lebanon in current program materials, and no other named, full-scholarship program covering a complete PhD abroad for Lebanese citizens either. If your goal is a doctorate rather than a master's, Fulbright Lebanon narrows your gap year plan, not fills it, since it doesn't cover the degree you're actually trying to fund.

CNRS-L's doctoral mobility grants: a cotutelle mechanic, not a full PhD abroad

The Lebanese National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS-L) is the country's main domestic research funding body, and it runs a specific mechanism worth understanding on its own terms rather than mistaking for a standard outbound scholarship. Its doctoral grants fund a research mobility period for a student whose thesis is already registered at a Lebanese university, structured as a cotutelle or co-supervision arrangement with a partner institution abroad, not as independent funding for a PhD pursued entirely outside Lebanon from admission to defense.

The most recent concrete version of this we found is the R3 Liban programme ("Recherche. Réponses. Résilience."), run jointly by AUF Middle East and CNRS-L since 2021, succeeding earlier AUF doctoral mobility schemes. It requires a doctoral thesis as the foundation of every project, an international cooperation dimension with a named foreign partner and a cotutelle or co-supervision registration abroad, and gives priority to research connected to Lebanon's ongoing multidimensional crisis, though without restricting the discipline, covering economic, health, social, environmental, and crisis-management angles. Historical program rules describe the mobility grant itself as running for one academic year, renewable up to twice. CNRS-L's current grants page lists only four active partnerships for the 2024-2025 academic year (with ULCO, the Lebanese University, AUF, and the French Embassy), and also requires applicants to have held Lebanese citizenship for at least ten years. Check cnrs.edu.lb directly for whether a current call is open, since recent cycles have shown a mix of open and closed calls across different partner institutions.

The practical upshot: if you're already enrolled in or planning a Lebanese-based doctorate and want a funded research period abroad as part of it, this is a real, specific channel to investigate. If you're trying to fund an entire PhD at a foreign university instead, from admission straight through to graduation, this mechanism isn't built for that.

The Hariri Foundation: a historically large program with an unclear current status

The Hariri Foundation is probably the most historically significant name in Lebanese study-abroad funding, and it's worth being honest about what we could and couldn't confirm about where it stands now. A 1985 Christian Science Monitor report described the foundation sponsoring more than 6,000 students across Western Europe and North America, with nearly 2,500 of them in the United States at the time, structured as loans rather than grants, repayable once the student returned to Lebanon and began working. A later report from 1989 described the loan program as open to Christian, Shi'ite, Sunni, and Druze students alike.

More recent material we found tells a narrower story. A Lebanon-based "University Loan Program" page we located cites budget figures from 2008 to 2010 and appears dated. A 2024-2025 announcement describes the Hariri Foundation jointly awarding scholarships with Rafik Hariri University, but for study inside Lebanon, not abroad. We did not find a current, live application page for a US-focused study-abroad loan comparable to the program described in the 1980s reporting. That doesn't mean nothing remains of it, foundations with this kind of history sometimes run programs that simply aren't well indexed online, but it does mean you shouldn't plan around a specific dollar figure or application process without confirming directly with the foundation's own current site that a US or international study-abroad loan is actually still open.

Names that show up on generic lists but don't actually apply to Lebanon

Two scholarship names appear constantly on broad "scholarships for Middle Eastern students" roundups without the list checking whether Lebanon is actually eligible. Chevening restricts eligibility to citizens of specific countries named on the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office's own current list, and Lebanon isn't on it. The Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan is restricted to Commonwealth member states, and Lebanon has never been a member. If you see either name on a Lebanon- specific funding list, that's a sign the list wasn't actually built with Lebanese eligibility in mind, and it's worth treating the rest of that list with the same skepticism.

Lebanon's own universities, and where AUB and LAU graduates actually go

Lebanon's own strongest universities, the American University of Beirut and the Lebanese American University chief among them, are themselves funded for domestic study rather than acting as a pipeline of scholarships that send their own graduates abroad. A Lebanese undergraduate from either school pursuing a funded PhD abroad is, in practice, going through the same core routes as any other applicant worldwide: the professor-funded assistantship route at a foreign university, a general (not Lebanon-specific) national scholarship from the destination country, or, for study in France specifically, the broader Francophonie mobility channels AUF administers across its member countries, Lebanon included, as a Francophonie member state. None of these are Lebanon-specific advantages, they're simply the routes available to anyone applying internationally, which is itself the point: Lebanon doesn't have a uniquely generous outbound PhD scholarship ecosystem the way a handful of other countries covered on this site do.

The route that doesn't depend on any of the above

Every program covered above shares the same structural limit: a fixed annual scope set by a government budget, a bilateral agreement, or a single foundation's own current priorities, none of which is scaled to match how many qualified Lebanese applicants exist in a given field. A professor's own active research grant, funding a PhD student directly as a research or teaching assistant, doesn't carry that constraint. It depends entirely on genuine overlap between your background and that professor's current work, and on the professor actually having funded capacity right now, not on Lebanon's inclusion on any scholarship's eligible-country list. Our guide to how to email a professor for PhD funding covers that outreach once you've identified someone whose work genuinely fits yours, and our piece on getting a funded PhD without a named scholarship covers why this route works alongside, not instead of, the programs above. It's also worth running in parallel with a CNRS-L mobility application if you're already pursuing a Lebanese doctorate, the two routes don't compete with each other for the same funding pool.

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