Nepal is eligible for exactly one Government of Canada scholarship. It is called Study in Canada Scholarships, it is worth CAD 10,200 for four months or one academic term, and you are not permitted to apply for it yourself. Everything else you have been shown is either a university's own award, which is a different thing, or a programme Nepal is not on the list for.
That is the whole answer, and the rest of this page is the detail behind it, because the detail is where the money is either found or wasted.
The one Nepal is on the list for
EduCanada publishes the eligible countries for Study in Canada Scholarships and Nepal is named, alongside Bangladesh and Taiwan for Asia. The award pays CAD 10,200 for four months or one academic term at undergraduate, master's or doctoral level, or CAD 14,000 for five to six months at master's and doctoral level only.
Three things about it are almost always reported wrongly here.
It is not a degree. It funds short-term inbound mobility, which in plain terms is one term or one semester in Canada.
You cannot apply. EduCanada's own wording is that Canadian institutions submit applications and that direct applications from individuals are not accepted. So there is no form for you to fill in and nobody in Nepal can submit one on your behalf either. A Canadian college or university has to put your name forward.
You have to stay a student in Nepal while you do it. The conditions require you to be enrolled full time at a post-secondary institution in an eligible country and paying tuition to that institution at the time of application and for the full duration of your time in Canada. It is an exchange with a return built into it, not a way out.
The 2026 round closed at 11:59pm EDT on 31 March 2026. The page was last modified on 20 April 2026, so check it rather than this paragraph before you plan around a date.
The ones Nepal is not on the list for
This is the part worth reading slowly, because four programmes are quoted at Nepali students constantly and none of them is open to Nepal.
Emerging Leaders in the Americas is for Latin America and the Caribbean. The Scholarships and Educational Exchanges for Development programme, SEED-2, is for ASEAN member states, Pacific Island countries and Mongolia. The Canada-China Scholars' Exchange Programme is for China. The Organization of American States programme is for OAS member states, and Nepal is not one.
If an office shows you a list of Canadian government scholarships and those names are on it, the list is not about you. That is not necessarily dishonesty; it is usually a page copied from somewhere else. It is still your money and your year.
The doctoral exception, and its catch
There is one federal award that funds a full degree, and it is new enough that most people have not caught up with it.
The Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships programme has ended. Its final competition was the one held in autumn 2024. What replaced it is the Canada Graduate Research Scholarship – Doctoral, run jointly by CIHR, NSERC and SSHRC, worth CAD 40,000 a year for three years. Unlike Vanier, it is explicitly open to foreign citizens.
The catch is in the eligibility wording. A foreign citizen must be enrolled in a doctoral programme at an eligible Canadian institution at the time of application. So it cannot pay for the move. You get to Canada first, by some other means, and then you compete for it. There is also a ceiling on how far in you can be: no more than 36 months of full-time equivalent doctoral study by 31 December of the year you apply.
For a Nepali student that makes it a second-year plan, not a first-year one. It is still worth knowing, because CAD 120,000 over three years is more than every other award on this page put together.
Where the money for a degree actually comes from
Not from Ottawa. From the institution.
Canadian universities and colleges run their own entrance awards, and unlike the federal programmes they can and do pay toward a degree. Those are decided by the admissions office you are already applying to, they are usually applied for inside the same application, and the deadlines are the university's own. That is the door to push on, and it is unglamorous enough that nobody advertises it.
Two habits help more than any list of scholarship names. Apply early, because most entrance awards are allocated in the first admissions rounds and are gone before the last one. And ask the university directly, in writing, which awards your programme is considered for and whether the application is automatic.
What a scholarship does not do
It does not remove the money you have to show.
A single applicant applying for a study permit on or after 1 September 2026 must show CAD 23,448 for living expenses for a year, outside Quebec, and that figure sits on top of tuition and travel. A scholarship can count toward proof of funds, but IRCC is specific about the limit: if your scholarship only covers tuition, you must provide other documents proving you have enough for living expenses and transportation.
So a CAD 10,200 exchange award does not make the bank balance go away. In the most common case it reduces one column of a budget and leaves the requirement that actually gets applications refused exactly where it was.
What we would tell you across the desk
If your plan depends on winning a Canadian government scholarship, you do not have a plan yet. One award is open to Nepal, it is a term abroad, and a Canadian institution has to nominate you for it. The federal doctoral award is real and generous and cannot be won from Kathmandu.
Build the budget on what you can show, treat every award as something that might reduce it later, and put the effort into the university's own admissions deadlines, where the decisions about money are genuinely being made.