MBBS in University of Udine Faculty of Medicine and Surgery

The University and What Makes It Different

There's a genuinely unusual origin story here worth telling properly. The University of Udine wasn't handed down by a royal decree or a papal bull the way a lot of older Italian universities were. It exists because ordinary people asked for it. After the devastating 1976 Friuli earthquake, locals collected 125,000 signatures, well past the roughly 50,000 needed, petitioning for a university as part of the region's rebuilding effort. That petition led directly to a 1977 financing law and a 1978 presidential decree, and teaching actually began on 1 November 1978.

Medicine wasn't part of that founding wave, though. The first two faculties were Foreign Languages and Literature and Engineering. Exactly when medicine arrived as its own faculty isn't something that turned up in any official source checked for this page, so that specific date is genuinely an open question rather than something worth guessing at.

Like several other Italian universities, the old "Facoltà" language here is outdated. Since 2017 the medical side of the university has been organised as the Dipartimento di Medicina, or DMED, formed by merging two earlier medical departments. It briefly went by a different name, Dipartimento di Area Medica, until the very end of 2023, when it was renamed to DMED.

The degree itself is Italy's standard Laurea Magistrale a Ciclo Unico in Medicina e Chirurgia, explicitly labelled "abilitante," meaning qualifying, in the university's own course documentation. There's no English-taught or IMAT track here that turned up in any research for this page, so this is a straightforwardly Italian-medium programme.

Udine's Layout and the Story Behind Its Campus

The physical layout is one of the more distinctive things about studying medicine in Udine. Teaching splits across what the university calls the Polo Medico, three separate sites. Sede Kolbe, a former Capuchin friary complete with a deconsecrated church now used as a main lecture hall, handles the first two years. Sede Tullio, built into or right alongside the Santa Maria della Misericordia hospital complex, takes over for the clinical years from three through six. A third site, Age Labs, is dedicated to translational research rather than day-to-day teaching.

That repurposed-friary detail is worth sitting with for a second. It's not every medical school where your first-year lectures happen inside a former religious building. It gives the early years of the programme a genuinely distinctive physical character compared with the more standard purpose-built science campuses you'd find elsewhere on this list.

Udine the city sits in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, in Italy's northeast, and carries some of that same regional character as Trieste and Trento, further from the tourist-heavy centre of the country and with its own distinct food and cultural traditions. It's a smaller, calmer setting than Italy's big southern or central cities.

Rent has been climbing here too, worth knowing before you commit. Third-party figures put a one-bedroom flat in the city centre at around 630 euros a month, a bit less outside the centre, with regional press citing roughly a nine percent year-on-year rent increase and student rooms running near 300 euros. ARDIS, the regional right-to-study body, runs about 600 subsidised beds including a dedicated student house, which is worth applying for early given regional bodies like this tend to fill up fast.

Course Structure, Cost, and Practical Details

Structurally, this is the usual six years and 360 credits. Since Italy's 2020 reform, the degree itself carries qualifying status, and the practical requirement that replaced the old State Exam is a Tirocinio Pratico-Valutativo built into the final stretch of study, not a separate post-graduation internship, worth 15 credits split across medical, surgical, and general-medicine placements.

Admission has been running through the new national semestre filtro system for two years running now, both the 2025/26 and 2026/27 cycles, which puts Udine slightly ahead of some other Italian universities in terms of actual lived experience with the reform. The structure is the familiar one: open enrolment into the first semester, no upfront test, then three common national exams in chemistry and biochemistry, physics, and biology that determine your national ranking for continuing into semester two. A flat 250-euro enrolment fee applies to the semestre filtro itself.

On money, Udine has actually published some genuinely useful, recent figures. The no-tax exemption threshold for the 2025/26 year sits at an ISEE of 30,000 euros, up from 28,000 the year before, and there's a reduced-fee band extending to 35,000 that knocks roughly 280 euros off the standard rate. Support continues, on a sliding basis, up to an ISEE of 60,000 through the regional ARDIS scheme. What isn't confirmed is whether medicine specifically follows these general bands exactly, so treat them as the best available reference point rather than a guaranteed figure for this particular degree.

Between the earthquake-recovery origin story, the repurposed-friary campus, and genuinely current fee data, Udine offers something a little different from the more predictable Italian medical school pitch, worth a proper look if the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region and its particular character appeal to you.

Quick Overview

Fee Structure

Why Udine's Medical Programme Deserves a Harder Look Than You've Given It

A Campus Born From a Community Petition
After the 1976 Friuli earthquake, locals collected around 125,000 signatures petitioning for a university as part of the rebuilding, far more than the roughly 50,000 required.

A Medical Campus Inside Repurposed Historic Buildings

The Polo Medico spans three sites: Sede Kolbe, a former Capuchin friary used as a lecture hall, for early years, and Sede Tullio, embedded within the Santa Maria della Misericordia hospital, for clinical years.

Honest Assessment

There's no English-taught track, and the exact year medicine was added isn't publicly confirmed. What's clear is a distinctive civic origin story and a medical campus genuinely woven into the city.