Copenhagen Business School’s MSc in Economics and Business Administration (cand.merc.) is Denmark’s flagship Master in Management — a two-year, English-taught, concentration-based degree at a triple-crown-accredited school that is free for EU/EEA students and a member of the CEMS Global Alliance.¹ ² It is one of the strongest value-for-prestige options in Northern Europe: a top-tier Nordic business school with no tuition for European students and no GMAT requirement.
It is also structured differently from most MiMs on this site, and the difference is the whole story. The cand.merc. is not one programme but a family of concentration-specific MScs, admission turns on a precise course profile rather than an essay or a test, and there are two deadlines depending on your nationality. Get those three things right and the application is very tractable. This guide lays out what CBS actually requires and how the process works. It is built from CBS’s own programme and admissions pages and our full Copenhagen Business School profile; where a detail varies by cycle, we say so rather than invent a figure.
What the cand.merc. actually is
“cand.merc.” (candidatus mercaturae) is CBS’s MSc in Economics and Business Administration — and it is delivered as a family of around a dozen concentration-based MSc programmes, from Finance & Strategic Management and Strategy, Organisation & Leadership to Finance & Investments, Supply Chain Management and General Management & Analytics.³ Entry requirements are standardised across the concentrations, but the concentration is your application choice: you apply to a specific concentration, not to a generic “cand.merc.,” and you may list up to three programme priorities per round.³ So step one is choosing the concentration that fits your background and goals — that decision shapes everything that follows.
Who is eligible — the 90-ECTS course profile
CBS is unusually explicit that no applicant has a legal right of admission, because the cand.merc. “is not the natural progression for any bachelor degree” — everyone is assessed competitively on their undergraduate background against the available places.³ Eligibility, though, hinges on a precise, published course profile you must have completed before you start. You need at least 90 ECTS, made up of:³
- 45 ECTS across six core areas — with a minimum of 5 ECTS in each: microeconomics, organisation, marketing, quantitative methods/statistics, accounting, and finance; plus
- 45 ECTS in business administration and/or economics.
In practice that means a strong, quantitative business-or-economics bachelor is effectively required — this is not an open conversion course, and a degree missing one of the six core areas (often statistics or accounting) can fail the profile even with excellent grades. Map your transcript against all six areas before anything else; that single check decides eligibility. CBS publishes no numeric GPA cut-off for the cand.merc. itself — admission is the competitive assessment against the cohort, with one exception noted below for the CEMS track.
The admission test: none
The cand.merc. **does not require the GMAT or GRE.**³ Admission rests on your undergraduate course profile and grades, not a test — which puts CBS among the European MiMs you can enter without a GMAT. The one place a test-like bar appears is alongside the degree: the selective CEMS Master in International Management track that CBS hosts runs its own selection on GPA, languages and an interview (not a GMAT) for eligible cand.merc. students.⁴ If the CEMS MIM is your goal, read our CEMS Master in International Management guide — but for the standard cand.merc., there is no test to sit.
English proficiency
You must document English. CBS’s published minimums are IELTS Academic 7.0 overall (with no band below 6.0) and Cambridge C1 Advanced at grade C with an overall 185 (or C2 Proficiency at grade C).³ For TOEFL, CBS lists 94 overall with at least 20 in each section for tests taken before 21 January 2026, and a banded 5 overall / 4.5 per section for tests taken on or after that date — reflecting the new TOEFL scoring scale, so check which scale applies to your test date.³ Holders of an English-taught CBS bachelor are exempt from extra documentation, and an upper-secondary or degree education in an English-speaking setting can also satisfy the requirement.³ Confirm the exact rule for your situation on CBS’s page.
The application file and the two deadlines
The cand.merc. file is documents-led, not essay-led. CBS asks for your passport/national ID, an official grade transcript with ECTS, your bachelor diploma or proof of enrolment, English-language documentation, and course descriptions for any non-CBS courses; a personal statement is required **only if a specific programme asks for one.**³ Notably not required for standard admission: a CV, recommendation letters, a GMAT/GRE, or an interview — those belong to the separate CEMS track, not the core cand.merc.³
Timing runs on two deadlines for the September (summer) intake, split by whether you need a residence permit:³ ⁵
- Group 2 — applicants who need a residence permit (generally non-EU/EEA): apply by 15 January (portal opens 15 December).
- Group 1 — EU/EEA and Swiss applicants: apply by 1 March (portal opens 16 January).
Both close at 23:59 CET. Map them against the rest of your list on our deadline tracker, and note the non-EU deadline is the earlier of the two — a common trip-up for international applicants.
Fees
For EU/EEA and Swiss citizens, the cand.merc. is tuition-free — Denmark levies no tuition, so the meaningful cost is Copenhagen’s (high) living expenses.³ ⁶ Non-EU/EEA students pay about DKK 60,000 per semester — roughly DKK 120,000 / €16,000 per year, or about DKK 240,000 / €32,000 over the two-year programme — plus a €150 application fee (with some exemptions).³ Even the non-EU fee is modest for a triple-crown school, and the free EU/EEA tuition makes CBS one of the best value MiM options on the continent — see our low-cost and tuition-free MiMs in Europe guide for the wider picture.
How to read your odds
CBS publishes no acceptance rate; selectivity is the competitive assessment against finite places per concentration. The honest read of what gets a competitive file admitted:
- Pass the course-profile check. The 90-ECTS / six-core-areas requirement is the real gate — confirm your transcript covers all six areas (especially statistics, accounting and finance) before you do anything else.
- Choose the right concentration. You apply to one, with up to three priorities; pick where your background is strongest, since you’re assessed against that cohort.
- Present strong undergraduate grades. With no test or essay to lean on, your transcript and grades carry the competitive assessment.
- Hit the correct deadline. Non-EU applicants must apply by mid-January, well before the EU/EEA window — diarise it early.
A strong, profile-complete business/economics bachelor, applied to the right concentration by the right deadline, is the whole game here.
Confirm before you apply
CBS keeps the live course-profile requirements, the concentration list, the exact fees and the deadlines inside its own pages and updates them each cycle — so use this guide for the structure and the strategy, and verify every hard number against the source before you submit. Weigh CBS against its peers on our best MiM in the Nordics guide, the Denmark MiM hub and the composite rankings; because CBS is triple-crown accredited, our what triple-crown accreditation means explainer covers why that matters. Still deciding on the degree itself? Start with is a MiM worth it in 2026, how to build a MiM profile and MiM vs MBA.
Sources (retrieved June 2026): Copenhagen Business School’s official MSc in Economics and Business Administration concentration pages — e.g. Finance & Strategic Management and Strategy, Organisation & Leadership (the “no legal right of admission” competitive assessment, the 90-ECTS course profile — 45 ECTS across six core areas with ≥5 ECTS each plus 45 ECTS in business administration/economics — and the English-test minimums), CBS’s application-and-admission page (the no-GMAT/GRE policy, the required documents, the concentration/up-to-three-priorities choice, the €150 application fee and the non-EU tuition), the admission deadlines page (the 15 January Group 2 / 1 March Group 1 deadlines and the September intake), and the CEMS MIM page (the GPA/languages/interview-based CEMS selection); and our own Copenhagen Business School profile. CBS sets these criteria per concentration and per cycle — confirm the current requirements on its pages. No figures or process steps are invented; where a value isn’t published (e.g. a numeric GPA cut-off or an acceptance rate), this guide says so rather than asserting one. Note: CBS’s cand.merc. does not appear in the Financial Times Masters in Management table we cite for single-degree MiMs, so we describe its standing by accreditation and CEMS membership rather than assigning an FT rank.
¹ Copenhagen Business School — programme and accreditation pages. ² CBS — CEMS Master in International Management page. ³ CBS — MSc in Economics and Business Administration programme & application pages. ⁴ CBS — CEMS MIM selection. ⁵ CBS — graduate admission deadlines. ⁶ CBS — tuition and fees for the cand.merc.