Master in International Management (MSc)

Esade Business School placed 24th worldwide in the Financial Times Masters in Management 2025, with a weighted three-year salary of about US $117,000 and a 91% employment rate at three months — and 12th in the QS Business Masters Rankings (Management) 2026, among the very top European programmes on the QS measure.⁴ ⁵ Its Master in International Management is a 15-month, English-taught degree from one of Spain’s two leading business schools, built around an unusually international cohort.

Overview

Esade, founded in Barcelona in 1958, is — alongside IESE — one of Spain’s two globally recognised business schools, and a member of the CEMS alliance.¹ Its Master in International Management is the school’s flagship pre-experience MiM: 15 months long, taught entirely in English, and including around 10 weeks abroad.¹

No professional experience is required to apply, and the programme can be taken on its own or extended into a two-year structure with a second-year option such as the CEMS Master in International Management or a double degree.³

Curriculum & Structure

The programme is designed to teach students to “manage the paradoxes of international business,” pairing a management core with electives, an international module and the option of an internship.¹ Esade’s pedagogy leans heavily on diverse teamwork — students work in international teams across courses — which is a natural fit given the breadth of nationalities in each cohort.

Class Profile

Esade’s Master in International Management draws one of the most internationally diverse cohorts in Europe: students come from 42 nationalities across five continents, with academic backgrounds spanning economics and management, engineering, the humanities and the social sciences.⁵ The teaching language is English throughout, and the programme treats that diversity as a core part of the learning model rather than a backdrop.

Application & Deadlines

Esade publishes a nine-stage application calendar for the September 2027 intake, and the distinction it draws matters: these are staged submission deadlines inside a rolling process, not competitive rounds.⁶ Meet a stage and the Admissions Committee assesses your complete file roughly a month later; miss it and you simply fall to the next stage.

The late stages are not equivalent to the early ones, and Esade says so in its own words: *“Toward the end of May, there may be very few places left for your first program of choice, so it is worth having a second option.”*⁸ Read plainly, a July application is an application for whatever is left. No work experience is required, and you can submit the online form before your supporting documents are ready — the file is only counted as complete once Admissions has manually validated every document, so leave time for that step.⁸

One caveat worth carrying: this calendar is published for Esade’s MSc programmes as a family, the Master in International Management among them, rather than on the programme page itself. It is the school’s own timeline and the programme is explicitly in scope, but confirm it on the programme page before planning around a late stage.

Tuition & Funding

Tuition for the one-year MSc in International Management is €39,000 for the 2027–2028 cycle, plus a €150 application fee paid through Flywire.³ That is the cycle this profile’s nine staged deadlines belong to; €37,500 was the 2026–2027 figure, so the price has moved €1,500 (4%) between cycles. Esade quotes one figure for every nationality — unusually among the private schools on this site, there is no EU / non-EU split to check.³

Esade publishes the two-year routes as totals, not as second-year add-ons, which is easy to misread: €55,200 for the CEMS MIM, €60,300 for a second Esade MSc or a partner-school double degree, and €82,200 if the second year is a Global Master’s.³ Subtract the €39,000 first year and the second year effectively costs €16,200, €21,300 or €43,200 — but the figure Esade actually invoices is the total. On funding, need-based scholarships cover 50–85% of tuition, the Excellence Awards run 10–50% (the last intake averaged 26%), and neither is combinable with another Esade prize or award.³

Career Outcomes

The Financial Times 2025 ranking reports a weighted three-year salary of about US $117,000 and a 91% employment rate at three months.⁴ Esade’s own Class of 2024 data puts the average salary at approximately US $80,308 (PPP-adjusted), with 92% of graduates employed within three months and 31% working abroad.⁶ These school-reported figures are on a different basis from the FT’s weighted three-year number and are worth reading alongside each other. The school’s five named top recruiters are McKinsey, BCG, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.⁶ Placement spans consulting, financial services, technology and consumer goods, supported by Esade’s Barcelona base, its CEMS network, and a careers operation geared towards international roles.

Reputation

Esade’s standing — a top-12 QS placement and a long-established CEMS membership — puts it firmly among Europe’s leading management schools, and Barcelona’s appeal as a place to live is a genuine part of the draw. For the broader case for the degree, see our pieces on whether a MiM is worth it in 2026 and MiM versus MBA.