Graduate funding in Canada runs on a small number of very large federal programs, the Tri-Agency awards administered by CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC (now harmonized into the Canada Research Training Awards Suite, CRTAS), plus a long tail of internal university awards, private foundation fellowships, and international exchange supports. A fully-funded PhD student at a top Canadian university typically has four or five overlapping sources: a Canada Graduate Research Scholarship, a program-internal supplement, a departmental teaching or research assistantship, and one or two external fellowships.
Who this page is for
You’re applying to, or enrolled in, a Canadian graduate program: master’s or doctoral, thesis-based or course-based, research-intensive or professional. You want to know which federal, provincial, and institutional awards you’re eligible for, and how they stack.
The Tri-Agency framework (2025 restructure)
The three federal research councils fund the majority of research-intensive graduate students in Canada. As of 2025, CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC have harmonized their talent programs under the Canada Research Training Awards Suite (CRTAS). The legacy CGS-M, CGS-D, NSERC PGS-D, SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, and Vanier CGS programs have been replaced by a unified two-tier scholarship:
- Canada Graduate Research Scholarship. Master’s (CGRS-M). $27,000 for one year, non-renewable. Available across all three agencies’ disciplinary lanes, health (CIHR), STEM (NSERC), social sciences + humanities (SSHRC). Up to ~3,300 awards administered annually.
- Canada Graduate Research Scholarship. Doctoral (CGRS-D). $40,000 per year for up to three years. Replaces the former CGS-D, PGS-D, and SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship (as well as the former Vanier $50,000 program). Single harmonized competition across all three agencies starting the 2025 to 2026 cycle.
Each agency still owns its own disciplinary scope:
- CIHR: health sciences, clinical research, public health, health policy.
- NSERC: STEM (math, physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, engineering, environmental science). Alexander Graham Bell CGS branding has been retired into the unified CGRS.
- SSHRC: social sciences, humanities, arts-based research. Business PhD students may be eligible depending on program.
Apply at your host institution, not directly to the agencies. Deadlines are early, usually September to November for awards starting the following September. Check your graduate school’s internal deadline, which is always earlier than the federal submission deadline.
Last verified: 2026-04-30 against NSERC’s “Launch of the new Harmonized Tri-agency Scholarship and Fellowship programs” announcement and the agency program pages.
Beyond Tri-Agency
Once you’re inside a graduate program, a second layer of funding opens:
- Internal department awards. Every graduate department has them, usually $2,000 to $10,000, sometimes renewable, often auto-assessed. Your program coordinator or graduate chair is the authority on which ones apply to you.
- Teaching and Research Assistantships (TAs and RAs). Typically tied to a per-semester contract, hourly wage + tuition-fee coverage at many universities. Not a “scholarship” in the competitive sense but the single largest funding stream for most graduate students.
- Named private fellowships. Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Doctoral Scholarship ($60,000 per year for up to four years for SSH doctoral students with a policy focus). Killam Doctoral Scholarships (specific universities). Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ) if you’re at a Québec institution.
- International exchange and co-tutelle. DAAD (Germany), Chevening (UK), Mitacs Globalink Research Award (Mitacs-administered inbound + outbound). For PhD students: co-tutelle arrangements with a partner university abroad can draw funding from both sides.
- Indigenous-stream awards. CIHR and NSERC both run Indigenous-designated streams with separate (often less competitive) application tracks. Indspire administers additional graduate-level scholarships.
Pre-application checklist
Before the Tri-Agency deadline at your institution:
- A supervisor who will sponsor your application. Most federal applications require a named supervisor and either a signed letter or a formal endorsement.
- A research proposal: 1 to 2 pages at the master’s level, 4 to 6 pages at the doctoral. Start early; your supervisor’s feedback matters.
- Transcripts: every post-secondary transcript from every institution you’ve attended, official. Order these in August; they take weeks.
- Two or three referees who can write substantive letters, not teaching-style “nice student” references but research-focused ones.
- A clear statement of fit with the specific agency (health, STEM, SSH). Applications misplaced into the wrong agency are rejected fast.
What this directory currently indexes
Canada’s Tri-Agency awards are federal. They don’t always show up as individual scholarship records in a search database because the application is mediated through your university. Below, our directory lists every graduate-accepting award we’ve indexed from university awards offices, faculty-specific programs, and private foundations. For Tri-Agency applications, go directly to your graduate school and your department’s website.