Student health insurance in Spain when you are over 35
The Sanitas International Students plan covers ages 14 to 35. If you will be 36 or older when the policy starts, it is not available to you — and our own calculator will not price it. That is worth saying plainly rather than letting you find out at the end of a form. Here is where it leaves you, and what still has to be satisfied either way.
Why 35 is a hard line rather than a soft one
The age band is a condition of the product, not a guideline an adviser can stretch. There is no supplement, upgrade or exception that carries the International Students plan past 35, which is why the calculator stops rather than quoting you something it cannot honour.
One detail decides more cases than people expect: age is measured at the date the policy starts, not the date you enquire. Policies begin on the 1st of a month. So the question is how old you will be on that date — if you turn 36 before it, the student plan is out; if you are still 35 on it, you are inside the band — price the student plan and take the guided student application, with no need for anything on the rest of this page.
Readers who land here are rarely undergraduates. They are usually:
None of that makes a study stay unusual, and none of it changes the insurance requirement attached to it. It just means the student product is the wrong shelf.
What is reviewed instead: Sanitas Residents and Residents Platinum
For readers outside the student plan's age band, the plans we review are Sanitas Residents and Sanitas Residents Platinum. They are arranged for visa and residency routes rather than for study stays specifically, and they cover a partner or children on the same contract — which the student plan, one student per policy, cannot do.
We do not publish prices for those plans on this site, and the calculator does not price them. That is deliberate. The student plan has a published rate table we can put on screen and stand behind; the Residents plans are quoted after a look at your particular situation. A figure invented for a web page would be worse than no figure at all, and you would find out it was wrong at exactly the wrong moment.
So this is one of the few places on this site where the right answer is a conversation rather than a calculator. To review your options we need:
Eligibility, premium and policy terms are confirmed before the policy is issued, and nothing is arranged until you have seen the figure.
A Residents policy has to satisfy the same four things
The operative regulation is Real Decreto 1155/2024, in force since 20 May 2025. It replaced RD 557/2011, which is repealed — if a page you are reading still cites the old one, its dates and thresholds are worth double-checking. Article 35(i) sets out the insurance condition, and it has exactly four parts:
- a health insurance policy
- from an insurer authorised to operate in Spain
- with benefits similar to the basic common portfolio of the Spanish national health system (cartera común básica)
- valid for the whole intended stay
Nothing in that list is age-dependent, so moving from a student plan to a Residents plan changes what you buy, not what has to be true of it.
The familiar extras are a different matter. "No copayments", "no waiting periods", repatriation cover and a €30,000 minimum appear nowhere in RD 1155/2024. They are consulate practice, and practice is not uniform between posts — the €30,000 and repatriation wording actually belongs to the Schengen short-stay Visa Code (article 15) and has been carried across onto some student checklists. Positions we recorded on 23 August 2026:
| Consulate | Its published position (checked 23 Aug 2026) |
|---|---|
| Toronto | Repatriation expressly not required — "it is not necessary to cover repatriations and/or evacuations" |
| San Francisco | Repatriation required |
| Casablanca / Nador | Repatriation required, €30,000 minimum |
| São Paulo | No copayments, no waiting periods, no cover limit |
| Miami, Houston, Mumbai, Shanghai, Sydney | Silent on copayments and waiting periods |
Two posts, two opposite answers on the same point. Read your own consulate's current list rather than a general rule about "Spanish requirements", and tell us which post you are applying through so the policy is matched to it. What consulates check covers the requirement in full, and the insurance certificate explains the document they actually read.
Courses longer than 14 months
Age is not the only limit worth knowing about, and plenty of readers hit this one instead. The student plan runs for 3 to 14 months and is renewable. A two-year master's or a doctorate therefore has two sensible routes:
Renew the student plan
Take the policy for the initial period and renew it before it expires. Renew early enough that the cover shows no gap — continuity matters later, at renewal of your authorisation and at the TIE.
Take a Residents policy for the whole period
One contract covering the entire stay, with no renewal step to remember and no join between two policies for anyone to query.
Which is simpler depends on your consulate as much as your course. Some posts set the policy length from the length of the stay: Boston states that where the total is over 180 days the insurance will cover 365 days, and Chicago asks for a one-year policy from entry for stays over six months (both checked 23 August 2026). Against a post like those — and against article 35(i)'s "whole intended stay" — a single contract spanning the period is the easier thing to evidence. If you are over 35 as well as over 14 months, the Residents route answers both at once.
If you will be registered with Spanish Social Security, you may need no private policy at all
This is the part almost nobody tells older students, and it matters most to exactly the people who read this page. Under RD 1155/2024 article 57.5, registration with Spanish Social Security satisfies the article 35 insurance requirement. Higher-education students may also work up to 30 hours a week without a separate work permit (article 57.1–2).
So a PhD candidate on a research contract, a postdoc paid by their institution, or a student taking employment alongside their course may be covered by the public system for the purposes of that condition, rather than by a private policy bought to satisfy it.
The practical catch is timing: registration normally follows arrival, while the insurance evidence is wanted at the visa application stage, from abroad. Ask your consulate what it expects to see at that point, and ask your institution whether it is putting you on a contract, before you commit to anything. We would rather tell you that than sell you a policy you did not need.
Over 35 and studying in Spain?
Send us your dates, your province and who is coming with you, and we will review which plan fits before anything is arranged.
Over 35 and studying in Spain — FAQs
Nothing on this page promises a visa. The insurance satisfies one condition of your application; the decision rests with the Spanish consulate or immigration authorities.