Honhaar Scholarship 2026 Last Date: What’s Confirmed

Every Site Gives a Different Honhaar Last Date — Because They Are Describing Three Different Phases

Search for the Honhaar Scholarship last date and you will be handed at least four answers: 18 October, 15 September, 26 October, 30 September. Every one of those dates was genuinely printed by somebody. Not one of them is necessarily yours.

The Honhaar Scholarship 2026 last date question has a messy answer for a boring reason, and once you see it the whole thing becomes simple: Honhaar is not one application window. It is a programme running in phases, and each phase has its own students, its own income ceiling and its own closing date. Sites copy a date from whichever phase they read about last, strip out the phase label, and publish it as the deadline.

Here is what is actually confirmed right now, and how to work out which set of rules applies to you.

Is Honhaar Scholarship registration open in 2026?
Yes. New registration has reopened for students in the 3rd to 8th semester of BS programmes at public sector universities and colleges, and for 2nd to 5th year MBBS and BDS students at public sector medical and dental colleges. Applications go through the official PHEC portal at honhaarscholarship.punjabhec.gov.pk.

The University of the Punjab’s scholarship page confirms new registration has started for 3rd to 8th semester students of public sector universities and 2nd to 5th year MBBS and BDS students of public sector medical and dental colleges. Kinnaird College’s notice for the same phase carries identical wording.

Why every page gives you a different last date

Honhaar has run in distinct phases, and the official programme record spells them out.

Under Phase I, 30,000 scholarships went to meritorious and deserving students enrolled in the 1st semester of BS programmes across all public sector universities, graduate colleges, selected federal chartered or private universities, plus 1st year medical students. Phase II awarded 20,000 scholarships to students enrolled from the 3rd to 8th semester of BS programmes and the 2nd to 5th year of MBBS and BDS in public sector universities, colleges and medical and dental colleges. Phase III provided 5,000 scholarships to students from other provinces.

Three phases. Three different applicant groups. Three different windows.

So when one page says the deadline was 18 October and another says 15 September, both may be reporting real notifications — from different phases, in different years. Bahauddin Zakariya University’s notice board carried a Honhaar last date of 18 October 2024. A later BZU notice for the same programme carried a deadline of 15 September 2025. Neither tells you anything about the phase that opened last week.

The practical rule: a Honhaar deadline is only meaningful if it comes with a phase label and a year. If a page gives you a date without saying which semester group it applies to, that page cannot help you.

Which phase are you in? Work this out first

Before you look at any date, place yourself:

• Enrolled in 1st semester of a BS programme, or 1st year MBBS/BDS? That is the Phase I profile. Your window opens with the new intake cycle, not the current one.
• In your 3rd to 8th semester of a BS programme at a public sector university or college? That is the phase currently accepting registration.
• 2nd to 5th year MBBS or BDS at a public sector medical or dental college? Same — this is your window.
• From a province other than Punjab? Phase III covered students from other provinces, with a much smaller allocation. Check the portal for whether that stream is currently open before assuming it is.

Only once you know your group does a deadline mean anything.

The income limit — Rs 300,000 or Rs 350,000?

This is the second thing pages get wrong, and it is a discrepancy worth taking seriously because a wrong affidavit is a rejected application.

For the phase currently open, the figure is clear. The official programme record states the applicant’s family monthly income must be less than Rs 300,000, with an affidavit required. Kinnaird’s Phase II eligibility notice repeats the same Rs 300,000 threshold with the affidavit condition and a downloadable sample affidavit.

But a separate university notification for a different cycle listed higher ceilings. BZU’s notice quoted income thresholds of up to Rs 350,000 per month for public sector HEIs and up to Rs 500,000 per month for federal or private sector HEIs, with the affidavit on e-stamp.

Both figures are real. They are not from the same phase.

What to do: use the income limit printed on the notification for your phase, and take the affidavit format from the sample the portal provides. Do not take a number from a blog. If your family income sits close to any of these lines, that is exactly the situation in which the specific notification matters most.

One warning that should not need saying but does: an income affidavit is a sworn legal document. Understating income to get under a threshold is not a shortcut — it is a false statement on a legal instrument.

The merit bar almost nobody quotes

Income gets all the attention. Merit is where a large number of applications actually fail, and it is stated precisely.

For public sector universities and colleges, the minimum is at least 70% or equivalent CGPA for science disciplines and 65% or equivalent CGPA for arts disciplines. For public sector medical and dental colleges, the minimum is 60% in annual examinations. Merit is determined using HEC policy guidelines for implementation of the uniform semester system in Pakistan’s higher education institutions.

Two things follow from that.

First, the science and arts thresholds are different. A 67% in an arts discipline clears the bar; the same 67% in a science discipline does not.

Second, “or equivalent CGPA” is doing real work. Your university’s conversion from CGPA to percentage is not something you should guess at from an online calculator. Ask your own examination department for the official equivalence before you decide you are ineligible — or before you assume you are safely above the line.

What the scholarship actually covers

The scholarship covers 100% of the tuition fee. University notices describe it the same way — full tuition coverage so students can focus on studies.

That is generous and it is also specific. Tuition is not the whole cost of a degree. Hostel charges, mess, transport and books sit outside a tuition-fee scholarship, and students who budget as though Honhaar covers everything get caught out in the second semester. Plan for the gap.

Which institutions are included

The programme is wider than most students assume, and it is not restricted to public sector institutions.

The Higher Education Department’s own announcement sets out the scope. The Government of Punjab said it would bear the cost of undergraduate degrees in 68 selected disciplines across all 50 public sector universities, 16 medical colleges and 131 graduate colleges of HED, as well as high-ranked institutions including LUMS, FAST National University, COMSATS, GIKI, NUST and seven other leading private sector universities in Punjab.

The same announcement set the scale: 30,000 scholarships offered each year, with over PKR 7 billion invested in that year alone, more than 120,000 students covered over four years, and an overall investment exceeding PKR 130 billion across eight years.

Two qualifiers matter here. Selected disciplines means your degree programme has to be on the list — being enrolled at a listed university is not enough on its own. And the phase currently open is specified for public sector institutions, so private-university students should check which stream they fall under rather than assuming inclusion.

Documents to have ready before you open the portal

Get these together first. The application itself is short; the document-gathering is what takes people days.

• Punjab domicile from any district of Punjab
• CNIC — yours, and family CNICs where required
• Family income affidavit in the prescribed format, on the required stamp paper
• Academic transcripts and your current CGPA or percentage
• Proof of enrolment for your current semester
• Your university’s discipline listing so you can confirm your programme is covered

Three traps to avoid

Trap one: the wrong country’s Punjab. If you search generic phrases like “Punjab scholarship last date”, Google will return results for the Indian state of Punjab’s scholarship portal at scholarships.punjab.gov.in — a completely separate government scheme with its own categories and its own deadlines. Those pages cover pre-matric and post-matric scholarships administered by the Government of Punjab in India, at a .gov.in address. The Pakistani programme lives at a .gov.pk address. Check the domain suffix before you read another word.

Trap two: agents and lookalike portals. There is a single official application route. Anyone offering faster processing, guaranteed selection or paid form-filling for a government merit scholarship is selling you something that does not exist. Merit lists are generated against stated criteria; nobody outside the system moves you up one.

Trap three: last-minute uploads. Every large Pakistani government portal slows under load in the final 48 hours of a window. If the closing date turns out to be tighter than you expected, a portal that will not accept your scanned affidavit at 11pm is a very ordinary way to lose a fully funded degree.

So what is the actual last date?

Here is the honest answer, and it is the reason this article exists.

For the phase that has just reopened, university notice boards are confirming that registration has started — but they are not publishing a closing date alongside it, and the confident deadlines circulating on scheme-aggregator sites trace back to earlier cycles rather than to a current notification.

The only place that closing date is authoritative is the official portal itself: honhaarscholarship.punjabhec.gov.pk. The second-best source is your own institution’s scholarship or financial aid office, which receives the notification directly and will usually post it on the university website before the aggregators catch up.

Treat any date you see anywhere else — including in this article, if you find it months from now — as unconfirmed until you have matched it against the portal notification for your specific phase.

That is not a hedge. It is the same rule that would have saved thousands of students from applying against a 2024 deadline in 2026.

Key takeaways

• Registration is open for 3rd–8th semester BS students at public sector universities and 2nd–5th year MBBS/BDS students at public sector medical and dental colleges.
• Honhaar runs in phases — Phase I (1st semester, 30,000 awards), Phase II (3rd–8th semester, 20,000 awards), Phase III (other provinces, 5,000 awards). Your phase determines your rules.
• Income limit for the current phase is under Rs 300,000 per month, with affidavit. Higher figures circulating (Rs 350,000 / Rs 500,000) come from a different cycle’s notification.
• Merit bar: 70% or equivalent CGPA for science, 65% for arts at public sector universities and colleges; 60% in annual exams for public sector medical and dental colleges.
• Coverage is 100% of tuition fee only — hostel, mess, transport and books are not included.
• Scope: 68 disciplines across 50 public sector universities, 16 medical colleges, 131 graduate colleges, plus LUMS, FAST, COMSATS, GIKI, NUST and seven other leading private universities in Punjab.
• One official portal. Confirm the closing date there or with your own university’s scholarship office — nowhere else.

FAQ