If you started your Bachelor's programme at the Faculty of Arts in or after September 2024, you have 30 ECTS of free elective space in your third year. The free elective space provides you with many opportunities to continue to develop yourself and expand your studies by taking courses from different study programmes.
In general, the free elective space consists of 15 EC in the first semester and 15 EC in the second semester of B3. Are you going abroad or doing the educational minor? Then the first semester generally consists entirely of free elective space (30 EC). The exact structure of year 3 of your programme will be available in the course guide from July 2026.
The accordions below show a schematic overview of both options.
| Semester 1 | Semester 2 | ||
| Major courses | 15 ECTS | Major course | 5 ECTS |
| Bachelor's thesis | 10 ECTS | ||
| Free elective space | 15 ECTS | Free elective space | 15 ECTS |
| Semester 1 | Semester 2 | ||
| Free elective space | 30 ECTS | Major courses | 20 ECTS |
| Bachelor's thesis | 10 ECTS | ||
This is a simplified overview; for specific details and applicable agreements regarding the replacement of the major courses from semester 1 that you are missing, please consult your student advisor or the OER for 2026-2027, as soon as it becomes available. This applies in particular to students of French and Spanish.
Now that you know what the B3 will look like, you need to start thinking about how you want to fill this free elective space. The courses you choose in your free elective space do not have to form a coherent whole. This means you can fill this space in almost any way you choose. You could consider, for example:
You can only select courses that are open to students taking subsidiary courses. It is your own responsibility to check if this is the case for your chosen courses.
If you want to select courses from another study programme within the Faculty of Arts and want to find out whether the course is open to you, please do the following:
If you want to take courses at another faculty in your free elective space, please do the following:
Please note: only by setting the filter in this way can you see whether the desired course(s) are open to be taken as a subsidiary course. This information cannot be found in the results list or the course information.
The primary goal of this free elective space is to broaden your horizons. It is therefore not allowed to take courses that are part of (a different specialisation of) your own study programme in your free elective space. That means, for example, that:
There is an exception for the Roman Languages and Cultures programmes: students of French cannot take courses with LET-RTCBF, but they are allowed to take courses from Spanish (LET-RTCBS) in their free elective space. Students of Spanish cannot take courses with LET-RTCBS, but can take courses from French (LET-RTCBF) in their free elective space.
You can only take courses at Bachelor's level in your free elective space.
If you need help making decisions or if you have other questions about the free elective space, please contact your programme's student advisor.
The free elective space is designed in such a way that all courses that are not a fixed part of your examination programme are automatically displayed here. For example, you can see courses from a previous programme (which you did not complete), from your second programme (if you are doing a double degree) or – if you started your studies in 2025 or later – courses that are part of your minor. If the free elective space is also filled with 30 ECTS, any additional courses will be placed under 'Other'. These will not be visible in your diploma supplement. If you would like them to be included, you can have them placed under the extracurricular space by submitting a request to STIP (for Faculty of Arts-courses) or the Examination Board (for other courses). Extracurricular courses do not count towards your distinction.
If there are courses in your free elective space that do not belong there or that you do not wish to have there, determine which of the following scenarios applies to you and follow the instructions.
PLEASE NOTE: This scenario only applies to students who started their study programme in September 2025 or later. If you started your study programme in 2024, this scenario does not apply to you.
Check in Osiris Student via MINOR if you are correctly enrolled for the minor that includes these courses. Once you have enrolled yourself for the minor, the courses from the free elective space will automatically be moved to the corresponding minor.
In order to fill the B2 minor space, it is important that there are at least two registrations for Faculty of Arts-minors. If you choose to also take a minor in your 30 EC free elective space and register for it in Osiris under MINOR, it will appear in your Study Programme Overview and diploma supplement under the heading minor space, not in the free elective space.
If you are certain you do not wish to finish the unfinished study programme, you can leave it as it is without any problems. They will simply count towards your free elective space. If you would like to take other courses in your free elective space, please contact STIP via stip [at] let.ru.nl (stip[at]let[dot]ru[dot]nl) and ask them to include the courses you do want to include in your free elective space. Only do this after you have registered for these courses.
When you have taken more courses than you need for your examination programme, the system will determine which courses will be placed in the free elective space and which will be placed under ‘Other'. If this does not correspond with what you want, please do the following:
The system will automatically place 30 ECTS of courses from the second Bachelor's programme in the free elective space. These should not be included here, because courses may only be included in one examination programme. Once you have obtained at least 30 ECTS from your second programme, you can apply for an exemption for the free elective space (in accordance with EER 2026-2027) with the Examination Board.