Norway's Prince Sverre Magnus Heads to a College With No Campus — Just Three Cities
Norway's royal court announced Monday that Prince Sverre Magnus, 20, will enroll this fall at Forward College to study business management for a bachelor's degree. The school has no single campus. Students move between Lisbon, Paris, and Berlin over three years, which is why it has been called a "nomadic European university" (Town & Country).
The prince starts in Lisbon for his first year, then moves to Paris and Berlin in sequence. Founded in 2021 and affiliated with the London School of Economics, Forward College runs classes in small groups of roughly 15 students — no traditional lecture halls. Tuition is about €18,500 per year (around $22,000) for EU citizens (Town & Country).
The announcement came in a press release from the Norwegian Royal Court, Norway's equivalent of Buckingham Palace's communications office, titled "Studiestart for prinsessen og prinsen" — "Study start for the princess and the prince" (Kongehuset.no). The "princess" in that title is Prince Sverre Magnus's older sister, Princess Ingrid Alexandra, who is transferring from the University of Sydney to the University of Oslo as an exchange student for the fall semester.
Prince Sverre Magnus is the son of Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit, placing him third in line to the Norwegian throne behind his father and his sister. His choice of a small, multi-city European college over a traditional university mirrors a pattern taking hold across Europe's young royals.
Spain's Infanta Sofía, the younger daughter of King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia, is already in her second year at Forward College, studying political science and international relations across the same three campuses. She began her studies in Paris this year. Her older sister, Princess Leonor — first in line to the Spanish throne — will start a political science degree at Carlos III University of Madrid after completing three years of military training (Town & Country).
What makes Forward College stand out is the model itself. Rather than settling into one city for three or four years, students pack up and relocate each year — Lisbon to Paris to Berlin, or some variation — while staying within the same degree program. The school's tie to the London School of Economics gives the coursework academic grounding, but the selling point is the movement.
For a prince whose family splits its time between Oslo and royal residences across Norway, a college that requires changing cities every twelve months may feel familiar. For the rest of us, it sounds like a gap year with a diploma at the end.
