The first cohort of 25,000 free Coursera licences under Malaysia's Rakyat Digital Global Learning Pass has been fully subscribed, the Ministry of Digital's MyDIGITAL Corporation said on 14 October. Registration remains open, but new applicants are now placed on a priority waiting list for Cohort Two, which will be released as more licences become available.
If you were planning to sign up, the free seats in the first batch are gone. The waiting list is how you get into the next one.
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What the pass actually gives you
Fully funded by the Government, the initiative gives Malaysians three months of complimentary access to more than 16,000 Coursera courses, Guided Projects and Professional Certificates. These are the same paid programmes that normally sit behind a subscription, covering areas from data and AI to business and software skills, and include the certificates many of them issue on completion.
Part of a bigger national push
The Global Learning Pass sits under Rakyat Digital, a national digital learning platform run by MyDIGITAL Corporation, and supports Malaysia's AI Nation 2030 vision, the Malaysia Digital 2030 Action Plan and the National AI Action Plan 2026 to 2030. In total, 100,000 free Coursera passes will be released in phases over the course of one year. The programme was launched on 16 September 2026, which means the first 25,000 seats were taken in under a month.
The speed of that uptake is the story here. It lands as Malaysia pushes hard on digital and AI capability on several fronts at once, from a growing semiconductor base to the cyber and AI risks its own agencies are now flagging. Demand for free, structured upskilling is clearly outrunning supply.
How to get on the waiting list
Registration is still open at rakyatdigital.gov.my, where new applicants are added to the priority waiting list for the next cohort. For enquiries about the Global Learning Pass, MyDIGITAL lists the email [email protected]. There is no cost to register, and the next batch is released as additional licences are freed up.
