The introduction reveals the concept of educational migration as a difficult life situation experienced by students. The migration flows of students are growing every year worldwide, which means that the study of the psychological characteristics of this group of young people and the difficulties they face are extremely relevant for psychological science. The current situation of a pandemic and forced self-isolation throughout the world led to even more serious psychological consequences for educational migrants, because many of them could not return to their homeland or come to their places of study, which increased anxiety for their future and career, for the inability to help their loved ones, etc. The conducted empirical research was devoted to the study of difficult life situations, their types, and prevalence in different groups of educational migrants during the COVID-19 pandemic. The novelty of the research lies in the study of difficult life situations of educational migrants. The section "Methods" describes the empirical basis of the study. It was made up of 380 people - students of higher educational institutions of Yekaterinburg and Tomsk at the age of 18-22 with different migration experiences. The study was carried out using the author's questionnaire, which included questions about the experience of the most common difficult life situations for educational migrants in these regions: coronavirus disease, worries about the health of loved ones, a failed trip (fixing the difficulties of movement), difficulties with studies, problems in personal life, everyday difficulties. The section “Results” shows that belonging to the group of “educational migrants” does not unambiguously affect the specificity of perception of difficult life situations by young people, their frequency, and typicality of experience. In the section "Discussion of the results" the obtained data are compared with the data of foreign researchers studying the features of adaptation of educational migrants to the new educational and socio-psychological environment. The “Conclusions” section states that the most “popular” and significant from the point of view of the phenomenon of “difficult life situations” for the respondents were difficulties with learning and worries about the health of friends and family.