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I wanted to simply say congratulations to my friend for his university graduation. But I was kind of stuck for choosing the correct terms.

Congratulations on your graduation

or

Congratulations for your graduation

or what?

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You can use either "for" or "on". It's up to you that how you want to greet him. In this particular case both sentences are absolutely correct grammatically, I don't see any flaw there.

In first one :

Congratulations for your graduation.

you are trying to greet him for the sake of whatever he has achieved, here graduation is the reason that you are greeting him. Nothing wrong in doing that, but context is different.

In second:

Congratulations on your graduation

when you are using "on", it seems like you are greeting him because of "occurrence" of something, like "on Christmas". According to your intention you can use both of them.

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  • "Congratulations for (anything)" is a very unusual phrase to use, at least in British English--don't think I've ever heard it, nor would I use it.
    – calum_b
    Jan 5, 2016 at 11:51
  • Yes, that is I agree, but there is nothing wrong if someone says that, is it?
    – user152418
    Jan 5, 2016 at 12:22
  • I'm not a grammar expert, but I think "congratulations for" would really need to be followed by a gerund... e.g. "congratulations for graduating", "congratulations for passing your exams" etc. But even those sound a bit strange to me.
    – calum_b
    Jan 5, 2016 at 16:25

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