Abstract. We study when there exists a dense holomorphic curve in a space of holomorphic maps from a Stein space. We first show that for any bounded convex domain Ω ⋐ C n and any connected complex manifold Y , the space O(Ω, Y ) contains a dense holomorphic disc. Our second result states that Y is an Oka manifold if and only if for any Stein space X there exists a dense entire curve in every path component of O(X, Y ).In the second half of this paper, we apply the above results to the theory of universal functions. It is proved that for any bounded convex domain Ω ⋐ C n , any fixed-point-free automorphism of Ω and any connected complex manifold Y , there exists a universal map Ω → Y . We also characterize Oka manifolds by the existence of universal maps.