Brussels: The European Commission has opened its 2026 Erasmus+ call for proposals with roughly €5.2 billion on the table, the largest annual budget yet for the bloc’s flagship education, training, youth and sport programme. Erasmus+ will fund cross-border mobility and cooperation projects that help Europeans build the skills employers and democracies increasingly demand.

The Commission expects the call to offer learning mobility to about 1.275 million participants and to support more than 100,000 organisations, from universities and schools to vocational centres, companies and sport clubs. It laid out the figures in its announcement of over €5 billion in skills funding.

This year’s Erasmus+ round carries a new action aimed squarely at schools. European Partnerships for School Development will help teachers and administrators share methods across borders, alongside the programme’s familiar mix of mobility grants, cooperation partnerships and Jean Monnet activities that bring EU topics into classrooms.

The Commission ties the call to its Union of Skills strategy, which pushes lifelong learning and quality employment across the single market. Officials argue that the green and digital transitions will stall unless workers can retrain, and that Erasmus+ remains the bloc’s most visible tool for spreading those skills person by person.

Since its launch in 1987, the programme has grown from a modest student-exchange scheme into a sprawling network touching millions of lives. Applicants can consult the detailed rules in the Commission’s Erasmus+ programme portal for 2026, which lists deadlines and eligibility for each strand.

Money alone does not guarantee reach. Critics have long warned that Erasmus+ favours students who already enjoy advantages, since poorer participants struggle to cover living costs abroad even with a grant. The Commission answers that inclusion sits among the call’s core priorities, with extra support meant to widen who can take part.

The programme also carries a quieter political purpose. Brussels sees Erasmus+ as a way to knit a common European identity, letting young people study, train and live in another member state and return home with looser prejudices and wider horizons. Supporters call that soft power at its most benign; sceptics see federalist ambition dressed as opportunity.

For the 2026 cycle, the priorities stay consistent: inclusion, the digital and green transitions, and democratic participation. The new schools action signals that the Commission wants to reach learners earlier, not only at university age when many educational gaps have already hardened.

The call now runs against its deadlines, and national agencies across the member states will guide applicants through the paperwork. If the response matches recent years, Erasmus+ will again move well over a million people across borders, a reminder that some of the EU’s most durable influence travels not through regulation but through the students it sends abroad.