Erasmus+ is the European Union’s programme for education, training, youth, and sport. It creates opportunities for people to learn, travel, cooperate internationally, and develop new skills through meaningful experiences. By bringing together participants from different countries and backgrounds, Erasmus+ promotes inclusion, active citizenship, intercultural dialogue, and personal growth. It is not only a programme for mobility, but also a platform for building a more connected, skilled, and open Europe.

Erasmus+ supports both personal development and organisational development. At individual level, it helps learners, young people, educators, trainers, and youth workers gain competences, confidence, international experience, and intercultural understanding. At organisational and system level, it supports cooperation, innovation, quality improvement, and policy development in education, training, youth, and sport. The programme is also linked to broader EU goals such as the European Education Area, the EU Youth Strategy 2019–2027, and the development of the European dimension in sport.

The four main priorities

Across the 2021–2027 period, Erasmus+ applies four horizontal priorities to all actions. These are:

1. Inclusion and diversity – making participation more accessible, especially for people with fewer opportunities.

2. Digital transformation – improving digital readiness, competences, and meaningful use of technology.

3. Environment and fight against climate change – encouraging sustainable practices and green awareness.

4. Participation in democratic life, common values and civic engagement – helping people engage actively in society and understand shared European values.

How the programme is structured?

Erasmus+ is mainly organised through three Key Actions:

Key Action 1 (KA1): Learning Mobility of Individuals

This supports mobility activities such as youth exchanges, training courses, staff mobility, study periods, and other international learning experiences for individuals.

Key Action 2 (KA2): Cooperation among organisations and institutions

This supports partnerships between organisations, including Cooperation Partnerships, Small-scale Partnerships, Partnerships for Excellence, Partnerships for Innovation, Capacity Building, and some sport actions.

Key Action 3 (KA3): Support to policy development and cooperation

This focuses on policy dialogue, reform, innovation at systems level, and cooperation that can influence how education, training, youth, and sport are developed more broadly.

What Erasmus+ supports in youth?

In the youth field, Erasmus+ commonly supports activities such as Youth Exchanges, mobility of youth workers, training and networking activities, and project partnerships focused on improving youth work practice. For youth organisations, the programme is especially relevant because it values non-formal learning, active participation, inclusion, and quality youth work.

This is why Erasmus+ is often used not only for travel or exchange, but also for developing tools, methods, manuals, training content, digital resources, and international cooperation models that strengthen youth work capacity over the long term.

Who can benefit?

Erasmus+ is not only for university students. It can involve:

young people, youth workers, teachers and trainers, schools and universities, NGOs and civil society organisations, vocational education providers, adult education organisations, sport organisations and staff

So, in practical terms, Erasmus+ is both a mobility programme and a cooperation/funding framework for organisations that want to build international projects.

Why Erasmus+ is attractive?

Erasmus+ is widely valued because it combines several things at once:

learning and personal growth

international mobility and intercultural dialogue

practical project funding

innovation and institutional cooperation

strong policy relevance in the education and youth fields

That is why it is often described not simply as a funding programme, but as a tool for building a more skilled, inclusive, democratic, and connected Europe. This wording is a synthesis of the programme’s published objectives and priorities.