If you have an innovative methodology in mind, or want to implement a new approach in your school or share up-to-date resources and materials with educators across Europe, cooperation partnerships are for you.
This chance of funding refers to transnational networks of schools and organizations (“partnerships”). To be eligible for these actions, schools must first form an international network, and then apply under the guidance of the school coordinating the partnership.
The coordinators will be responsible for the project, reporting directly to their National Agency.
Contents
Goals
Key Action 2 (KA2) projects have 3 main goals:
1. Exchange of good practices
They enable schools to establish international networks, participate in project meetings, and enhance the capacities of each participating organisation to work transnationally and address common needs.
2. Innovation
Cooperation partnerships must enable transformation and change, creating something new. For example, you may consider creating: new teaching activities and modalities, guidelines and job aids for teachers or school professionals, innovative assessment tools, taxonomies and procedures, digital platforms and learning systems.
3. Research projects
These partnerships are open to cooperation with universities and other higher education institutions to produce new research and lead to improvements and innovative approaches.
Remember: getting familiar with the Erasmus+ Horizontal Priorities, the European Education Area, and, since 2025, the Union of Skills is crucial to making your project relevant – 1/4 of your project score depends on this, check the criteria below!
Take a look at our Erasmus+ projects to get new ideas.
Sectors
Consider the field where your organization is working: who are the main target groups of your organization’s activities?
Here you will find the six sectors of the Erasmus+ Programme:
- Higher Education: universities or institutions providing recognized degrees or tertiary level qualifications;
- School Education: any nationally recognized institution providing general, vocational or technical education at any level from pre-school to upper secondary education, including early childhood education and care;
- Vocational Education and Training: it aims to prepare young people and adults for specific occupations or the job market in general. It can be initial (for instance, students in upper secondary education going abroad for a traineeship) or continuous (for newly graduated and workers to start or further develop their careers and professional skills)
- Adult Education: all kinds of non-vocational adult education (formal, non-formal, or informal), but remember that educational staff (teachers, trainers, educators, academic and youth staff, etc.) in any Erasmus+ sector cannot be considered adult learners in Adult Education!
- Youth – activities for the empowerment and the active participation of young people (from 13 to 30 years old), any out-of-school activity (such as youth exchange, volunteering or youth training) carried out by a young person and characterised by a non-formal learning approach;
- Sport – Physical leisure activities practised regularly by people of all ages for health, educational or social purposes.
Choose the one that is closer to your organization’s main activity. You can also contact your National Agency if you aren’t sure of your sector. Then, consult the Erasmus+ Guide to identify the sector-specific priority that is most relevant to your project and don’t forget to check the updated deadlines!
The Partners
Can you summarize your project idea in one sentence?
Then, you can now find your partners: the minimum number for a Cooperation Partnership is 3 organizations from 3 different countries. Since many schools have been asking us to support them in their partner research, we have designed a free online platform to help them in this task: Europass Projects Platform. Here you can find many organizations willing to participate in the Erasmus+ Programme, both in KA1 and KA2 projects.
Select your project partners carefully, as reliable partners make all the difference during the whole duration of a project. Make sure to involve organisations with different profiles and expertise, to cover all the aspects of your project.
Cooperation Partnerships should create synergies between the different fields of the Programme, or have a strong impact in a specific sector, but don’t overdo it! If you involve too many organizations, the management and coordination process may become too complicated.
The needs analysis
Once you have established your partnership, you can proceed with the needs analysis to show that your project idea is grounded in the everyday practice of your organizations. To understand the needs of the partnership and the ones of the target groups, identify “the desired changes in the context in which an organization is functioning”.
Describe what is required to transform the current situation into the desired one, and the expected benefits for your organization and your students. Based on this needs analysis, you will then quantify an initial overall cost of the project and identify the most adequate lump sum to fund your project.
Budget, Objectives and Impact
How does the lump sum work?
A lump sum is a fixed amount of money covering all the project costs. At the application stage, the partnership will select one of the 3 lump sums available for the Cooperation Partnerships:
- € 120 000
- € 250 000
- € 400 000
In the project proposal, you will explain and justify how you will use the chosen lump sum, describing the activities that you will implement, their objectives, and their expected results.
The project objectives
When you start writing a project proposal, the first step is to formulate the project objectives, following an evidence-based needs analysis.
Your project objectives should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. They are the first step in the project design, which counts for 30% of the score in the award criteria.
A clear structure is key for project implementation: each project objective should be linked to a work package, that is “a set of activities contributing to the achievement of specific project objectives”.
So, the project activities will be divided into work packages (WPs) that must have specific objectives and expected results (or “deliverables”), clearly related to the general project objectives. You should divide your project into a maximum of 5 WPs, including the one dedicated to project management. This one includes activities aimed at monitoring, coordination, evaluation, and risk management. It won’t require any specific objectives by itself, but it does have a maximum amount of budget allocated, which is 20%.
But how can you make sure that you reach the project objectives?
With the indicators!
They can be quantitative (measurable, e.g. the number of students involved in a specific activity) or qualitative (e.g. describing events, effects and experiences), you will need both to describe the expected results of your activities.
***Work Package 1: Project Management – no specific objectives/results***
The impact
Another key aspect of all Erasmus projects is the impact, which counts for around ¼ of the score in the award criteria.
Indeed, you should describe how you plan to introduce the project result in the partners’ usual work, which positive repercussions they will have outside the partnership, and how it will continue producing an impact after the project ends.
Consistently carrying out the communication, dissemination, and exploitation phases of a KA2 project can be hard for a school, that is why we, as Europass Dissemination Network, would like to help you, ensuring your work has the visibility it deserves.
Small-scale Partnerships
If you are a newcomer and all of this scares you a bit, you can start with a small-scale partnership.
PRO of Small-scale Partnerships
- Less work during the preparation of the project proposal, as the application is simpler because it is specifically dedicated to organizations without experience in the Erasmus+ Programme;
- One partner from another EU member state or third country associated with the Programme (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Republic of North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Turkey) is sufficient to create a partnership;
- There may be a second round of applications in October (even though in many countries 70% of the budget is allocated in the first round in March);
- Your project proposal must score at least 60 points out of 100, while in EPSD and Cooperation partnerships, the minimum is 70 points;
- Any organization can be the applicant, while in Cooperation Partnerships the applicant organizations must have been legally established for at least 2 years before the deadline, and in EPSD, only school authorities can apply.
CONS of Small-scale Partnerships
- Lump sums are: € 30 000 or € 60 000;
- As in EPSD, your organization can apply as a coordinator only once per deadline;
- Your organization can be involved with up to 5 Small-scale proposals, while with up to 10 Cooperation partnership proposals;
- Unlike in Cooperation partnerships, you can’t involve organizations from third countries not associated with the Programme;
- Unlike in Cooperation Partnerships and EPSD, you can’t organize result-sharing events in Erasmus+ Programme Countries that aren’t project partners.
European Partnerships for School Development
This initiative is a novelty of 2026 to make cross-border cooperation a standard, sustainable, and widely accessible part of school education across Europe. The mission of European Partnerships for School Development (EPSD) is to ensure that more and more pupils, teachers, and schools can access effective learning mobilities and impactful international exchanges.
Why these partnerships matter
Between 2021 and 2024, Erasmus+ enabled more than 700,000 pupils and 270,000 teachers and staff to experience learning opportunities abroad. Despite this success, only a small part of Europe’s schools have taken part.
These new partnerships aim to scale up access, reinforce cooperation across school systems, and strengthen the learning of basic skills, citizenship education, and environmental sustainability.
They promote knowledge exchange, experimentation with high-quality methodologies, and long-lasting improvements at the system level.
How EPSD are structured
European Partnerships for School Development are built around local or regional school authorities, which can truly lead the change by guiding schools in building up long-term cooperations in other countries. Indeed, only school authorities or school coordination bodies can be the applicant in this action, and they have to involve at least 2 schools providing general education in their country, such as preschools, primary and secondary schools.
Formal relations between the local authority and the partner schools aren’t required, but of course, official links between partner organizations at the local or regional level can only strengthen your application. As well as additional partners that have an impact on the school education system, such as teacher associations, pedagogical institutes, and parent associations.
However, the final decision on eligibility is made by each National Agency, which will publish a list of organizations that can apply as coordinators and/or partners in this Action.
To sum up, a valid partnership must include at least 6 organisations:
- One coordinating school authority + two schools from the same country
- One partner school authority from another Erasmus country + two schools
Each school authority can coordinate only one application per deadline. Additional organizations may join freely as there is no upper limit, but all partners must be established in an Erasmus+ Programme Country (check Who can participate in Erasmus? in our FAQ for the updated list).
Each ESDP project lasts 3 years and receives a lump sum of €400,000 to implement its activities.
Key Areas of Cooperation
Projects must implement at least three of the following tasks, including at least one from “improving learning and teaching” and one from “capacity building for cross-border cooperation”:
1. Improving Learning and Teaching
- Innovative teaching and learning: Develop and test new learning activities and teaching methods linked to EU priorities (basic skills, EU values, citizenship, CLIL). Activities must be tried out many times in different contexts.
- Collaborative teaching: Teachers from different countries co-create and co-teach content in partner schools abroad.
- Peer learning: Teachers, school leaders, and policymakers take part in peer-learning, mentoring, and job shadowing to exchange effective practices.
- Teacher substitution: Create local systems to pool teacher resources and support substitution during mobility periods.
2. Capacity building for cross-border cooperation in school education
- Support structures: Set up mobility coordinators, international offices or similar services for pooling resources at local and regional levels, with targeted support for participants with fewer opportunities.
- Mainstreaming mobility: Standardise procedures, remove potential administrative barriers, and embed mobility and cooperation into everyday school practice.
- Test “mobility windows”: Test dedicated periods for sending and hosting pupils and staff abroad to create sustainable management and teaching practices.
- Recognition of project work: Promote recognition of learning outcomes abroad and of project work by school staff to ensure high-quality implementation.
- Capacity building through training of school leaders and staff: Strengthen internal capacity through training in project management, mobility preparation, and mentoring, with schools gradually taking over training delivery.
So, European Partnerships for School Development can occasionally fund mobilities with formats similar to those defined under KA1, when these directly support their project objectives, for instance, to test new pedagogical methods or updated management procedures.
To maximise impact and broaden participation, Partnerships are encouraged to create synergies with Key Action 1 mobility projects and accreditations.
Award Criteria
The following chart summarizes the maximum score your application can get for each category, out of a total of 100. However, you must score at least 50% of available points in each category.
The chart clearly shows how KA240 – European Partnerships for School Development differs from more traditional Erasmus+ partnerships.
While KA210 and KA220 give high weight to relevance, KA240 assigns fewer points here (15). This reflects the assumption that relevance is already embedded: KA240 partnerships should be, by definition, aligned with EU priorities because they involve school authorities and aim at system-level cooperation.
The biggest shift appears in the impact criterion, which rises to 35 points—much higher than in KA210 or KA220. This signals the Commission’s expectation that KA240 should deliver systemic, long-lasting change, not just good project activities.
Project design and partnership arrangements keep the same weight, but KA240 demands a more structured and strategic approach: clear work packages, repeated testing of activities, and strong governance across countries. Indeed, there are clear guidelines about its structure: your ESDP project should have no more than 12 work packages, including
- 1 Project Management work package (max. 20% of the budget)
- 1 Long-Term Impact work package
- 3–10 Implementation work packages, each covering one of the abovementioned tasks
To conclude, what stands out is that KA240 aims to build structured, cross-country partnerships between schools and school authorities, focused on institutional development, pedagogical innovation, stronger support structures for teachers, and results that can be used at the regional, national, or European level.
Final Tip and References
Always keep in touch with your NA, they are there to help you design a good application and to make the most out of the Erasmus+ opportunities.
It is important to participate in Erasmus events, presentations, and social gatherings to get as much information as possible. For instance, there may be some additional priorities that are particularly important in your country, so if you address them in your project, you may get more points.
References:
- Erasmus+ Guide
- Budget explanation – Handbook lump sum 2026
- Frequently Asked Questions on the lump sum funding model – FAQ
- Evaluators’ Guide – Guide for Experts on Quality Assessment
Would you like to become a KA2 expert?
Join our 3-day course! Enrol here: