Erasmus+ KA220 Cooperation Partnerships: Complete Guide

Erasmus+ KA220 — Cooperation Partnerships — is the most ambitious and most impactful cooperation action in the Erasmus+ programme. It funds transnational partnerships between three or more organisations to develop substantial outputs, drive systemic innovation and contribute measurably to the modernisation of education, training and youth work across Europe.

KA220 is also the most demanding Key Action to apply for. The application form is detailed, the budget model is complex, the evaluation standards are high and the competition is significant. Organisations that approach KA220 with the same level of preparation they would bring to a small grant application consistently fall short. Those that treat it as the strategic, multi-year institutional investment it represents — and prepare accordingly — produce stronger, more competitive applications. This guide covers everything you need to know to be in the second group.

1. What Is Erasmus+ KA220

KA220 is a cooperation action that funds partnerships of three or more organisations from different Erasmus+ programme countries to jointly develop substantial, transferable outputs that address a documented challenge in education, training or youth work. The defining characteristic of KA220 is its systemic ambition — the expectation that the project will produce something that changes practice at scale, not just within the consortium.

KA220 projects produce substantial, transferable outputs — curricula, open educational resources, assessment frameworks, digital tools, methodology guides — that are made available to the entire sector, typically through publication on the Erasmus+ Results Platform. The programme funds the staff time, travel, subcontracting and operational costs required to develop and validate these outputs through a structured work package system.

KA220 is available across all five Erasmus+ sectors and is managed by the National Agency of the coordinator’s country. Projects can run for 12 to 36 months, with the possibility of extension in justified cases, and a maximum lump sum of €400,000 under the standard track. The minimum evaluation score for funding consideration is 70 points out of 100 — though in competitive calls, the effective bar to actually be funded (once available budget is accounted for) is often higher than this formal minimum.

2. Who Can Apply

KA220 eligibility requirements are stricter than KA210 in several important respects. Every criterion below is checked before evaluation begins — applications that fail any one of them are rejected at the admissibility stage.

Eligible organisation types. Any public or private organisation with formal legal personality active in education, training or youth work. Informal groups of young people are not eligible as applicants or partners in either KA210 or KA220. Eligible types include:

• NGOs, associations and foundations with formal legal status
• Schools, VET providers and adult education centres
• Universities and higher education institutions
• Youth organisations and youth centres with legal registration
• Local, regional and national public authorities
• Research institutes and think tanks
• Social enterprises and private companies active in education or training

Minimum consortium requirements. At least 3 organisations from 3 different Erasmus+ programme countries. There is no formal maximum, though 4 to 6 partners is the most common range for a well-functioning KA220 consortium. Larger consortia require proportionally larger budgets and significantly more coordination effort.

Country requirements. All partners must be based in Erasmus+ programme countries — the 27 EU Member States plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, North Macedonia, Serbia and Türkiye. Organisations from partner countries (Western Balkans, Eastern Partnership, South Mediterranean) may participate as partners — not coordinators — in some sectors under specific conditions. Always verify against the current Programme Guide for your sector and call year.

Organisation registration. Every partner organisation must register and hold a valid Organisation ID (OID) through the Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps Organisation Registration System. For organisations applying for grants above €60,000 — which includes most KA220 coordinators, unless exempt as a public body or long-established publicly-funded organisation — additional financial capacity documentation is required alongside the standard declaration on honour.

Partner mandates. All partner organisations must formally authorise the coordinator to submit the application on their behalf, as part of the accession process for multi-beneficiary grants. Confirm the exact current mechanism and timing against the live application form — this step is not optional, and missing it results in inadmissibility with no opportunity to fix it after the deadline.

3. What You Can Fund: Eligible Activities and Outputs

KA220 funds a broad range of activities — but only those that are directly necessary for delivering the project’s outputs and achieving its objectives. The key test for any activity is whether it can be justified by reference to a specific work package and a specific output. Activities that exist outside this logic — however useful they may be — are not eligible.

Activity / Output Type	What It Involves	Budget Category
Staff work on project activities	Time spent by employed staff on delivering work packages — research, development, coordination, reporting	Estimated using unit-cost-style daily rates by role/seniority and by country, as part of the budget used to justify your chosen lump sum tier
Transnational project meetings	In-person meetings between partner organisations — kick-off, progress meetings, final review	Estimated via travel distance bands + individual support (accommodation/subsistence) by destination country per participant per day
Substantial outputs	Transferable deliverables — training curricula, OERs, methodology guides, digital tools, assessment frameworks	Staff days of the WP lead and contributing partners; costs for translation, expert review or design if subcontracted
Dedicated dissemination events	Events reaching external audiences beyond the consortium — one per partner country is a widely recommended practice for KA220	Travel and individual support of organising staff; costs for venue, catering and materials if applicable
Subcontracting	Outsourced specialist services that cannot be delivered by partner staff — translation, external evaluation, graphic design, web development	Market rate with justification; each subcontracted item must be justified as not deliverable internally
Equipment	Specific equipment directly necessary for project activities — not standard office equipment	Eligible only for the project-use proportion; must be directly necessary and explicitly justified
Exceptional costs	Higher travel costs for participants with fewer opportunities — remote location, disability-related travel needs	Costs up to a defined ceiling; requires specific justification per participant

4. The KA220 Budget Model Explained

KA220 is a lump sum grant — you receive one of three fixed amounts (€120,000, €250,000 or €400,000), not a reimbursement of actual itemized spending. What makes KA220 more involved than KA210 is that you must build a detailed, work-package-based cost estimate to justify and calculate which of the three tiers to request. That estimate is built line by line in the application’s budget tool — it just doesn’t determine your final payment the way a true cost-reimbursement grant would.

Staff costs. Staff time is usually the largest line in the cost estimate. It’s calculated using daily rates that vary by role/seniority and by country: number of working days × daily rate = estimated staff cost for that partner on that work package. Rates are updated annually — always use the current Programme Guide for your call year, and don’t assume specific named staff-category labels without checking the current guide, since these details can change between programme years.

Travel. Each transnational trip is estimated individually using distance bands, from short trips under 100km up to intercontinental trips of 8,000km or more. Most intra-European travel falls in the mid-range bands. The unit cost per trip is fixed by band — it does not vary by actual ticket price. Estimate each trip separately: outward and return count as one trip per participant.

Individual support. Accommodation and subsistence for transnational activities are estimated through daily rates that vary by destination country. The rate covers all living costs for each day the participant is away from home, including travel days. Higher-cost countries have higher daily rates; lower-cost countries have lower rates.

Subcontracting. Services outsourced to third parties are included in your cost estimate as itemized amounts. Each subcontracted service must be justified as something that cannot reasonably be provided by the partner organisations themselves. Translation, external evaluation and graphic design are the most commonly approved subcontracting items. The core intellectual work of the project — developing the main outputs — cannot be subcontracted to a non-partner organisation.

The WP1 cap. Project Management (WP1) is capped at 20% of the total project budget. If your WP1 staff day allocations exceed this threshold, you must redistribute them into the relevant implementation WPs. Many coordinators exceed this cap in their first draft and need to rebalance before submission.

5. How KA220 Applications Are Evaluated

KA220 applications are assessed by independent expert evaluators against four criteria. The total score is out of 100 points, with a formal minimum threshold of 70 points for funding consideration — and, as noted above, competitive calls often mean the effective bar is higher in practice.

Criterion	Points	What Evaluators Look For	How to Score High
Relevance	25	Documented need with evidence; precise target group; explicit connection to Erasmus+ horizontal and sector-specific priorities; genuine transnational added value	Cite at least 2 external sources for the need; name specific EU priorities and policy documents; define the target group with demographics and geography; explain why the project cannot be delivered by one country alone
Quality of Project Design	30	SMART objectives; coherent work plan with named outputs; feasible timeline; clear methodology; quality assurance approach; full consistency between work plan, budget and partner roles	Write SMART objectives; ensure every activity has a named output; run the four consistency checks before submission; describe the validation process for each output; include a QA framework
Quality of the Partnership and Cooperation Arrangements	20	Specific justification for each partner; genuine complementarity across the consortium; whether newcomers are involved alongside established organisations; coordinator’s documented management capacity; clear distribution of roles	Justify each partner with specific expertise and role — not generic descriptions; include at least one newcomer to the Action; demonstrate the coordinator has managed comparable grants; assign each partner a lead WP role
Impact	25	Quantified expected outcomes for participants and target group; specific dissemination strategy with named channels and reach estimates; sustainability plan beyond the grant period; contribution to policy or systemic change	Give specific reach figures — not “wide dissemination”; plan dedicated dissemination events in each partner country; describe open-access publication on the Erasmus+ Results Platform, EPALE and SALTO; explain how outputs will be used after the project ends

6. What the Application Form Requires

The KA220 application is submitted through the Beneficiary Module — an online platform that combines narrative sections, structured data fields and the budget tool in a single form. The following are the major sections and what each demands.

Context and background. Describe the problem, the evidence base and the target group. This section must be specific, documented and connected to Erasmus+ priorities. It feeds Relevance. Reference external data, policy documents or sector research. Do not summarise the Erasmus+ programme here — evaluators know what the programme is. Focus entirely on the specific need your project addresses.

Objectives. Write an overall objective and two to four specific objectives. Each specific objective must be measurable, linked to a specific output and achievable within the project timeline. Use the SMART framework — vague objectives like “strengthening capacity” without indicators score below their potential on project design.

Work packages. Structure the project into a maximum of five work packages — WP1 Project Management, plus up to four implementation WPs covering the major phases of the project (typically research, development, piloting and dissemination). For each WP, name the lead partner, describe the activities and outputs, assign contributing partners and specify the timeline in months. Every activity must have a named deliverable.

Outputs. Describe each substantial output specifically — its title, type, format, target users, validation process, language versions and publication plan. The description must be specific enough that an external reader could understand exactly what will be produced. Generic output descriptions score poorly on project design.

Partner profiles. For each partner organisation, describe their specific expertise, their role in the project and why they are the right organisation for that role. One well-written, specific paragraph per partner is the standard. Generic descriptions — “an experienced NGO with relevant expertise” — score poorly on the Partnership criterion.

Budget tool. Enter staff days per partner per WP, travel trips per event per participant, individual support days, subcontracting items and any equipment or exceptional costs. Use this to arrive at a total and select the closest of the three lump sum tiers. Check the total against your 20% project management cap and review the partner budget distribution for proportionality before finalising.

Partner mandates. Confirm and complete the partner mandate/authorisation step for all partner organisations before submitting — this is required for the coordinator to act on their behalf. Missing this step results in inadmissibility, with no opportunity to fix it after the deadline.

7. Most Common KA220 Mistakes

Starting the application too late. A credible KA220 application requires 3–4 months of preparation: concept development, partner identification and alignment, work plan drafting, budget building and narrative writing. Organisations that start 6 weeks before the deadline produce weak applications. The partner search alone should begin 3 months before submission.

Generic partner justifications. Describing a partner as “an experienced organisation in the field of VET with relevant expertise” tells an evaluator nothing. Each partner must be justified with their specific expertise, their specific role in this project and why they — and not another organisation — are the right fit for that role. Generic justifications consistently cost points on the Partnership criterion.

Vague output descriptions. An output described as “training materials for youth workers” is not a proper description — it is a placeholder. Each substantial output must have a specific title, a component list, a validation process, a language version plan and a publication destination. The more specific the description, the more credible the project design score.

Project management exceeding 20% of the grant. This is the most common KA220 budget error and it is entirely preventable. Check the WP1 percentage in your cost estimate before finalising. If it exceeds 20%, redistribute staff days from coordination activities into the WPs where the actual work is happening.

Inconsistency between work plan and budget. Activities described in the narrative with no corresponding budget line — or budget lines with no corresponding activity — are a reliable signal of a proposal written in sections without a final consistency review. Run the four-check consistency review before submission: work plan vs objectives, work plan vs budget, work plan vs partner roles, work plan vs timeline.

Missing partner mandates. This is an admissibility issue, not an evaluation weakness. Set an internal deadline for this at least two weeks before the submission deadline. Do not submit the application until everything is confirmed.

Weak impact section with vague reach claims. “The project will have a wide impact on the sector” scores near zero on the Impact criterion. Evaluators expect specific numbers: how many practitioners will be reached through dissemination events, how many downloads of the open-access output are projected in year one, which specific policy bodies will receive the policy brief. Specificity is credibility.

8. KA220 Application Checklist

• ✅ Minimum 3 partners from 3 different Erasmus+ programme countries confirmed
• ✅ All partner organisations registered with a valid OID via the Erasmus+ and ESC Organisation Registration System
• ✅ Partner mandates/authorisations collected from all partners and ready for upload
• ✅ Application submitted under sector matching the coordinator’s primary mission
• ✅ Coordinator has documented experience managing grants of comparable complexity
• ✅ Problem statement specific and supported by at least 2 external sources
• ✅ Target group defined precisely — demographics, geography and context specified
• ✅ Project connects to at least one named Erasmus+ priority — specifically, not generically
• ✅ SMART objectives written — linked to specific outputs and measurable indicators
• ✅ Maximum 5 work packages — WP1 management, plus up to 4 implementation WPs
• ✅ Each WP has a named lead partner, specific activities, named outputs and a timeline
• ✅ Each output described specifically — title, components, validation, language versions, publication plan
• ✅ Each partner justified specifically — not generically — with role and expertise stated
• ✅ Consortium includes at least one newcomer or less experienced organisation
• ✅ Budget estimate built from work plan — staff days assigned per activity per partner
• ✅ Project management does not exceed 20% of total lump sum
• ✅ Partner budget shares proportionate to partner workload
• ✅ Four consistency checks completed — work plan vs objectives, budget, partner roles and timeline
• ✅ Impact section includes specific reach estimates and named dissemination channels
• ✅ All outputs planned for open-access publication under an open licence