Erasmus+ Statistics 2026: The Programme by the Numbers

Erasmus+ is easy to describe in general terms — the EU’s programme for education, training, youth and sport. It’s harder to grasp in scale. This post pulls together the programme’s own official statistics, current as of September 2026, to show what Erasmus+ actually looks like in numbers: how big it is, how fast it’s grown, where the funding goes, and which kinds of organisations it actually reaches.

All figures below come directly from the European Commission’s official Erasmus+ statistics dashboard. Where a figure covers a specific time period rather than the programme’s full history, that’s noted explicitly — precision matters more than a bigger-sounding number.

Data as of September 2026.

Erasmus+ programme statistics, 2014–2026. Source: European Commission.

The programme’s scale, in numbers

Erasmus+ started in 1987 as a student exchange scheme, with 3,200 students from 11 countries taking part in its first year. Today it’s a multi-billion-euro framework spanning education, training, youth and sport. These figures cover the 2014–2026 statistical period:

For context: that’s over a million distinct organisations that have received EU support to run transnational education, training or youth projects — not a small club of large institutions, but a genuinely wide base of schools, NGOs, training providers and universities across Europe.

Growth trends: more projects, more participants

Project volume has grown substantially since 2014, though not in a straight line:

Projects funded per year. The 2021 dip reflects pandemic disruption to mobility and in-person cooperation.

Some of that participant increase reflects 2014 being the first year of a new seven-year funding cycle, when the programme was still ramping up from a comparatively low starting point — so the multiplier overstates organic year-on-year growth in isolation. The clearer takeaway is the trend, not the multiplier: participation has grown consistently and substantially across the current programming period.

Where the funding goes

For the 2021–2023 funding period specifically, Erasmus+ grants split as follows across its main activity types:

Learning mobility — individuals travelling abroad to study, train, teach or volunteer — continues to receive the majority of programme funding by a wide margin. Cooperation partnerships between organisations, which fund KA210 and KA220 projects, account for just over a third of grants. This breakdown covers 2021–2023 specifically and is not the same as the 2014–2026 project and grant totals above.

Who the programme actually reaches

Erasmus+ is sometimes assumed to be primarily a higher education programme — a legacy of its original 1987 student-exchange design. The organisation data tells a different story. Of the 1,066,924 organisations supported since 2014, higher education institutions account for a relatively modest share. Youth, VET and School Education — highlighted below — together make up close to 80% of the total:

Figures may not sum exactly to the programme total, as some organisations are active across more than one field.

Youth organisations, VET providers and schools together account for close to 80% of all organisations supported — the actual centre of gravity of the programme today, not a footnote to its higher education origins.

What this means if you’re planning an application

Two things are true at once, and both matter for how you plan. First, the funding pool has grown substantially and consistently since 2014 — this is not a shrinking programme, and the sharp recovery after 2021 suggests continued institutional commitment to it. Second, growth in project volume has been matched by growth in participation and applicant numbers, which means competition for cooperation partnership funding (KA210, KA220) has almost certainly grown alongside the budget, not eased.

For NGOs, schools, VET providers and youth organisations specifically, the field-level data is the most directly useful part of this picture: you are not a niche applicant type competing against a university-dominated system. You represent the majority of organisations the programme actually funds.

Frequently asked questions

– Where does this data come from?

All figures in this post are drawn directly from the European Commission’s official Erasmus+ statistics dashboard, current as of September 2026. We’ve cross-checked the year-by-year figures against the published totals for internal consistency before publishing.

– Which Key Action gets the most funding?

For the 2021–2023 period, Mobility (Key Action 1) received 59% of grants, more than the 37% going to Cooperation Partnerships (Key Action 2). This reflects the programme’s continued emphasis on individual learning mobility alongside institutional cooperation.

– Does Erasmus+ only fund universities?

No. Youth organisations, VET providers and schools together account for close to 80% of all organisations supported since 2014, compared to roughly 11% for higher education institutions specifically.

– Has Erasmus+ recovered from the pandemic disruption?

Yes. Project volume dropped to 19,237 in 2021 but had roughly doubled to 38,677 by 2025 — the fastest sustained growth period in the data since 2014.

– Does rising participation mean lower odds for my proposal?

Not necessarily lower odds, but almost certainly more competition for the same relative share of funding, since both project volume and participant numbers have grown together. This makes proposal quality — not just eligibility — the deciding factor more often than in the programme’s earlier years.

This article is based on the European Commission’s official Erasmus+ statistics dashboard, data as of September 2026. GrowthProjects.eu is an independent consultancy and is not affiliated with the European Commission, EACEA, or any National Agency.