Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education: How the EU Funds University Partnerships Beyond Europe

Partnerships · By the Open Quad editorial team · Published 2026-11-12

A bright university library reading room with blue, orange and yellow beanbags on a round blue carpet in front of low bookshelves — The renovated library reading room of the University of Miskolc, Hungary, 2025. Photo: Szalax, Wikimedia Commons, CC0.

Since the large US programmes for university partnerships were wound down in 2025, the European Union's Erasmus+ programme has become the most visible public funder of long-term cooperation between universities in Europe and universities in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe's neighbourhood. Its instrument for this is called Capacity Building in Higher Education, or CBHE. This guide explains how the action works, based on the 2026 Erasmus+ Programme Guide, and what it takes to put together a proposal that can win.

What the action is for

CBHE is part of Key Action 2 of Erasmus+, the strand for cooperation between organisations. Unlike student mobility, which moves people, CBHE moves practices: a project typically builds a new master's programme, reforms how a university is governed, sets up an internationalisation office or a career service, or trains teaching staff. The beneficiaries are the institutions and the higher education systems of the partner countries, not the European universities that take part.

The Programme Guide sets the aim as making higher education in those countries more relevant to the labour market and society, of higher quality and more modern, and links it to the EU's Global Gateway strategy, to the Sustainable Development Goals and to the Paris Agreement. The specific objectives include graduate employability, inclusive access to higher education, the training of teachers and university staff, better governance and internationalisation of institutions, and regional cooperation between universities of neighbouring countries.

The three strands

Since the 2021–2027 programme began, CBHE has been split into three strands of increasing size and ambition. The grant is a lump sum within the following ranges.

Strand	Purpose	EU grant per project	Usual duration
1. Fostering access to cooperation	Bring in institutions with little international experience, often in less developed countries or remote regions; strengthen management, teaching and access for disadvantaged students	€200,000 to €400,000	24 or 36 months
2. Partnerships for transformation	Innovative curricula and teaching methods, Bologna-type reforms, work placements, incubators, staff training, internationalisation and governance	€400,000 to €800,000	24 or 36 months
3. Structural reform projects	Reform of a national higher education system, with the national authorities (usually the ministry) as partners	€600,000 to €1,000,000	36 or 48 months

Strand 1 is the entry point for institutions with little international experience. Strand 3 only works if a ministry wants the reform and commits people to it.

Who can take part, and where

Two groups of countries are involved. On one side are the EU Member States and the third countries associated to Erasmus+ (such as Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, North Macedonia, Serbia and Türkiye). On the other are the third countries not associated to the programme in the eligible regions: the Western Balkans, the Eastern Neighbourhood (Belarus is excluded), the South Mediterranean, Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, the Pacific, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Within Asia, the Middle East and the Pacific, only part of the countries are eligible; the Programme Guide lists them.

Any public or private organisation active in higher education or in the labour market can be a partner: universities, but also employers, chambers of commerce, NGOs and, in Strand 3, ministries. Only a higher education institution, or an association or network of institutions, may act as coordinator, and an organisation can coordinate no more than two proposals in the same call.

The minimum consortium

Strands 1 and 2, multi-country projects: at least two EU or associated countries, each with at least one university, and at least two eligible third countries, each with at least two universities.
Strands 1 and 2, national projects: the same European side, plus one eligible third country with at least two universities. National projects are only open in some regions; the Western Balkans, Latin America and the Caribbean accept multi-country projects only.
Strand 3: at least two EU or associated countries, each with at least one university, and at least one eligible third country, where each participating third country brings at least two universities and its competent national authority.

In every consortium, the organisations from the eligible third countries must be equal to or more numerous than those from the EU and associated countries. Associated partners, which contribute without receiving funds, do not count towards these minimums.

Money is also shared out geographically. Roughly 90% of the budget goes to national and regional projects and about 10% to cross-regional ones, each strand has an indicative budget per region, and in Sub-Saharan Africa no single country may take more than 8% of the region's funding in Strands 1 and 2.

What the grant can and cannot pay for

Because the grant is a lump sum, the consortium does not report every receipt; it is paid against the work packages and deliverables agreed in the grant. The rules still shape the project:

Equipment must be directly relevant to the project, bought no later than twelve months before the end, and is capped at 35% of the EU grant.
Subcontracting is capped at 10% of the grant.
Mobility is only eligible for students and staff from the eligible third countries, normally for at least a week. Travel between European partners is not funded.
New programmes built by the project must be accredited or licensed before the end of the funding period, and new courses must actually run for at least a third of the project's duration. A curriculum that exists only on paper at the final report is a failure under the rules.

How proposals are scored

Applications are submitted through the EU Funding & Tenders Portal and assessed for the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA), which manages the action. For the 2026 call (ERASMUS-EDU-2026-CBHE) the deadline was 10 February 2026, at 17:00 Brussels time; the next call's date is published on the portal. Experts score each proposal against four criteria:

Criterion	Maximum	Minimum required
Relevance of the project	30	15
Quality of project design and implementation	30	15
Quality of the partnership and cooperation arrangements	20	10
Sustainability, impact and dissemination	20	10

A proposal needs at least 60 points in total. Ties are broken by relevance, then design, then impact. Shortlisted proposals are then sent to the EU Delegations in the partner countries, which can flag a project that duplicates another or does not fit national priorities.

What makes a credible bid

The scoring grid rewards the same things that make any partnership work, which we discuss in our guide to evaluating university partnerships. In practice, the proposals that do well tend to share a few features.

The need comes from the partner universities. Relevance is the heaviest criterion. A project designed in Europe and then offered to partners reads that way. Evidence of the need, such as employer surveys, accreditation reports or national strategies, should come from the partner country.
Roles follow capacity. Reviewers look for a real division of work, including who holds the budget for local activities. The issues of authorship, ownership and fair shares we describe in fair research collaboration apply here too.
The ministry or accreditor is involved early. Since new programmes must be accredited before the project ends, the national quality agency's timetable is part of the plan, not an afterthought.
Something survives the grant. Sustainability is a scored criterion. Budget lines taken over by the university, a programme that keeps enrolling students, and staff who stay are what reviewers look for, not a closing conference.
Measurable results. Indicators such as the number of accredited programmes, staff trained or students enrolled in the new courses should be defined at the start, with a baseline.

Where CBHE fits

Erasmus+ also funds individual mobility and Erasmus Mundus joint master's degrees; CBHE is the instrument aimed at institutions. For the longer history of this kind of aid, from the US land-grant model to the Erasmus+ era, see our overview of university partnerships for development.

Rules change slightly every year. Before starting a proposal, read the current Programme Guide and the call document on the Funding & Tenders Portal; this article reflects the 2026 edition.

Sources

European Commission, Erasmus+ Programme Guide 2026, Part B, Capacity building in the field of higher education (consulted 12 November 2026).
European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA), call ERASMUS-EDU-2026-CBHE, EU Funding & Tenders Portal.
European Commission, Global Gateway strategy, Joint Communication JOIN(2021) 30.