Erasmus+ opens €28.4 million capacity-building call for VET partnerships

€28.44 million — that is the budget the European Commission has allocated to the 2026 Capacity Building in Vocational Education and Training (CB VET) call under Erasmus+, targeting VET systems in third countries not associated with the programme.

The envelope is split across six regions: the Western Balkans (€8.48 million), Sub-Saharan Africa (€7.5 million), the South-Mediterranean (€6.36 million), Neighbourhood East (€3.8 million), Latin America (€2 million) and the Caribbean (€300,000). Projects run for 36 months with grants of up to €500,000, and every consortium must include at least one VET secondary-education provider.

For institutions in partner countries, the call is one of the more accessible routes to structured European cooperation — the application's technical part is capped at 40 pages, and subcontracting at 10% of the grant.