Erasmus+ Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVE): How the Application Works

Centres of Vocational Excellence sit at the top end of Erasmus+ partnership funding. A single project can receive up to EUR 4 million, which is ten times the largest KA220 Cooperation Partnership, and in exchange the rules on who must be in the consortium, what activities it runs and how the proposal is scored are much stricter. This page sets out those rules from the Erasmus+ Programme Guide 2026 and the 2026 call. The 2026 deadline has passed, so treat the call facts as the template for planning a 2027 bid, and check the 2027 Programme Guide when it is published before fixing any dates.

What a Centre of Vocational Excellence is

A CoVE is a transnational collaborative network that brings together local and regional vocational education and training (VET) stakeholders, including VET institutions, companies, social partners, authorities, higher education institutions and research institutes, in what the Programme Guide calls strong and broad partnerships that create comprehensive skills ecosystems for innovation, regional development and social inclusion. The action belongs to the Partnerships for Excellence family of Key Action 2 and is managed centrally: proposals go to the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) through the Funding & Tenders Portal, not to a National Agency. According to the Commission, 69 CoVE projects had been funded since 2019 as of March 2026, spread across more than 30 countries.

The 2026 call in one table

Eligibility rules that get bids rejected

The consortium: 8 applicants, 4 countries, the right mix in each

The partnership must include at least 8 applicants, meaning beneficiaries, from at least 4 EU Member States or third countries associated to the Programme. The rule most often misread is the per-country requirement: each participating country must include at least one enterprise, industry, other employer or sector representative organisation, and at least one VET provider at secondary or tertiary level. A consortium of eight VET schools from four countries, or of eight organisations where one country has no employer-side partner, is ineligible regardless of quality. The coordinator must be from an EU Member State or an associated third country.

Who counts as an applicant, and who can only be an associated partner

Any public or private legal entity active in VET or the world of work can apply, for example VET providers, companies, employers, sector organisations, research institutes and innovation agencies. Organisations from third countries not associated to the Programme can take part only as associated partners, which contribute but do not receive EU funding and do not count toward the minimum of eight. Organisations from Belarus are not eligible. Entities linked to a beneficiary can take part as affiliated entities.

A minimum-compliant consortium map

Finding the missing employer or VET provider in one country is the typical gap. The channels in the partner-search guide work for Erasmus+ as well as Horizon Europe, and every applicant needs a validated PIC before submission.

Money: a lump sum of up to EUR 4 million at 80 percent

CoVE follows a lump sum funding model. The single lump sum is determined for each grant from the estimated budget of the proposed action, the evaluation result and a funding rate of 80 percent. Applicants fill in a detailed budget table by beneficiary and work package, and the proposal must show the share of the lump sum per work package and, within each work package, per beneficiary and affiliated entity. Estimated costs can cover staff, travel and subsistence, equipment, subcontracting and other costs such as dissemination, publishing or translation. Two things are not allowed: financial support to third parties in the form of grants or prizes, and costs for financial audits. After evaluation, the authorising officer fixes the lump sum taking the experts’ findings into account, so an overestimated budget can be reduced.

Because payment follows work packages, the work plan and the budget are designed together. The logic is the same as for Horizon Europe lump sums, worked through line by line in the lump-sum budget guide, and the Erasmus+ version is summarised in the glossary.

The three activity clusters

Every CoVE must cover all three clusters, with a minimum number of activities in each: at least 4 under teaching and learning, at least 3 under cooperation and partnership, and at least 2 under governance and funding. The Programme Guide lists the menu to choose from.

How proposals are scored: 35, 25, 20, 20

Relevance carries more than a third of the points and has the highest minimum, and its aspects are regional as much as educational: a CoVE is expected to show how it plugs into regional development, innovation and smart specialisation, not only how it improves teaching. The partnership criterion, at 20 points, asks whether the configuration and the geographical spread make sense, so employer partners who appear only as names on the cover page cost points under a criterion that has its own minimum.

Part B: structure and a page budget

The Erasmus+ application form for this type of grant sets 120 pages for Part B unless the call document provides otherwise, with a minimum font of Arial 9 points, A4 pages and margins of at least 15 mm. Supporting documents submitted as annexes do not count, and if an over-length file is not shortened after the automatic warning, the excess pages are made invisible to evaluators. The form follows the award criteria:

Cover page and project summary
1. RELEVANCE
   1.1 Background and general objectives
   1.2 Needs analysis and specific objectives
   1.3 Complementarity with other actions and innovation, European added value
2. QUALITY
   2.1 Project design and implementation
       2.1.1 Concept and methodology
       2.1.2 Project management, quality assurance, monitoring and evaluation
       2.1.3 Project teams, staff and experts
       2.1.4 Cost effectiveness and financial management
       2.1.5 Risk management
   2.2 Partnership and cooperation arrangements
       2.2.1 Consortium set-up
       2.2.2 Consortium management and decision-making
3. IMPACT
   3.1 Impact and ambition
   3.2 Communication, dissemination and visibility
   3.3 Sustainability and continuation
4. WORK PLAN, WORK PACKAGES, ACTIVITIES, RESOURCES AND TIMING
   4.1 Work plan
   4.2 Work packages, activities, resources and timing
       (one table per work package; events, meetings and mobility; timetable)
5. OTHER
   5.1 Ethics
   5.2 Security
6. DECLARATIONS
Annexes (outside the page limit)

A sensible starting allocation, not an official split, gives sections 1 and 3 roughly the weight their points carry and leaves the largest share for section 4, where each cluster of activities becomes a work package with tasks, deliverables and a lump-sum share. The work package worked example shows the level of detail evaluators expect in those tables, and a common structure for a 48-month CoVE is one management work package, one work package per activity cluster, and one for impact, dissemination and sustainability.

Planning a bid for the next call

The 2025 call closed in June and the 2026 call in September, so do not plan against a remembered date. A realistic sequence working back from whatever deadline the 2027 call sets:

1. When the 2027 Programme Guide is published: check whether the eligibility, maximum grant, criteria and page limit have changed, and read the call document on the Portal.
2. About nine months before the deadline: lock the consortium country by country against the employer-plus-VET-provider rule and confirm every PIC.
3. Seven months before: choose the activities, at least 4, 3 and 2 per cluster, and turn them into work packages.
4. Five months before: build the detailed budget table by work package and beneficiary, remembering the 80 percent funding rate.
5. Three months before: draft Part B section by section against the award criteria and the regional dimension.
6. One month before: external review against the minimum scores; cut to the page limit; collect annexes.
7. Final week: submit at least 48 hours before 17:00 Brussels time.

CoVE, Alliances for Innovation and KA220 compared

For smaller education partnerships through National Agencies, see the KA220 application guide. Organisations whose work is about rights, equality or civic participation rather than skills should look at the CERV programme. Live Erasmus+ calls, including the next CoVE call when it opens, are listed in the open calls database, and research offices supporting several bids can use Proposia’s institutional plans.