Europe is investing millions in education, skills, and international cooperation. But how much of that investment is creating opportunities for rural communities? The European Commission's 2026 Erasmus+ selection announcements provide an encouraging picture of continued investment in education and cooperation. University alliances are receiving renewed support, international master's programs are expanding, and capacity-building partnerships are connecting institutions across continents. While these are important achievements, from the perspective of the Ruralities Living Lab, they raise another question: Are we measuring the success of European education investment by the number of projects funded, or by the communities that benefit from them? For rural Europe, the distinction matters.

1. Where is Erasmus+ funding going? Several major 2026 selection announcements illustrate the scale and direction of European investment:

• In July, the European Commission announced funding for 20 European Universities alliances, bringing together 190 higher education institutions. The selected alliances will receive up to €7.2 million each in two-year bridge funding, bringing the total number of supported alliances to 65. The investment reinforces institutional cooperation, shared educational resources, innovative learning pathways, and international mobility.

• The 2026 selections include 37 Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters and 50 Erasmus Mundus Design Measures. These initiatives support internationally integrated higher education, interdisciplinary learning, and opportunities for students to develop specialized skills through cooperation between institutions across countries.

• Capacity Building in Higher Education received €113 million to support international higher education capacity-building projects that address diverse challenges, including digital education, climate-responsive employment, entrepreneurship, institutional modernization, and the blue-green economy.

• Alongside these centrally managed programs, Erasmus+ continues to support learning mobility and cooperation in school education, vocational education and training (VET), adult education, youth, and Sport, although many mobility selections are managed and announced by National Agencies, meaning that their results cannot be captured through a single European-level announcement.

Taken together, these funding streams illustrate the breadth of Erasmus+: from large institutional alliances to local learning opportunities and community-based cooperation. The distribution of funding across educational sectors, however, does not tell us how effectively it reaches different territories.

2. What does this investment mean for rural communities? Education and skills development are often discussed as instruments of economic competitiveness. In rural territories, they also influence something more fundamental: whether people have realistic opportunities to build their futures where they live. Consider the opportunities Erasmus+ can create:

• Adult learning and lifelong skills development - Rural adults may need opportunities to acquire digital competencies, update professional skills, develop enterprises, or transition into new occupations without relocating to urban centers.

• Flexible learning models, community-based training, and cooperation with adult education providers can make lifelong learning more accessible.

• Teachers in rural schools frequently work across small educational communities where access to specialist training, professional networks, and international exchange may be limited. Erasmus+ cooperation can connect these educators with new methodologies, peer networks, digital learning resources, and international experience.

• Rural entrepreneurship, local economic diversification, and skills development are closely connected to the future prosperity of rural economies; agriculture, sustainable tourism, circular production, care services, creative enterprises, and digital employment all require evolving competencies. These educational partnerships can help rural enterprises and communities identify emerging opportunities and develop the skills needed to pursue them.

• Youth participation and international mobility are often limited for young people, who should not have to choose between accessing European opportunities and maintaining connections with their home communities. International mobility can expand horizons, strengthen competencies, and create professional networks. The challenge is to ensure that these experiences can also contribute to opportunities back home.

3. Cooperation between universities and rural territories. European Universities alliances and international academic partnerships offer considerable potential for territorial knowledge exchange. Rural communities can contribute practical knowledge, local challenges, experimentation environments, and opportunities for applied research. But this requires universities to engage with rural actors as partners in knowledge creation, not simply as locations for fieldwork or beneficiaries of outreach.

From opportunity to participation

Yet the potential of Erasmus+ to strengthen rural communities depends on more than the availability of funding. Turning opportunities into meaningful participation requires access to information, experienced partners, administrative resources, and the capacity to navigate increasingly complex application and project management procedures while meeting financial capacity requirements. For many smaller rural organizations, these conditions cannot be taken for granted. The challenge is not necessarily a shortage of innovative ideas or local expertise, but the resources and institutional connections needed to translate them into competitive proposals. This raises a fundamental question: How can European funding become more accessible to the very organizations best positioned to understand and respond to the needs of their communities? This is where the discussion becomes more complicated. European funding programs may be formally accessible to a wide range of organizations, yet eligibility and the practical capacity to participate are not the same thing.....

A small rural association, cooperative, municipality, or adult learning provider may have an excellent idea and strong community relationships but limited experience navigating European funding procedures. Preparing a competitive proposal requires time, specialized knowledge, administrative resources, and access to credible international partnerships. Organizations may also encounter financial and operational constraints, including cash-flow requirements, staffing limitations, and co-financing obligations where applicable.

For smaller rural actors, these barriers can be decisive. Furthermore, there is another challenge: the geography of partnership networks. Organizations already embedded in European cooperation networks are often better positioned to identify opportunities, join consortia, and build on previous experience. Meanwhile, smaller or geographically isolated organizations may struggle to find partners, gain visibility, or participate early enough to influence project design. The result can be a gap between the geographical reach of a funding program and the actual distribution of opportunities it creates.

This is not an argument against investment in large institutions. Universities, research organizations, and established networks play essential roles in advancing European cooperation. Rather, it is an argument for ensuring that their institutional capacity also helps open doors for smaller territorial actors.

From European cooperation to territorial opportunity

At Ruralities Living Lab, we see an important role for place-based cooperation in closing this gap.

Living Labs, local action groups, community organizations, educational institutions, municipalities, and enterprises can help connect European programs with the needs and capabilities of rural territories.

They can bring together stakeholders who rarely participate in the same discussions, identify locally relevant skills needs, support experimentation, and facilitate the transfer of knowledge between institutions and communities.

Crucially, they can also help ensure that educational innovation does not disappear when an individual project ends.

This calls for a shift from treating rural communities primarily as recipients of funded activities toward recognizing them as partners in defining problems, designing solutions, and sustaining results.

The opportunity is not simply to bring more European projects into rural areas. It is to strengthen the local capacity to initiate, participate in, and benefit from European cooperation over time.

The Right to Stay begins with the opportunity to learn

The Right to Stay is not about discouraging mobility or suggesting that people should remain in the places where they were born.

It is about making staying a genuine choice.

That choice depends on access to education, employment, entrepreneurship, public services, connectivity, and meaningful participation in community life.

Erasmus+ can contribute to many of these conditions. But to understand its territorial impact, we need to ask questions that go beyond the published selection statistics.

How many rural organizations participate as full partners rather than occasional stakeholders?

How many rural educators and adult learners gain access to international learning opportunities?

How effectively do university partnerships connect with smaller towns and rural economies?

And how much of the knowledge, capacity, and cooperation developed through funded projects remains embedded in local communities after the funding period?

The 2026 selection announcements do not provide a complete answer to these questions. They tell us which projects and institutions received support, but they do not, by themselves, establish how much funding ultimately reaches rural territories.

That is precisely why the questions deserve attention.

The measure of European investment in education and skills should not be only how many projects are funded, but whether the opportunities they create reach the communities where access to learning, employment, and mobility is most constrained.

For rural Europe, successful educational investment should expand not only the freedom to move, but also the Right to Stay.

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