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    • The FORTHEM European Alliance Announces New Erasmus+ Funding for the Period from 1 November 2026 to 31 October 2028

    The FORTHEM European Alliance Announces New Erasmus+ Funding for the Period from 1 November 2026 to 31 October 2028

    The FORTHEM European Alliance has been awarded new Erasmus+ funding for the period from 1 November 2026 to 31 October 2028. This support from the European Commission will enable the Alliance to continue developing a sustainable joint transnational campus and to deepen cooperation among its partner institutions, with the ambition of further integrating Alliance activities into the everyday academic life of its member universities.

    As part of its new project, FORTHEM NEXUS (Nurturing Excellence and Talent through Exchange with Universities and Society), the Alliance will receive funding of nearly €7.2 million, covering approximately 80% of the total budget. This new phase marks an important milestone: the transition from a project-based cooperation model to a sustainable, structured European university fully integrated within the partner institutions.

    The University of Jyväskylä (Finland) will serve as the overall coordinator of the project for the 2026–2028 period. It succeeds Université Bourgogne Europe, which coordinated the Alliance from 2022 to 2026, following an initial phase led by Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Germany) from 2019 to 2022. This continuity reflects the shared governance model and the strong trust established among FORTHEM’s partner universities.

    FORTHEM NEXUS: A New Step Towards Building the European University of Tomorrow

    After more than seven years of cooperation, the FORTHEM Alliance is reaching a new stage with FORTHEM NEXUS, a project designed to make the common European campus an ever more tangible reality. The ambition is clear: to fully integrate the European dimension into the daily lives of students, doctoral candidates, researchers, and staff, ensuring that mobility opportunities, joint educational programmes, collaborative research projects, and initiatives carried out with socio-economic stakeholders become natural components of university pathways.

    To achieve this goal, the Alliance will focus on several key priorities by 2028: developing mobility opportunities that are better integrated into degree programmes, strengthening pedagogical innovation, providing enhanced support for early-career researchers, consolidating scientific collaborations among partner universities, and increasing its societal impact through initiatives related to democracy, artificial intelligence, entrepreneurship, and service to society.

    Already supported by the engagement of more than 15,000 students across the Alliance’s nine universities, FORTHEM now has the resources to accelerate this momentum and offer its academic community even more opportunities for learning, exchange, and cooperation on a European scale.

    A Strategic Role for Université Bourgogne Europe

    A founding member of the Alliance since 2019, Université Bourgogne Europe (UBE) will continue to play a central role in the implementation of FORTHEM NEXUS.

    UBE will notably co-coordinate two major strategic work areas:

    • Alliance sustainability, with the objective of ensuring the long-term integration of FORTHEM activities into the structures and practices of partner universities;
    • The FORTHEM Academy for Early-Stage Researchers, aimed at strengthening support for doctoral candidates and early-career researchers through training opportunities, networking, and collaborative initiatives at the European level.

    The university will also lead a new internal funding mechanism designed to encourage the emergence of collaborative projects among member institutions and support the development of new European initiatives.

    This involvement confirms UBE’s leading role in the governance of the Alliance and its commitment to building an ambitious, open, and innovative European university.