How to fill in an Erasmus+ PIF, field by field

An invented scenario, but a familiar one. It is late February. A coordinator in another country is filling in a partnership application, three days before the deadline. She has PIFs from four partners open in four windows. Yours says your organisation has "around 20 staff", gives an OID with one digit missing, lists a contact person who left last summer, and describes your work in two paragraphs copied from your website. She emails you at 11 at night. Nobody answers until Monday. By then, she has asked another organisation.

A PIF, or Partner Identification Form, is the short profile organisations exchange when they look for Erasmus+ partners: identity, codes, contacts, what you do, who works on projects and what you have done before. It is common practice, not an official EU form. The Erasmus+ Programme Guide 2026 does not use the term, and there is no single official template. Do not confuse it with the Identification Form that applicants upload to the Organisation Registration System, which the National Agencies validate (Programme Guide 2026, p. 415).

The PIF still matters, because its facts travel into the official application. Entering an OID into the application form fills in the information given at registration automatically (Programme Guide 2026, p. 414). And for applications to National Agencies, applicants show their operational capacity through the application form, for example with a general presentation of the organisations and the profiles, qualifications and experience, of the staff who will manage and carry out the project (Programme Guide 2026, p. 424). Most of that text starts life in somebody's PIF.

The Erasmus+ Programme Guide 2027 had not been published when we checked on 11 November 2026: the Commission's Programme Guide page still showed the 2026 Guide, version 1 of 12 November 2025, as the current version. The rules below come from that Guide. Want a clean file to fill in while you read? Get the free PIF template (Word and PDF)

Because the PIF is not an official form, every template is a little different. The public templates we looked at share the same backbone. A template hosted on SALTO-Youth's Otlas, titled "Partner Organisation Details", asks for the OID, legal name, country, city, website, whether the organisation is a public body or a non-profit, its type and main sector, a short presentation, its activities and experience, its key staff, and its legal representative and contact person. A guide on PIFs published in 2026 by the National Erasmus+ Office in Ukraine lists much the same, and adds past EU-funded projects, the organisation's potential role in a project and its motivation (National Erasmus+ Office in Ukraine, "Робота з PIF", 2026, slides 3, 9 to 13).

Write the legal name exactly as it appears in your registration, including punctuation, abbreviations and the legal form. Many templates ask for it twice, in the national language and in Latin characters, plus an acronym. That is because the official record is what the application form will show: entering an OID fills in all the information the organisation gave at registration (Programme Guide 2026, p. 414).

• OID. For actions managed by National Agencies, organisations register in the Organisation Registration System for Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps and receive an Organisation ID (Programme Guide 2026, p. 414). The Guide defines the OID as a unique number for an organisation, used when applying for an accreditation or grant under actions managed by National Agencies (Programme Guide 2026, p. 448).
• PIC. For actions managed by the European Education and Culture Executive Agency, organisations register in the Funding & Tenders Portal and receive a Participant Identification Code, a 9-digit identifier (Programme Guide 2026, pp. 413–414). If you have one, put it in the PIF too; coordinators of EACEA projects will need it.
• One OID only. Organisations should register only once, and using several OIDs for the same entity may qualify as misrepresentation and lead to rejection (Programme Guide 2026, pp. 414–415).
• Check before you send. Organisations can check their OID, or change the information linked to it, in the Organisation Registration System (Programme Guide 2026, p. 414).

Not sure which code is which? Our guide sets out the OID and the PIC side by side. OID or PIC: which code goes where

Most templates ask two yes or no questions, "Is the organisation a public body?" and "Is the organisation a non-profit?", then a type, such as school, higher education institution, NGO, youth organisation or company, and a main sector. Answer from your statutes or your entry in the national register, not from how you see yourselves. The 2026 Cooperation Partnership form lists each organisation's type and whether it is a newcomer in its partnership composition table, and asks for the applicant's establishment or registration date (2026 KA220-SCH application form template, pp. 6, 8).

Size is not a fixed field everywhere, but many PIFs give the number of staff and learners. A newcomer, in the Guide's words, is any participating organisation that has not previously received support in a given type of action, as coordinator or partner (Programme Guide 2026, p. 447). Being one is not a weakness: in both KA210 and KA220, evaluators look at the extent to which the project involves newcomers and less experienced organisations (Programme Guide 2026, pp. 241, 249).

The two roles are different, and the templates keep them apart. A PIF published by a Catalan secondary and VET school, for example, labels them like this:

• Legal representative: usually the director, president, rector or head teacher, the person who signs for the organisation. In the Programme Guide it is the legal representative who registers the organisation in the Organisation Registration System (Programme Guide 2026, p. 414).
• Contact person: the person who will actually work on the project, answer the coordinator and attend meetings. The SALTO-hosted template also has a separate line for a contact person for Online Language Support.
• For each: title, first name, family name, position, email and phone.

This is the field coordinators copy most. The questions the official form asks show what it needs to answer. In the 2024 Small-scale Partnership application form, every participating organisation, applicant or partner, had a "Background and experience" block with these questions (2024 KA210-YOU application form template, pp. 6–7):

• Please briefly present your organisation.
• What are the organisation's main activities?
• What are the organisation's activities in the field of this application?
• What profiles and age groups of learners are concerned by the organisation’s work?
• How many years of experience does the organisation have working in the field of this application?

Write your PIF so that each of these has a clear answer. The SALTO-hosted template allows up to 5,000 characters for the presentation; nobody needs that many. The National Erasmus+ Office in Ukraine recommends clarity, brevity and structure, a focus on evidence of what the organisation can do, and adapting the PIF to each request or partner ("Робота з PIF", 2026, slide 6, our translation).

A fictional example, for an invented organisation: "Northfield Youth Hub is a non-profit youth association founded in 2015 in [city], [country]. We run a youth centre open five days a week, street-based youth work in two neighbourhoods and a volunteering programme. We work with young people aged 13 to 25, about a third of them from families on low incomes. Our team of 9 staff and 35 volunteers reaches around 500 young people a year (2026). We have worked in non-formal education for 11 years and in Erasmus+ youth projects since 2019."

Separate what you always do from what is relevant to this project. Many templates ask the second question directly, as "What are the activities and experience of the organisation in the areas relevant for this application?" (National Erasmus+ Office in Ukraine, "Робота з PIF", 2026, slide 11). The 2024 form asked for activities in the field of the application and years of experience in that field (2024 KA210-YOU application form template, p. 6).

• Activities: name concrete, regular things, such as courses, clubs, services, events and publications, with how often they happen.
• Target groups: who, how old and how many. If you work with people with fewer opportunities, say how, without labels that would embarrass the people concerned.
• Experience: years in the field, and what changed because of your work, in numbers where you have them.

Where the call provisions make it relevant, applicants to National Agencies should include information about previous projects and activities, and publications if any, in the application form (Programme Guide 2026, p. 424). In a PIF this is usually a table. The templates we found use columns such as EU programme, year, project identification or contract number, and applicant or beneficiary name (National Erasmus+ Office in Ukraine, "Робота з PIF", 2026, slide 13).

• Give the project number exactly as on the grant agreement or the Project Results Platform, which gives access to information on all projects funded under Erasmus+ (Programme Guide 2026, p. 25).
• Say what your role was: coordinator, partner, or hosting or sending organisation.
• Put the most recent and the most relevant first, and stop at six or eight.
• No previous projects? Write "newcomer to Erasmus+" and list relevant local, national or other international work instead.

Templates usually ask "What are the skills and expertise of key staff/persons involved in this application?" (National Erasmus+ Office in Ukraine, "Робота з PIF", 2026, slide 11). This feeds the staff profiles that show operational capacity: their qualifications and experience (Programme Guide 2026, p. 424).

Then say what your organisation brings. The application form asks the coordinator to explain it. The 2026 Small-scale Partnership form asks "What are the strengths that each partner will bring to the project?" (2026 KA210-SCH application form template, p. 6), and the 2026 Cooperation Partnership form asks how the mix of participating organisations complements each other (2026 KA220-SCH application form template, p. 8). Evaluators score whether the allocation of tasks shows the commitment and active contribution of all participating organisations (Programme Guide 2026, pp. 241, 249).

Planning a small-scale partnership? See how evaluators score the partnership criterion. KA210 award criteria explained

Most PIF problems are not about style. They are facts that are wrong, out of date or impossible to check, and some of them run straight into a rule.

• A legal name that does not match the registration. The application form shows the registered data, not your PIF (Programme Guide 2026, p. 414).
• A wrong, incomplete or second OID. An invalid OID is a ground for non-admissibility (Programme Guide 2026, p. 416), and several OIDs for one entity may qualify as misrepresentation (Programme Guide 2026, p. 415).
• Old contacts. A legal representative or contact person who has left, or an email that nobody reads.
• Inflated experience. Falsely claiming experience or expertise is one of the Guide's examples of misrepresentation (Programme Guide 2026, p. 416, footnote 463).
• Your website pasted in. Marketing copy rarely answers the form's questions about activities, target groups and years of experience.
• No dates. "Over 500 participants" since when? Undated numbers age without anyone noticing.
• Project text in the PIF. The PIF describes your organisation. The project itself must be original content authored by the applicant and partners (Programme Guide 2026, p. 428), so write it with the coordinator, not in your profile.

Our checklist turns these into 18 quick checks, each with the rule behind it. Run the 18 PIF checks

1. Read the coordinator's request: the action, the deadline and the role they offer. Adapt the "relevant activities" paragraph and the "what we bring" lines to it.
2. Send the PIF in a format they can copy from. A PDF is easy to read; text in a Word file or a web page is easy to paste into the form.
3. Give your OID consent in writing, for that project, action and deadline. Applicants must have explicit consent to use another organisation's OID, and may be disqualified if they cannot show it in case of disagreement (Programme Guide 2026, p. 414).
4. Expect follow-up documents. Some coordinators also ask for a mandate or a declaration.

Our guide lists the documents partners are usually asked for, and when. Erasmus+ partner documents

Still looking for a coordinator to send it to? Start with the official partner-finding tools. How to find Erasmus+ partners

The Catalan school PIF quoted above carries a footer on every page that says, in Catalan, that the document may become obsolete once printed, and asks the reader to check that it matches the latest version.

That is the problem with every PIF sent as an attachment. Once it leaves your outbox, it is copied, forwarded and opened again weeks later, on the night someone fills in an application form. Your registered data can be corrected in the Organisation Registration System (Programme Guide 2026, p. 414); the copies of your PIF in other people's folders cannot.

Check when the next deadlines fall, so the review happens in time. Erasmus+ deadlines

That is the part MyPIF will do. It will keep your organisation's PIF behind one permanent link that always opens the latest version, with version history, an AI Quality Score from 1 to 10 on 4 criteria (not a prediction of any funding decision), PDF and Word export when a coordinator needs a file, and copy for any field. It will not write your applications; it keeps your facts right. MyPIF opens soon: join the waiting list before 1 December 2026 and get 2 months of Pro free, no card needed. Join the waiting list: 2 months of Pro free