PIF, PIC, OID and the other forms, untangled

An invented scenario, but a familiar one. A coordinator at a small adult education centre has agreed to join a Cooperation Partnership led by a school in another country. On Monday the lead school writes: please send your PIF, confirm your OID, tell us if you have a PIC, check that your Identification Form is validated, and sign the Accession Form before Friday. Five names, three of them starting with the same letter. She sends a two-year-old PIF and asks a colleague what the rest mean. Nobody is quite sure.

The confusion is understandable, because the five things are of three different kinds. Two are official codes that identify your organisation. One is an official form you upload once, when you register. One is an official form you sign for a specific application. And one, the PIF, is not an official document at all: it is the profile partners swap in practice before any application exists.

This guide puts them side by side, says who issues each one, where it lives and when you need it, and points out the mix-ups that cost time before a deadline. 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 2026 Guide.

No. A search of the full Erasmus+ Programme Guide 2026 finds neither "PIF" nor "Partner Identification Form". The PIF is a common practice: a profile that organisations exchange while they look for partners, before any application form is opened. There is no single official template, and coordinators, universities and platforms each publish their own.

The National Erasmus+ Office in Ukraine describes the PIF, in a 2026 presentation, as a short form for presenting an organisation during the search for partners for international projects. It adds that, unlike a project concept note, the PIF focuses on the organisation's capacity, experience and profile rather than on a project idea (National Erasmus+ Office in Ukraine, "Робота з PIF", slide 2; our translation).

In the public templates we opened, the codes sit at the top of the PIF. The template from the Ukrainian office has rows for "PIC #" and "OID #" next to the legal name, address and registration number (slides 9–10). A template published by a Malta-based organisation, Learnkey, starts with "PIC" and "OID" fields, then the full legal name in the national language and in Latin characters, a profile, background and experience, and the legal representative (Learnkey, Erasmus+ Partner Identification Form).

Need a clean structure? Our free template comes in Word and PDF, with a filled fictional example. Get the free PIF template

It depends on which agency manages the action. For actions managed by National Agencies, applicants register in the Organisation Registration system and receive an OID. For actions managed by the Executive Agency, EACEA, applicants, affiliated entities and associated partners register in the Funding & Tenders Portal and receive a PIC (Programme Guide 2026, p. 413).

• Most KA210 Small-scale Partnerships and KA220 Cooperation Partnerships in education, training and youth go to the National Agency of the country where the applicant is established, so the OID applies (Programme Guide 2026, pp. 238, 246).
• Cooperation Partnerships submitted by European NGOs, and partnerships in the field of sport, go to EACEA through the Funding & Tenders Portal, so the PIC applies (Programme Guide 2026, pp. 238, 246).
• Youth Exchanges are submitted to the National Agency of the country where the applicant is established (Programme Guide 2026, p. 157).
• A PIC obtained in another EU programme is valid for Erasmus+, so you do not register again (Programme Guide 2026, p. 413).

How to find your OID or PIC, what to do if the person who registered has left, and how consent works are covered in our guide to the two codes. OID and PIC in depth

No, they are different documents with similar names. The Identification Form is official: you upload it once to the Organisation Registration system as part of registration, and the National Agencies validate it (Programme Guide 2026, p. 415). A PIF is the informal profile you send to partners.

• In a consortium application, every member provides the Identification Form, but only the coordinator provides banking details (Programme Guide 2026, p. 415).
• The form is filled in with reference to the country where the bank is located, even if the applicant is registered in another country (Programme Guide 2026, p. 415).
• The Commission page the Guide links to offers three business partner forms, for a natural person, private companies and a public law body, each dated 10 April 2025. It says they replace the previous LEF and BAF forms, which were accepted for validation until the end of 2025 (European Commission, "Business partners – legal entities and bank accounts").

The Accession Form is how a partner formally joins one application. In projects with several beneficiaries, the coordinator signs the grant agreement and is the only contact point for the agency, and every other organisation that takes part as a co-beneficiary signs an accession form to give the coordinator that role (Programme Guide 2026, p. 436).

• Timing: it should be provided with the application for each co-beneficiary. If it is not, the National Agency can ask for it later with an obligatory deadline, and the grant agreement cannot be signed until every co-beneficiary has provided it (Programme Guide 2026, p. 433).
• It also carries the partner's own Declaration on Honour: for actions managed by National Agencies, the co-beneficiaries' declaration on honour is incorporated in the Accession form (Programme Guide 2026, p. 421).
• Youth Exchanges: participating organisations sign an accession form to the applicant organisation, at application stage and at the latest by grant signature (Programme Guide 2026, p. 156, footnote 155).
• Exception: accession forms are not required from partner organisations in other countries in mobility projects for higher education, VET, school education and adult education staff, but members of national consortia in those fields must provide one (Programme Guide 2026, p. 436).

The form is specific to one project. The version published on the website of JUGEND für Europa, in Germany, for Erasmus+ Youth projects, asks the partner for its legal name, its OID number and legal address, and for the coordinator's legal name and the application's form ID number, and mandates the coordinator "to act as the coordinator and to submit and sign in our name and on our behalf the project application" (JUGEND für Europa, Accession Form and Declaration on Honour for co-beneficiaries, Part I).

Mandates, declarations and the other papers coordinators may ask for are listed in our partner documents guide. Erasmus+ partner documents

The rules set the official steps; the PIF fits in where partner searches happen in practice. A typical sequence for a project with a National Agency:

1. Register once. The legal representative uses an EU Login account to register in the Organisation Registration system and receives the OID (Programme Guide 2026, p. 414). The Identification Form is uploaded as part of that registration (Programme Guide 2026, p. 415).
2. Prepare your PIF. Common practice: copy the OID, PIC, legal name and address from the registration, then add contacts, staff and experience.
3. Find partners and send the PIF. Coordinators use it to choose partners; the official partner-finding tools are in our guide below.
4. Agree to be named. The coordinator needs your explicit consent to use your OID in the application form, and may be disqualified without it in case of disagreement (Programme Guide 2026, p. 414).
5. Sign the Accession Form for that application (Programme Guide 2026, p. 433).
6. If the project is funded, the coordinator signs the grant agreement once every co-beneficiary's form is in (Programme Guide 2026, p. 433).

Where to look for partners, by field: How to find Erasmus+ partners

• A PIC where an OID is needed. In National Agency forms, entering the OID fills in your registration data automatically (Programme Guide 2026, p. 414), and an invalid OID is a ground for non-admissibility (Programme Guide 2026, p. 416).
• An old code on an old PIF. The registration data in the form comes from the system, not from your PIF, so a PIF that disagrees with your registration sends the coordinator checking instead of writing.
• A second registration to solve a login problem. Multiple registrations, or several OIDs for the same entity, may qualify as misrepresentation and lead to rejection from the affected award procedures (Programme Guide 2026, p. 415).
• Treating the Identification Form as a PIF, or the other way round. One is uploaded once to the registration system and validated (Programme Guide 2026, p. 415); the other is a profile you send to partners and keep current yourself.
• Signing an Accession Form before you know the project. It includes a mandate for the coordinator (Programme Guide 2026, p. 433), and in the JUGEND für Europa version that mandate is to submit and sign the application on your behalf (JUGEND für Europa, Accession Form, Part I).

Our checklist turns these identity checks, and the others, into 18 points to tick before you send. Get the PIF checklist

Of the five documents, the PIF is the only one no agency checks, and the one that travels furthest. It is forwarded, saved in folders and opened again on the night a coordinator fills in the application form. The OID, the PIC and the Identification Form live in EU systems with one current version each. Your PIF has as many versions as there are copies in other people's inboxes.

The facts in it end up in someone else's application, next to data the form pulls from your registration (Programme Guide 2026, p. 414). Keeping your PIF identical to your registration, and keeping it current, is the part of the paperwork that only you can do.

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, PDF and Word export when a coordinator needs a file, and copy for any field, so your OID and PIC go into a form exactly as written. It will not register your organisation, sign forms or write 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