How to send your PIF and answer an Erasmus+ partner call

An invented scenario, but a familiar one. A trainer at a small adult education centre finds a partner request on a Thursday night: a KA210 on digital skills for older learners, three partners wanted, reply by Sunday. She writes a warm email with the subject line "Erasmus", attaches a PIF file called "PIF_final_v3_NEW" from a project two years ago, and sends it. The coordinator receives forty replies that weekend. Hers says nothing about the action, the role she could take or why her centre fits. The file lists a director who retired last spring. She never hears back.

Nothing in that email was wrong in spirit. It simply made the coordinator do the work. A coordinator who replies to you is about to put your organisation's facts into an application. Entering your OID in the form automatically fills in the information you gave when you registered (Programme Guide 2026, p. 414), and applicants show their operational capacity through what they write about every organisation and its staff (Programme Guide 2026, p. 424). An email that is quick to judge, and a PIF that is current, make that decision easy.

The PIF, or Partner Identification Form, is a common practice, not an official Erasmus+ form: the Programme Guide 2026 does not use the term. This guide covers the step after you have one: where to send it, what to write, when to follow up and how to tell a genuine call from a dubious offer. The Erasmus+ Programme Guide 2027 had not been published when we checked on 11 November 2026: the Commission's Programme Guide page still showed "Version 1 of 12.11.2025" as the current version, so the rules below come from the 2026 Guide.

No PIF yet? Start from a clean structure with a filled fictional example. Get the free PIF template

Answer a call through the channel it was posted on, unless it gives an email address. Each official tool handles contact a little differently.

The Irish National Agency, Léargas, is also clear about what National Agencies do not do: they "don't have the capacity to monitor and directly connect organisations" (Léargas, Partnership Finding page). The search, and the checks, are yours.

Our partner-finding guide explains each official tool in more depth. How to find Erasmus+ partners

• The action and the field. A KA210 Small-scale Partnership and a KA220 Cooperation Partnership have different rules for partners; check which one the call means.
• The two deadlines. A partner request has its own closing date, set by the coordinator, and it comes well before the Erasmus+ deadline itself, which for National Agency actions is always at 12:00:00 midday Brussels time (Programme Guide 2026, p. 434).
• What the call asks for. Calls often set their own conditions. One Otlas request we read in November 2026 asked only for newcomers near a UNESCO site, and for a short presentation confirming both. Answer exactly that first.
• Your own room. One OID cannot be involved in more than 10 KA220 or 5 KA210 applications per deadline to National Agencies in school education, VET, adult education and youth, as applicant or partner (Programme Guide 2026, pp. 237, 245). Count the applications you have already said yes to.
• Who is asking. Look the coordinator up on the Erasmus+ Project Results Platform, which gives access to information on all projects funded under Erasmus+ (Programme Guide 2026, p. 25).

Not sure which action a call is for? Our comparison sets out both, rule by rule. KA210 or KA220: the differences

There is no official template for this email. What follows is our advice, built from what coordinators need to decide and from what public calls ask for. One partner request we read on Otlas, for example, asked respondents to present their organisation and expertise and to share their PIF, and a sample partner call uploaded to Otlas ends by asking interested organisations to "briefly introduce your organisation and your interest in the topic".

1. Subject line: the action, the call title and your country. For example: "KA210 partner call 'Digital skills 60+': adult education centre, [country]". A coordinator sorting forty replies can find yours again.
2. First line: which call you are answering and where you saw it.
3. Who you are, in three sentences: legal name, type of organisation, city and country, what you do and with whom.
4. Why you fit this call: one or two concrete facts linked to its topic or its conditions, such as a target group you already work with or a past project.
5. The role you can take: partner, host of an activity, lead of one result. Say if you cannot take on something.
6. Your PIF: one link to the current version, or one PDF, named clearly.
7. The practical details: your OID (and PIC if the action uses it), the contact person and the best way to reach them.
8. A clear next step: for example, a short online call in the next two weeks.

A fictional example, written by us. Every item in brackets is a placeholder:

• Subject: KA210 partner call "[call title]": [type of organisation], [country]
• Dear [name], I am replying to your partner request on [platform], deadline [date].
• [Organisation name] is a [type of organisation] in [city, country] working with [target group] since [year].
• Your call fits our work on [topic]: in [year] we ran [activity] with [number] [participants].
• We could act as a partner and host the [activity] in [city].
• Our PIF, with our OID [E1234567], key staff and past projects, is here: [link]. Our contact person is [name, role, email].
• Would a 20-minute call on [date] or [date] suit you? Kind regards, [name, role, organisation]

Either works, if the coordinator can read it and copy from it. A PDF is easy to read and forward; text in a Word file or a web page is easier to paste into an application form. Whatever you send, the facts must be current, because they will end up in someone else's application.

What to have ready follows from what the application asks. Applicants show operational capacity through a general presentation of the organisations, the profiles of the staff responsible for managing and implementing the project, and a description of the consortium (Programme Guide 2026, p. 424). For grants over €60,000, applicants to National Agencies are recommended to submit a list of the participating organisations' publications, if any, and an exhaustive list of previous and ongoing projects connected to the field or the action over the past four years (Programme Guide 2026, p. 424).

• Include: legal name exactly as registered, OID (and PIC if you have one), address, legal representative, contact person, a short description, key staff with their roles, and past projects.
• Leave out at this stage: bank details. In the official Identification Form uploaded to the Organisation Registration System, banking details are needed only for the coordinator (Programme Guide 2026, p. 415).
• Do not send: your EU Login password or access to your projects in the Erasmus+ IT tools. The Portuguese National Agency for education and training lists a request for that access as a warning sign (Agência Nacional Erasmus+ Educação e Formação, "Sinais de alerta").

Before you send it, run the checks coordinators most often have to chase. The 18-point PIF checklist

A coordinator is choosing partners they will have to defend. Evaluators score the quality of the partnership and the cooperation arrangements in both KA210 and KA220, looking among other things at an appropriate mix of organisations in terms of profile and at a task allocation that shows the commitment and active contribution of all of them (Programme Guide 2026, pp. 241, 249). In practice, they check:

• That your codes and name are right. An invalid OID is one of the grounds for non-admissibility (Programme Guide 2026, p. 416).
• That you exist beyond the PIF. In case of doubt, a National Agency may use other sources to assess operational capacity, including information from the organisation's website or social media profiles (Programme Guide 2026, p. 424). Coordinators look there too.
• That your experience is real. Projects you name can be looked up on the Project Results Platform (Programme Guide 2026, p. 25).
• That your staff fit the tasks. Staff profiles, with qualifications and experience, are part of how operational capacity is shown (Programme Guide 2026, p. 424).
• That you can be reached. A contact person who answers within days is, for a coordinator under deadline pressure, a fact as important as any other.

Coordinators may also ask for a mandate or a signed declaration later. Our guide lists which documents and when. Erasmus+ partner documents

No official rule sets how long to wait, so this section is our advice. Work back from the partner request's own closing date and from the Erasmus+ deadline, which is fixed at 12:00:00 Brussels time for National Agency actions (Programme Guide 2026, p. 434).

Most partner calls are genuine. But National Agencies have warned in 2026 about offers that use the PIF as bait. In a January 2026 information event for KA210 newcomers, the German National Agency for school education (PAD) showed an email it described as a dubious offer, under the subject line "Become a Coordinator for a High-Quality KA2 Project – We write, you coordinate", and asked organisations to check offers of this kind carefully (PAD, KA210 information event, 12 January 2026, slide 14).

The same email promised "Zero Workload for You" and a "60% success rate". Here is why offers like it are a problem, and the other warning signs official sources name:

• Someone else writes the application. Applicants are strongly advised against relying on external entities or individuals for drafting the application, and no other organisations or external individuals can be paid or otherwise compensated for drafting it or any later report (Programme Guide 2026, p. 428).
• The same project for many partnerships. All applications must contain original content authored by the applicant or partners, and proposals are automatically screened for double funding and plagiarism (Programme Guide 2026, p. 428). Almost identical or similar applications to National Agencies may all be rejected (Programme Guide 2026, p. 428).
• Your OID used without a clear yes. 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).
• Advice to register a second OID. Using multiple OIDs for the same entity may qualify as misrepresentation and lead to rejection (Programme Guide 2026, p. 415).
• A claim to act for the National Agency. The Portuguese National Agency warns against people who present themselves as acting on its behalf, and notes that it is easy to add the Erasmus+ name and the EU flag to any message or email signature (Agência Nacional Erasmus+ Educação e Formação, "Sinais de alerta", our summary of the Portuguese text).
• A request for access to your projects in the Erasmus+ IT tools, or pressure that Erasmus+ is too hard to manage alone. Both are on the same Portuguese list of warning signs (Agência Nacional Erasmus+ Educação e Formação, "Sinais de alerta").
• Paid services sold as a shortcut. On 5 March 2026 the Polish National Agency (FRSE) said it does not work with any commercial body offering paid training or advice on Erasmus+, that paid courses and intermediaries do not increase the chance of funding, and that it does not recommend outsourcing project documents to commercial bodies, including those using artificial intelligence (FRSE statement, 5 March 2026, our summary of the Polish text).

Some problems only show up later. In a February 2026 recommendation, the Erasmus+ user advisory board at the German National Agency for VET and adult education (NA beim BIBB) described "dubious actors" as organisations that systematically fail to meet contractual obligations, for example by repeatedly withholding project funds, not delivering outputs or refusing to communicate, as reported by different partners across several projects (Erasmus+ Nutzerbeirat, recommendation of 17 February 2026, our summary of the German text). That is one more reason to look up a coordinator's past projects and to ask their former partners.

Your National Agency is the authority to ask. The Commission keeps the list. Erasmus+ National Agencies: who to ask

Answering partner calls is a volume game. In one season you may send your PIF to fifteen coordinators. Each one saves it, forwards it to a colleague and opens it again weeks later, on the night they fill in the form. Every copy is a snapshot: the address you had, the director you had, the projects you had finished by then. When something changes, fifteen copies are wrong at once, and you cannot reach most of them.

The facts in your PIF become someone else's application. Your OID fills in your registration data in their form (Programme Guide 2026, p. 414), and an invalid OID can make an application inadmissible (Programme Guide 2026, p. 416). The email gets you noticed; a PIF that is still right on deadline day keeps you in the partnership.

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 that flags gaps before you send it (a check of the PIF, not a prediction of funding), PDF and Word export when a coordinator asks for a file, and copy for any field. It will not find partners or write applications for you; 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