OLS (Online Linguistic Support) for Erasmus+: 2026 Guide

• Hosted on the EU Academy (since 2022).
• Free for all Erasmus+ participants in mobilities over 14 days.
• Covers the working language of the mobility (study, work or training).
• Includes 24+ languages including all EU official languages plus Arabic, Russian, Ukrainian and others.

• Initial assessment: mandatory before mobility for stays over 14 days.
• Follow-up courses: optional and self-paced.
• Final assessment: removed in 2022 — no longer required.
• Native speakers of the working language are exempt from the initial assessment.

• Participants log in via EU Login on academy.europa.eu.
• Sending institutions send the invitation through the Beneficiary Module.
• Courses include live group sessions, self-paced modules and an AI tutor.

OLS was rebuilt from the ground up when it moved from the standalone 2014–2020 portal onto the EU Academy in late 2022. Most coordinators only notice the cosmetic differences — but several operational changes affect how you brief participants today.

• Single EU Login for OLS, eTwinning, EU Academy, EU Survey and the Online Learning Agreement — one credential covers the whole stack.
• Self-enrolment instead of beneficiary-managed licences — coordinators no longer allocate licence codes per cohort.
• AI tutor (Lia) for conversational practice in selected language pairs since 2024.
• Live tutored sessions added in 2024 for Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese.
• Open-content licence — anyone can take the courses, not just Erasmus+ participants.
• Final assessment removed — only the initial assessment remains compulsory.

OLS adoption is highest when coordinators give a short, scripted briefing rather than emailing a link. The five-minute version below covers everything a participant actually needs to know.

• Why it matters — the assessment is mandatory for stays over 14 days; not completing it can delay the second grant tranche.
• Where to go — academy.europa.eu, log in with EU Login (same credentials as your Erasmus application).
• What to expect — 30–45 minutes for the initial assessment; CEFR-aligned across reading, writing, listening, grammar.
• What to do with the result — screenshot the certificate; upload to the participant portal or email it to your International Office.
• What is optional — every course module that follows the assessment. Take what helps; ignore what does not.

Participants who have heard this five-minute brief complete the OLS assessment 3× faster than those who have only received the link by email. Build it into the pre-departure briefing checklist.

Not all 29 languages have the same coverage depth. The breakdown below helps coordinators set participant expectations realistically — particularly for less-resourced languages.

• Tier 1 (full A1–C1, AI tutor, live tutoring) — English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese.
• Tier 2 (A1–B2, self-paced) — Dutch, Polish, Czech, Greek, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Romanian.
• Tier 3 (A1–B1, foundational) — Bulgarian, Croatian, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Slovak, Slovene.
• Non-EU additions — Arabic, Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish (assessment + foundational courses).
• Special-purpose modules — academic English, business English, medical terminology, legal language.

If your participant is heading to a Tier-3 language environment, supplement OLS with a local-language course at the host university. OLS is good enough for survival and basic workplace use; it is not a substitute for sustained immersion.

OLS feeds directly into the Beneficiary Module final report. Coordinators who treat OLS as a tickbox lose visibility on a useful operational signal.

• Initial assessment scores aggregate into the project's linguistic-proficiency profile.
• Aggregate uptake on follow-up courses correlates with mobility satisfaction scores in the EU Survey.
• Inclusion top-ups can fund supplementary local-language courses where OLS coverage is thin.
• National Agencies use OLS uptake as a proxy for project quality during ECHE-renewal interviews.
• Participants with low initial-assessment scores benefit from a structured follow-up plan — not from being left to self-direct.

Treat the OLS dashboard as a live management tool, not as a year-end paperwork artefact. The signals are weak but consistent, and they catch problems earlier than the EU Survey does.