KA120, KA121 or KA122: which one is for you

Two doors lead to the same funded mobility — courses, job shadowing, teaching assignments abroad. They suit different organisations, and picking the wrong one costs a year.

The map in one table

	Short-term project (KA122)	Accreditation (KA120 → annual KA121)
What you apply for	One self-contained project	A multi-year membership
Quality evaluation	Every time you apply	Once, at accreditation
After approval	Project runs 6–18 months, then ends	Grant request every year, all admissible requests funded
Requires experience	No	Application scored partly on relevance and capacity
Best for	First-timers, one concrete plan	Organisations that want mobility every year

Choose KA122 if…

…you have never run Erasmus+ mobility and want to try with contained risk, or you have one specific, bounded need. You apply by 19 February, projects start from 1 June, and everything — including staff courses — happens inside your project window. No accreditation needed.

Two rules to know before you budget: courses and training may take at most 50% of your project grant, and each person can attend one course per project.

Choose the accreditation route if…

…you already know you’ll want mobility year after year. The KA120 application is more demanding — a real Erasmus Plan scored out of 100 — but it converts every following year into a formality: the February KA121 request has no quality evaluation at all.

The deadlines, side by side

Verified against the Erasmus+ Programme Guide, Call 2026. Always confirm on your national agency's website — second rounds and national details vary.

Our honest read

If you’re a school or training centre with a stable team and any appetite for annual mobility, the accreditation pays for its extra effort within two cycles. KA122 is the right first step when nobody in the organisation has run a mobility before — do one, learn what your staff actually uses, then write a KA120 grounded in that experience. Evaluators can tell the difference between a plan written from experience and one written from imagination.

Frequent questions

Can we do a KA122 while waiting for our accreditation?

Short-term projects are designed as an entry route. Check the current call conditions with your national agency for limits on repeated short-term projects — the intended path is: try mobility with KA122, then move to accreditation for the long run.

What does KA121 mean?

KA121 is the annual grant request that accredited organisations submit. There is no new quality evaluation — the quality was assessed when your KA120 accreditation was approved. All admissible requests receive funding.

What happens if we spend less than 75% of our accredited grant?

Under the budget allocation rules, accredited organisations that executed less than 75% of a previous project's budget see their next base allocation reduced by 25%. Plan volumes you can actually deliver.