Three teenagers assembling robotics and electronics kits in a classroom

Opportunities 10 August 2026

€17.5 million and two deadlines for the courses that keep teenagers in school

Calls PESSOAS-2026-10 and PESSOAS-2026-11 fund youth Education and Training Courses for 2026/2027. Applications close on 31 August and 16 September, through the Portugal 2030 portal.

Deadline: 16 September 2026

Apply / Learn more

There is €17.5 million on the table for youth Education and Training Courses in the 2026/2027 school year, €15 million of it from the European Social Fund Plus. The calls opened on 7 August, and there is not one of them. There are two, with different eligible applicants and different deadlines, and mixing them up costs an application.

Call PESSOAS-2026-10 is for public education establishments running CEF courses at level 2 of the National Qualifications Framework, in the type 2 and type 3 pathways. Call PESSOAS-2026-11 is for public and private vocational schools and for private and cooperative education schools.

The dates

PESSOAS-2026-11 closes first, on 31 August 2026. PESSOAS-2026-10 closes on 16 September 2026. Both are submitted by electronic form through the Portugal 2030 portal.

The programme itself warns, and the warning is worth taking seriously, that leaving submission to the final days is the most reliable way to turn an unexpected technical problem into a lost application.

Who the courses are for

The end beneficiaries are young people aged 15 or over who are at risk of dropping out, or who have already left school before completing compulsory education. CEF courses carry dual certification, pairing a practical, technical strand tied to the labour market with general education, and the programme’s stated aim is cutting early school leaving. By 2029 the target is to support 75,000 participants in qualifying training.

Call PESSOAS-2026-11 also covers the music-focused version of the course, aimed at students who have finished the sixth year. The beneficiaries are the bodies that own five schools: Escola Profissional de Música de Espinho, Escola Profissional de Artes da Beira Interior, Escola Profissional Artística do Vale do Ave, Escola Profissional Artística do Alto Minho and Escola Profissional de Arte de Mirandela.

Questions about applications go to the Linha dos Fundos on 800 10 35 10, or to PESSOAS 2030 on 21 597 67 90. The full text of both calls is on the programme’s notices page.

Other funding lines with open deadlines have passed through here too, including the €30 million for tourism projects.

By Miguel Sarmento

Image: PESSOAS 2030 · Co-funded by the European Union

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