Join the Arqus European Student Assembly 2026!

Arqus invites students from all its universities to apply for the 5th edition of the European Student Assembly (ESA 2026), which will take place from 20 to 22 April 2026 at the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

Applications are open until 2 November at 23:59 CET to students from all nationalities, fields, and levels of study, from the second year of Bachelor’s to PhD.

The European Student Assembly is a grassroots project that gathers each year more than 200 students from different European University Alliances (EUAs) to debate current issues, draft political recommendations for the future of Europe, and advocate them among stakeholders and decision-makers. 

From January to April 2026, the selected students will work and debate on 8 topics related to the future of Europe with members of their same panel, to deepen their understanding of their chosen topic and to start drafting policy recommendations. 

As part of the programme, they will be responsible for proposing concrete solutions to these challenges, to be implemented by stakeholders at various decision levels. To fulfill this goal, they will meet experts and follow online training on policy drafting and moderation, enabling them to analyse the political and legal context, identify the main challenges raised by the topic, and decide the priorities they wish to deal with. 

This several-month project will culminate with a democratic exercise in a deliberative Assembly gathering at the European Parliament in Strasbourg from 20 to 22 April 2026. During 3 days, participants will discuss and finalise their policy recommendations with members of their panel and hear other panels’ recommendations and debates, to end up voting in a plenary session on all the policy recommendations prepared and helping in dissemination activities afterwards. In addition to this, many other activities will be organised for students and the 65 EUAs.

Eligibility

• Students who never participated in ESA are welcome to apply as participants and/or panel coordinators.

• Students who participated in one of the previous editions of ESA as participants may only apply as panel coordinators.

• Students who participated in one of the previous editions of ESA as coordinators cannot apply anymore.

• Faculty members are not eligible except for PhD candidates.

Students interested in representing Arqus in this major political event, please reach out to the Arqus Student Agora team at student-agora@arqus-alliance.eu, which will provide detailed information about the Assembly and the application process. We encourage students to read carefully the ESA26 Handbook, that you can read below, before applying.

Read about the experience of Marija Bočiarovaitė and Arume Morales at ESA2026

* ESA does not charge any participation fees. Meals will be provided for free, as well as accommodation for three nights in a youth hostel. The reimbursement of travel costs is at the discretion of the European
Universities Alliances