Turing Scheme 2025-2026: The University Guide

In 2025-2026, the Turing Scheme funded 35,249 UK student placements abroad at a cost of £73.6 million. For higher education institutions, the scheme had a 99.3% success rate on applications. This is what your international office needs to know before the 2026-2027 application window opens.

1. What the Turing Scheme Is, and What It Is Not

The Turing Scheme is the UK government's international student mobility programme, launched in September 2021 following the UK's exit from the Erasmus+ programme. Named after the mathematician Alan Turing, it provides funding for UK-based students and apprentices to undertake study, work, and volunteering placements anywhere in the world.

This framing matters. The Turing Scheme is not a bilateral exchange programme: institutions do not need reciprocal agreements with foreign universities or companies. It is not restricted to Europe: placements can go to any destination, from Canada to Vietnam to South Africa. And it is not exclusively for degree-level students: further education colleges, apprenticeship providers, and schools also access the scheme.

For university international offices, the relevant funding stream is Higher Education, which accounted for £42.3 million of the total 2025-2026 allocation, supporting 18,826 placements. The scheme is administered by the UK Department for Education, not the British Council or UCAS. Funding goes to institutions, not directly to students.

2. 2025-2026 by the Numbers

The UK Government published official funding allocation data for 2025-2026 in September 2025. These are the headline figures every international office should know.

The near-universal HE success rate (147 of 148 applications funded) reflects how the scheme is calibrated: it functions less as a competitive grant and more as a structured allocation mechanism for institutions that meet basic eligibility. The competitive pressure is significantly higher in the further education and schools sectors, where undersubscription and capacity constraints produce lower success rates.

The 61% disadvantaged-student figure is the scheme's defining feature. From the outset, the Turing Scheme positioned itself as a social mobility intervention as much as an educational one. This design principle directly shapes what makes a strong application.

3. How the Funding Works: Grant Rates and Destination Groups

Funding reaches students through their institution. The DfE provides a block grant to the provider, which then distributes support to individual participants. The core funding components are: living cost grants, travel cost funding, and additional disadvantaged-student provisions.

Living cost grants by destination group

The scheme divides destinations into two groups based on general cost of living. Group 1 covers higher-cost destinations; Group 2 covers lower-cost destinations. Grant rates differ between short placements (14 to 56 days) and longer placements (57 to 365 days).

For a disadvantaged student undertaking a six-month internship in Germany (a Group 1 destination), the living cost grant alone reaches approximately £3,276 over 182 days at the £18/day rate. This is a meaningful contribution to cost of living in a city like Berlin or Frankfurt, though it does not cover full accommodation costs in most cases.

Travel cost funding operates on a set rate for each destination. Institutions can redirect underspent travel allocations to other placements within the same grant, giving some flexibility in how the budget is used across a cohort.

What the grant does not cover

The Turing Scheme does not provide a stipend equivalent: it supplements living costs, it does not replace them. Students on work placements may or may not receive payment from their host organisation, depending on host country labour law and individual agreements. For students going to countries where internships are unpaid, the Turing grant is the primary financial support. Institutions should be transparent with students about this distinction during the pre-placement briefing.

4. Who Can Participate: Students and Institutions

Institutions

To apply for Turing Scheme funding, higher education providers must be regulated in the UK or British overseas territories and be responsible for delivering the education of participating students. This includes universities, university colleges, and higher education institutions operating under the Office for Students regulatory framework in England, or equivalent bodies in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Consortium applications are permitted, which allows smaller institutions to group together and reduce administrative overhead.

Students

Student eligibility rests on enrolment at a funded institution, not nationality. Students do not need to be UK nationals to participate. This is a significant operational detail for universities with large international student populations: a French student enrolled at a UK university is eligible to access Turing funding through their institution for a placement in the United States, Japan, or elsewhere.

Students must be physically based at the UK institution during their studies (remote-only learners are excluded). Recent graduates can access Turing funding for work or volunteering placements up to 12 months after graduation, under the same terms as current students, but cannot use the scheme for study placements after completing their degree.

Placements must take place between 1 September 2025 and 31 August 2026 and last between 14 days and 12 months. There is no minimum credits requirement or academic level restriction within the HE sector guidance.

5. The Disadvantaged Student Framework

The Turing Scheme's social mobility objective is operationalised through a formal disadvantaged student framework. Meeting the definition of disadvantaged unlocks higher living cost grants, dedicated travel funding, and what the scheme calls "readiness to travel" provisions.

Who qualifies as disadvantaged

Under 2025-2026 guidance, a student is classified as disadvantaged if they meet any of the following criteria:

• Annual household income of £25,000 or less
• Receipt of Universal Credit or equivalent income-related benefits
• Care experience or care leaver status
• Primary carer responsibility for a family member requiring support
• Estrangement from family

Students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) receive additional separate support within the same framework.

Readiness to travel funding

For disadvantaged students, the scheme covers visa application fees, passport costs, relevant vaccines, travel insurance, police certificates, and costs associated with travel to application appointments. These provisions directly address the practical barriers that most frequently prevent lower-income students from taking up international placements: the upfront cost of documentation and preparation, which can easily reach several hundred pounds before a student even boards a plane.

For institutional applications, demonstrating a credible plan for reaching disadvantaged students is the single most important element of a strong submission. The DfE assesses applications against their stated social mobility contribution. Institutions that treat the disadvantaged provisions as a compliance checkbox rather than a programme design principle consistently underperform in allocation.

6. Work and Internship Placements Specifically

The Turing Scheme funds three types of student activity: study, work experience, and volunteering. For international offices running internship programmes, work placements are the most operationally relevant category.

A Turing-funded work placement is any structured work experience activity undertaken at a host organisation abroad, lasting between 14 days and 12 months. The scheme does not require a formal tripartite learning agreement of the Erasmus+ type, though institutions may use their own learning agreement frameworks. There is no specific credits requirement, though institutions should document the educational rationale for the placement.

Destination countries for work placements are unrestricted: students can go anywhere in the world, subject to the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) travel advice. This is a significant structural advantage over Erasmus+, which restricts mobility to participating programme countries. A UK student undertaking an internship in Singapore, Canada, or South Africa can access Turing funding in the same way as one going to France or Germany.

Host organisations do not need to be registered with the scheme or pre-approved by the DfE. The institution is responsible for vetting placement quality. This creates more flexibility than Erasmus+ but also places greater due diligence responsibility on the sending institution. Coordinators should maintain their own quality assurance frameworks, including minimum supervisor contact requirements, learning outcome documentation, and mid-placement check-ins.

For international offices working with placement providers to source internship opportunities, the Turing Scheme grant can be applied to placements arranged through third-party networks. There is no restriction on using intermediary organisations, provided the student is enrolled at the funded institution. Internship Abroad's UK platform operates as one such network, connecting UK institutions and their students with vetted placement partners across Europe and beyond.

7. The Application Process: What Universities Actually Need

Applications for each cycle open approximately six months before the academic year begins. For 2026-2027, guidance is already available, with applications typically due in late spring or early summer 2026.

Strong applications address four core areas:

1. Student numbers and cohort composition. How many students will participate, from which programmes, and what proportion meet the disadvantaged definition.
2. Destination plan. Which countries, what cost group, what types of placement (study, work, volunteering).
3. Social mobility narrative. How the institution will identify, support, and monitor disadvantaged students from recruitment through return.
4. Quality assurance framework. How placements will be vetted, monitored, and assessed for learning outcomes.

The application is not primarily a financial document: the DfE calculates funding based on planned placements and approved rates. The assessment focuses on the quality of the programme design and the credibility of the social mobility plan. Institutions that can reference prior Turing cycles and demonstrate improving disadvantaged participation rates have a measurable advantage.

8. How Turing Compares to Erasmus+

UK universities are not eligible to access Erasmus+ as full programme-country partners following the UK's exit from the scheme in 2021. Understanding what has been gained and lost is relevant for coordinators advising students and developing institutional strategy.

The most significant operational difference for international offices is the absence of inbound funding. Under Erasmus+, institutions received funding for both outbound and inbound students, and bilateral agreements created managed exchange flows. The Turing Scheme is outbound only. UK universities that relied on Erasmus+ inbound funding to cross-subsidise their international offices have had to adapt their financial models, typically through tuition revenue or bilateral arrangements that operate outside the Turing framework.

For students, the geographic flexibility is a genuine advantage. UK students can access Turing funding for placements in the US, Canada, Australia, or emerging markets that were not covered by Erasmus+. For institutions with strong industry relationships in non-European markets, this opens programme possibilities that simply did not exist before 2021. The government and mobility overview on our EU platform covers how European institutions can still partner with UK universities through bilateral channels outside Erasmus+ and Turing.

9. Looking Ahead: 2026-2027

Guidance for the 2026-2027 Turing Scheme cycle is already published on GOV.UK, providing international offices with unusually strong lead time. The 2026-2027 guidance confirms the scheme continues with the same structure for higher education providers, with updated destination group classifications that include additional countries.

The broader policy question is whether the Turing Scheme will be maintained beyond its current funded cycles. The scheme was extended in 2025 for the 2025-2026 academic year, and the 2026-2027 guidance indicates another extension. However, unlike Erasmus+ which operates on seven-year budget cycles with treaty-level commitments, Turing is subject to annual UK spending review decisions. International offices should plan their programmes with this uncertainty in mind, while building the evidence base (participation data, outcome tracking, disadvantaged student engagement rates) that supports continued institutional investment in the programme.

For UK-based students planning international work placements, resources and vetted placement opportunities are available through Internship Abroad UK. For European university international offices seeking to understand how their students can access placement networks in the UK, the institutions section of this platform covers partnership models, Erasmus+ traineeship coordination, and bilateral placement support.

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