UK Erasmus+ deal revives popular study destination for Maltese students

Maltese students will once again be able to head to the United Kingdom for their Erasmus+ exchanges, with the UK set to rejoin the European student exchange programme.

The UK used to be an extremely popular Erasmus+ destination for Maltese students, with up to a third of local exchanges occurring in the country.

While the UK quit the programme after Brexit, the current government agreed to reopen negotiations at a UK-EU summit last May.

And The Guardian reported that an agreement to rejoin Erasmus+ from January 2027 is set to be announced today.

An international fee waiver would apply for EU students studying at UK universities under the Erasmus scheme, which means they would pay the equivalent of domestic fees – capped at £9,535 a year.

Meanwhile, UK students would continue paying their domestic fees at their home university while studying in Europe and would also be eligible for a grant to help them with the costs of living and studying abroad.  

At a press conference two weeks ago, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that his country needs to get closer to the EU, that people would “have to be grownup” about this and that this would require “trade-offs”.