With more than 7,300 participants from over 100 countries and over 1,200 organisations represented at the exhibition, EAIE 2026 transformed Glasgow into a global meeting point for international higher education.
At the heart of UNITA’s participation was booth F75, conceived not simply as an exhibition space but as a meeting point for the Alliance’s international community. Throughout the conference, the booth welcomed a steady flow of visitors and provided an opportunity to reconnect with established partners, meet many representatives of the GEMINAE network, and open new conversations with universities and organisations from Europe and beyond.
Bringing UNITA’s experience into the EAIE debate
Through a series of Campfire and Ignite sessions, colleagues from across the Alliance shared experiences and opened discussions on some of the questions currently shaping European University Alliances.
The sessions explored the potential and challenges of Blended Intensive Programmes (BIPs), reflected on different approaches to managing and sustaining European University Alliances, and presented UNITA’s contribution to FOREU4ALL Community Engagement, with a particular focus on student participation. An IGNITE session brought student–staff co-creation into the spotlight, showing how working together to design the communication campaign for the UNITA Student Assembly election helped creating new forms of engagement.
The strong participation in these sessions created valuable opportunities to move from presentation to conversation, exchanging perspectives with colleagues from other European University Alliances as well as universities within and beyond Europe.
Connections that continue beyond Glasgow
The EAIE Conference and Exhibition, organised annually by the European Association for International Education, is Europe’s largest international higher education conference and one of the world’s major meeting places for professionals working in internationalisation.
For UNITA, Glasgow was above all an opportunity to turn internationalisation into connections: between people, institutions, alliances and ideas.
Next stop: Lisbon. See you at EAIE 2027!
