Image created with Canva

Educational larps in EU programs

05/2026

For a long time, larp existed in the European public sphere solely as a subcultural phenomenon – a hobby with an unclear status, associated with fantasy and costumes, and rarely considered a conversation partner with institutions. This state of affairs persisted for over three decades. Today, the situation is completely different.

Larps appear in EU budgets, are described in European Commission programming documents, and are also implemented by universities, for example in Sweden, as part of the Horizon Europe program Larpocracy. They are also increasingly being included in projects of national institutions funded by public funds. This change is no accident; it is the result of many years of work by researchers, educators, and activists.

Edu-larp is a form of larp with precisely defined pedagogical goals and a mandatory post-game debriefing.

It offers something that formal education systems typically fail to provide: experiential learning combined with inhabiting another person’s perspective. Playing the role of a character with a different social background, beliefs, or life situation isn’t just fun or a theatrical experiment. It’s a controlled experience of challenging topics in a safe environment. Topics like radicalisation, social exclusion, climate change, and migration aren’t avoided in edu-larp. On the contrary, they become the subject of a consciously designed educational process that allows participants to examine them from different perspectives and better understand them.

Important dates in history

The first institutional traces of larp’s presence in EU projects date back to 2014. However, a clearer point of reference emerged in 2016, when the EUNET (European Network for Education and Training) Working Group launched an initiative called “Mini-LARP on teaching the history of the EU.” The real breakthrough came three years later, with the beginning of the 2019-2024 priority period.

The DiveIN project (2019–2021, Erasmus+ KA2), coordinated by the Krakow-based organisation Europe4Youth, was the first large-scale project we found that consciously framed edu-larp as a response to an EU policy priority: countering the radicalisation of young people.

It demonstrated that larp can be described in a language understood by officials and evaluation committees. Not as a “role-playing game,” but as an “experience-based pedagogical intervention addressing the threat of extremism.”

Subsequent projects followed one after another. LARP For Climate methodology to climate education. GreenEduLARP from Estonia and LARPIC expanded their geographic scope and thematic focus. By April 2026, Erasmus+ databases included 185 projects using edu-larp as a teaching tool.

The culmination of the development of educational larps, in our view, is the Larpocracy project, launched in January 2025 as part of Horizon Europe, a prestigious EU research program previously reserved strictly for hard science and technology. Coordinated by Uppsala University, with a budget of € 3 066 306,00, the project focuses on democratic deliberation and civic competences developed through larps. Furthermore, the MEN4DEM project in Horizon which explore the relationship between masculinities and democratic engagement, is developing an edu-larp designed on these themes. Horizon Europe directs funding to areas where there is a solid methodological basis and evidence of effectiveness. This demonstrates the position larps have taken on in the perception of EU institutions.

Behind this process are specific groups and organisations, particularly from Italy, Poland, Nordic countries, and Greece, which for over a decade have systematically translated larp practice into the language of public policies and educational priorities. As a result, this method, which originated in hobbyist communities, has entered the European educational mainstream faster than expected.

Our project, Dystolarp, follows the same path.

Bibliography (Accessed April 13, 2026)

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.

Project code: 2025-1-PL01-KA220-YOU-000364734

Copyright ©  2026 Dystolarp

Powered by WordPress.