European Day of Languages Competition 2025

Celebrated on 26 September every year, the European Day of Languages (EDL) is designed to promote the importance of language learning and protecting the linguistic heritage. The theme for 2025 is: Languages open hearts and minds.

The European Union has 24 official languages. These are Bulgarian, Czech, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Irish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish.

2025 Competition for Schools

For this year’s competition, we’re asking students to explore and express in their own words how languages open hearts and minds, both their own and those of others.

The competition is open to all schools that study or speak in a European language and aims to showcase the importance of language learning and how they unite us.

Using the ‘Opening Hearts’ and ‘Opening Minds’ templates, students will reflect on:

❤️ How languages make them feel and connect people across cultures
🧠 The knowledge, skills, and future opportunities languages provide

Entries must include text in a European language (e.g. a phrase, paragraph, poem, or creative format). All participating schools will receive access to a resource pack including an assembly, quizzes and cross-curricular activities.

Enter your school

How to enter

Using our ‘Opening Hearts’ and ‘Opening Minds’ templates, students should:

In the heart outline, write about how languages make you feel. 
  • How do you feel about your own language and culture?
  • How do you feel about other languages, the languages of your friends?
  • How do languages bring people together?
  • How do they help us to understand other people and other cultures?
In the head outline, write about how languages give you the skills and knowledge to make you a global citizen of the future.
  • What languages can you speak?
  • Why are languages important?
  • Why should we learn languages? 
  • What careers are open to you if you can speak more than one language?
Your entry must include text in a European language. This can be:
Entries must be submitted by a teacher on the Global School Alliance platform.

How to submit entry

  1. Register via the form on this page.
  2. Check your email with the information to access the project space.
  3. Navigate to ‘Documents’ and upload the submission to Primary/Secondary folder.

How the competition will be judged

The winners will be picked by a panel of three judges who will be looking for:

a) creativity b) presentation and c) language used

Who can enter

The competition is open to Primary and Secondary age groups.

Please refer to ‘How to Enter‘ for further guidance.

When is the deadline?

24th October 2025.

When will the winners be announced?

3rd November 2025.

Register to enter