Coimbra group

The Coimbra Group is an association of European universities founded in 1985. Its member universities are older multi-disciplinary research institutions.

The group takes its name from the city of Coimbra, Portugal, and its University of Coimbra, one of the oldest in Europe.

The Coimbra Group was founded in 1985 and formally constituted in 1987 by a charter signed between its members, then numbering 19. In 1994 it published Charters of Foundation and Early Documents of the Universities of the Coimbra Group. A second edition was published in 2005, by which time Caen had left the group while Åbo, Bergen, Geneva, Graz, Lyon, Padua, Tartu and Turku had joined.

In 2013 the group consisted of 40 universities, but by the following year this had fallen to 37 with the departures of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece), the University of Cambridge (UK) and the University of Oxford (UK). Since then, the Group has added Vilnius University (Lithuania) in June 2015 and Durham University (UK) in June 2016. This brought the membership of the group to 39, but it subsequently fell to 38 in October 2016, when a new membership list showed the departure of the University of Lyons (France).

The Coimbra Group works for the benefit of its members by promoting "internationalization, academic collaboration, excellence in learning and research, and service to society" through "creating special academic and cultural ties", by lobbying at the European level, and by developing best-practice.

As of October 2016, the Coimbra Group includes 38 universities in 23 countries: Charter members are marked *, either on this list or the list of former members.