ICEF Eurasia 2026

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Perfect for regular attendees to both refresh their knowledge and share their experiences with first timers, this special session provides practical tips and strategies for making the most out of any ICEF event, and ICEF Eurasia in particular.

With community at the heart of the international education industry, this session presents a unique opportunity for ICEF regulars and newcomers alike to pool their knowledge in a supportive environment, fostering a more productive event experience.

Topic areas include:

Making the most of your time during the event
Developing effective post-event follow-up strategies and agent contracts
Building a mutually beneficial relationship with providers and agents

Driven by strong governmental support for internationalisation, which includes a 30% increase in the number of study abroad scholarships offered by the country’s Education Ministry, Azerbaijan has emerged as a rapidly growing international student source country.

In this presentation, we will look at the overall growth of outbound international students, as well as key study destinations. Additionally, we offer insight into the preferences of Azeri students, providing practical recruitment strategies that will benefit institutions with an established presence in the country and newcomers alike.

With 86 million inhabitants, nearly half of whom are under the age of 30, Türkiye ranks eighteenth in terms of population. Moreover, despite a challenging start to the year, the country boasts a strong economy, which grew by nearly 4% in Q3 of 2025. Driven by a mix of favourable economic conditions and the limited places available in the domestic tertiary education system, demand is high for study abroad opportunities, making Türkiye a potent target for international student recruitment professionals.

In this presentation, we will provide an overview of student preferences as well as a summary of popular and growing study destinations. Additionally, the session offers a wealth of practical tips for recruiters looking to enter or expand within this diverse country. The audience will also have an opportunity to participate, with a short Q&A rounding out the talk.

With demand growing for study abroad opportunities, short-study programmes offer an attractive alternative to full-time courses for prospective students on tighter budgets or with commitments that do not allow them to be away from home for long periods of time. Flexible, affordable, and available across a range of study destinations, short-term study programmes have become increasingly popular in recent years.

In this interview, panellists provide an overview of the short-term study programme landscape. The session covers the growing appeal of this programme type among Central European and Asian students, highlights the main benefits of short-term study, and identifies the popular study destinations.

As the number of international students continues to grow, study destinations around the world are increasingly focused on questions of quality and sustainability. In many destinations, and certainly across Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US (“the big four”), stringent regulations have come into force, which aim to ensure that international students receive transparent, high-quality support from recruitment professionals.

In this session, we will introduce the lessons that have been learned from across the major study destinations. We not only look into the latest rules and regulations but also key compliance measures, as well as the benefits that global standards bring to students. The session will then wrap up with a live Q&A session, allowing our guest speakers to elaborate on important points.

The international education landscape is evolving. Key international student decision making factors now include cost of study and living, ease of visa access, and return on investment, as well as more traditional concerns such as institutional ranking. At the same time, the range of study destinations has expanded well beyond the historic “big four” of Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US, with the sector increasingly moving away from a “market era” dominated by volume towards a “managed era”, where quality and sustainability are key.

In this new landscape, countries such as China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Spain, and Germany, are all promoting themselves as attractive alternatives, offering a range of advantages to prospective students such as proximity, a lower cost of study and living, or accessible visa options. In this session, we will discuss the range of options now open to students from across Central Europe and Asia.

As distinct from a panel session or keynote, the roundtables provide a space for a less-structured discussion but with guidance from an informed specialist. To provide that guidance, each table is led by a host whose role is to moderate and animate the discussion around the topic at hand.

- There will be two sittings of all tables, each lasting 25 minutes. The first begins at 18:00; the second at 18:30.

Roundtables' topics:

AI and the future of international education: To what extent is it a threat or an aid to existing recruitment processes? - Aysenur Tuna
Post-study work rights: Is the promise of a career the new "scholarship" - Sherzod Sobitov
The growing responsibilities of K-12 & boarding school providers: What does safeguarding look like? - Sander van Aartrijk
Recruiting from Kazakhstan: What are the key student expectations of an international education? - Dariko Issatay
Which countries are most welcoming for Eurasian students? - Oana Lelcu