
ICEF Higher Education welcomes huge influx of newcomers as market grows
Over the past four years, despite the pandemic, there has been a sharp increase in attendance at ICEF Higher Education conferences. In 2022 this upward trend continued, making Barcelona our largest gathering so far – with over 31.5% of delegates attending for the first time.
As usual, this was a truly international event, with 427 individuals representing 334 industry organisations from 84 countries. Together they held a total of 3,150 in-person and virtual meetings over the course of three days.

Who join us at ICEF Higher Education?
A total of 151 educators representing 107 institutions from 26 countries joined the event – 137 in person in Barcelona, and 14 remotely. Of these, 15% were attending ICEF Higher Education for the first time, and for 11%, this was their first ICEF event.
With agents coming from 71 countries, ICEF Higher Education was a truly international event. The five top countries were: Ukraine, Colombia, India, Azerbaijan and Brazil. In total, 221 pre-screened agents attended, representing 197 organisations. Of those, 66% held top management positions, and 40% were attending a focused higher education event for the first-time.
ICEF Higher Education also welcomed 32 representatives from 22 organisations covering 11 industry sectors relevant to overseas study.
Seminars, webinars & live steams
At ICEF Higher Education 2022, we presented a programmes of ten seminars and panel discussions, covering a range of topics including: ‘Study in Spain – education, our art’, ‘Digital transformation in international student recruitment’, and ‘ICEF Agent Voice – key findings from ICEF’s biannual international agent survey’.
This year we also live streamed a selection of the presentations, free of charge, for professionals not in attendance.
There were also four on-demand webinars and five provider presentations. All of these can be viewed for up to four weeks after the event.

2022 Event Statistics
- Top 5 agent countries
- Agent recruitment regions
- Agent segment interest
- Top 5 educator countries
- Educator sector provision
- Ukraine
- Colombia
- India
- Azerbaijan
- Brazil
Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Côte d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, France, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Honduras, Hungary, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, Libya, Lithuania, Martinique, Mexico, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Netherlands, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovak Republic, South Korea, South Sudan, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Zambia
- Canada
- USA
- Spain
- Finland
- Italy