The European Non-Governmental Sports Organisation (ENGSO) has opened applications for a new Equality Within Sport Mentoring Programme, an 8-month initiative pairing mentors and mentees working on equality issues within sport organisations across Europe. Applications close at 18:00 CEST on 15 August 2026, with priority given to applicants representing ENGSO member and associated member organisations. The programme runs from September 2026 to May 2027 and includes an onsite mentoring component in Split, Croatia, from 14 to 17 October 2026; the ENGSO call links this to the European Sport Platform, whose own public conference programme runs from 15 to 17 October.

ENGSO's Equality Within Sport (EWS) Committee began a new 2026 to 2028 mandate in May 2026, with members convening for the first time in Budapest during the organisation's General Assembly. The mentoring programme is one of the first publicly announced initiatives of the committee's new mandate.

ENGSO's role and the Committee's new mandate

ENGSO describes itself as a not-for-profit umbrella organisation for national sport confederations and Olympic committees across more than 30 European countries, representing organisations responsible for grassroots sport in their respective countries (ENGSO's own pages give slightly different country counts in different places, so this analysis uses the more conservative "more than 30" rather than a specific figure). Its origins trace to 1966, when governments and sport bodies set up an informal discussion forum within the Council of Europe framework; the organisation adopted its current name in 1990. As a non-governmental body, ENGSO operates alongside, rather than as part of, EU institutions, functioning as a coordinating and advocacy platform for its member federations rather than a regulatory or funding authority.

The Equality Within Sport Committee is one of ENGSO's standing thematic committees. Its 2026 to 2028 mandate is chaired by Tarja Krum, a sustainability manager at Finlands Svenska Idrott (an umbrella organisation for Swedish-speaking sports federations in Finland and the Åland Islands) who has served on the committee since 2022 and as chair since 2024; her IWG Women & Sport Insight Hub profile lists her as ENGSO's contributor to the International Working Group on Women & Sport (IWG). She is joined by Vice-Chair Sarah Townsend of the European Gay and Lesbian Sport Federation and six other appointed members drawn from national Olympic committees, national sports confederations, disability sport bodies, youth structures and specialist gender-equality and safe-sport organisations. According to ENGSO, the new mandate's stated priorities include the mentoring programme, an equality training programme, and a series of online seminars on emerging equality issues in sport.

What the mentoring programme actually offers participants

The preliminary structure envisages 5 mentors and 15 mentees, at a ratio of roughly 3 mentees per mentor, though ENGSO notes the final numbers may shift depending on the applicant pool. Both mentors and mentees must be aged 18 or over and working or volunteering on equality issues within sport organisations in a Council of Europe member state.

Programme activities include 4 online mentoring sessions of 60 minutes each, 3 joint online learning and networking sessions of 90 minutes each, and the single in-person event in Split. A preliminary schedule sets an online kick-off for 21 September 2026, followed by mentoring sessions in November, January and February, a joint session in March, a further mentoring session in April, and a closing evaluation session in May 2027. Selected participants sign a participation agreement committing to the full 8-month cycle. ENGSO Equality Officer Kyra Angerer is coordinating the programme and serves as the main point of contact for applicants.

How this fits ENGSO's 2026 to 2028 equality mandate

The programme's timing is not incidental. It was set in motion within three months of the new Committee taking up its mandate in Budapest, positioning peer mentoring as an early, cohort-based mechanism for putting the mandate's priorities into practice before the training programme and seminar series that ENGSO has also flagged for this term. The design leans on structures already familiar to the sector, such as fixed-term cohorts, defined mentor-to-mentee ratios and a capstone in-person event, rather than introducing a new institutional format.

It also sits within a small set of mentoring and capacity-building initiatives addressing gender and equality leadership gaps in European sport. UEFA's Women in Football Leadership Programme, delivered with IMD Business School, and UEFA's separate Coach Mentor Programme for female coaches, running since 2018 over an 18-month cycle, provide adjacent examples of structured mentoring and capacity-building, although their target groups, duration and institutional scope are materially different from ENGSO's cross-sport equality programme. UEFA's Women in Football Leadership Programme is a one-week executive seminar for around 30 participants aimed at senior leaders in football specifically; its Coach Mentor Programme's most recent cohort paired 11 mentee coaches with mentors over 18 months. ENGSO's programme differs in scope, targeting equality practitioners and officers across grassroots sport structures generally over an 8-month cycle, rather than coaches or football-specific leadership tracks; its cohort size (20 participants across mentor and mentee roles) should be read as a different kind of programme rather than measured directly against UEFA's figures.

What happens next

Applicants will be informed of outcomes by 31 August 2026, giving roughly a three-week window between the deadline and programme kick-off on 21 September. The in-person Split event in October will be the first point at which participants meet in person, roughly a month into the cycle. The programme's completion in May 2027 will land within the first half of the Committee's 2026 to 2028 mandate, leaving time for ENGSO to assess outcomes before the mandate's remaining initiatives, the flagged training programme and seminar series, come into view. Whether the mentoring format is repeated in a second cohort before the mandate ends is not yet indicated in ENGSO's published materials.

For equality officers and practitioners across ENGSO's member and associated member federations, the practical takeaway is procedural rather than programmatic: applicants should ensure a complete application is submitted before the 18:00 CEST deadline on 15 August 2026; the public call does not indicate rolling selection or an advantage for earlier submissions. The programme itself, on current evidence, remains modest in scale and untested as a repeatable format.

Sources

  • ENGSO, "Call for applicants: Equality Within Sport Mentoring Programme" — https://engso.eu/call-for-applicants-equality-within-sport-mentoring-programme/
  • ENGSO, "Equality Within Sport (EWS) begins a new mandate" — https://engso.eu/equality-within-sport-ews-begins-a-new-mandate/
  • ENGSO, "History of ENGSO" — https://engso.eu/about/history-of-engso/
  • ENGSO, "About us - Organisation" — https://www.engso.eu/organisation
  • ENGSO, "Equality Within Sport (EWS) Committee" (committee roster) — https://engso.eu/about/committees/equality-within-sport-committee/
  • IWG Women & Sport Insight Hub, Tarja Krum profile — https://www.iwginsighthub.org/profile/tarja-krum
  • Finlands Svenska Idrott, "About Us" — https://idrott.fi/om-fsi/about-us/
  • UEFA Academy, "UEFA Women in Football Leadership Programme (WFLP)" — https://uefaacademy.com/courses/wflp/
  • UEFA.com, "Female coaches growing on and off the pitch through UEFA mentor programme" — https://www.uefa.com/news-media/news/02a0-1f777328defe-3964408134dc-1000--female-coaches-growing-on-and-off-the-pitch-through-uefa-m/