The UK is set to rejoin the Erasmus programme, the BBC understands, five years after announcing it would end its participation as part of the Brexit deal with the European Union.
The EU provides funding through the scheme for people to study, train or volunteer in other European countries for up to one year.
The UK replaced it with its own Turing scheme in 2021, which funds similar placements around the world.
The government said it would not comment on the ongoing talks.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer had suggested in May that a youth mobility scheme could be part of a new deal with the EU.
The Erasmus scheme was scrapped in the UK in December 2020, when the government announced its post-Brexit trade deal with the EU.
Boris Johnson, prime minister at the time, said it was a “difficult decision” but that the plan had become “extremely expensive”.
He said it would be replaced by Turing’s scheme, which has been in operation ever since.
Both programs are open not only to university students, but also to people undertaking vocational training courses, as well as apprentices and people training at university or school.
In 2020, the last year the UK participated in Erasmus, the scheme received €144m (£126m) of EU funding to enable 55,700 people to take part in Erasmus projects in total.
That year, the UK sent 9,900 students and apprentices to other countries as part of the scheme, while 16,100 did so in the opposite direction.
Glasgow, Bristol and Edinburgh were the three universities sending the most students, and Spain, France and Germany were the most popular countries for UK students to attend.
In the 2024/25 academic year, the Turing scheme had funding of £105 million, which paid for 43,200 places, of which 24,000 were in further education, 12,100 in further education and 7,000 in schools.
The majority (38,000) were from England, 2,900 from Scotland, 1,000 from Wales and 1,200 from Northern Ireland.
Ministers who introduced the Turing scheme in 2021 said it was designed to benefit more people from disadvantaged backgrounds and provide greater support for travel costs than the Erasmus scheme.
It is still unclear what will happen to the Turing scheme once Erasmus is reintroduced for UK students.
