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In 1985, the International Relations Office at Université catholique de Louvain was celebrating its 20th anniversary and had an inspired idea: invite other universities to come together, collaborate, and dream big.

• Comprehensive university, including a Faculty of Medicine;
• Big university in a small city, like Louvain-la-Neuve and Leuven;
• Foundation date comparable to that of Louvain – XV century;
• Comparable number of students – 15 to 30.000.
• That initial meeting sparked something extraordinary. A network of like-minded institutions was born—one that would grow and thrive over the next four decades. Today, we know it as the Coimbra Group, a leading voice in European and global higher education.

Following on from the meeting in Louvain-la-Neuve/Leuven a meeting was held in Coimbra on 29-30 May 1986, at which it was decided to name the cooperation network after its host university. Joint projects were discussed, among them exchanges of choirs and orchestras, summer courses for North American students at CG universities, and joint student exchanges.

The 21 founding members of the network were: Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Università di Siena, Universidad de Salamanca, Université de Poitiers, Università di Pavia, University of Oxford, Université catholique de Louvain, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leiden University, Heidelberg University, Universidad de Granada, University of Göttingen, University of Galway, University of Edinburgh, Trinity College Dublin, Universidade de Coimbra, University of Cambridge, Université de Caen, ,Università di Bologna & Aarhus University