At Integrated Dreams, inclusion is not an ideal, it is our mission. Which is why we are proud to share with you that we are part of ELEVATE-SS, an Erasmus+ funded project officially launched in January 2026, bringing together seven partner organizations from across Europe with a shared goal: to make football stadiums truly welcoming and accessible for disabled fans.
WHAT IS ELEVATE-SS?
ELEVATE-SS is a two-year European collaboration designed to create a standardized, multilingual, and digitally delivered accessibility training program for matchday staff across four professional roles: stewards, security personnel, ticketing staff, and hospitality teams. The project unites stakeholders from Portugal, the Netherlands, Poland, France, Romania and North Macedonia: Integrated Dreams, LFP, FRF, MMS, CampusAI, AccessibAll and LTT Sports. The scope is bold: train over 700 stadium staff across three countries, deliver the program in 11 languages and establish a model replicable across Europe and beyond. All by December 2027.
OUR ROLE: LEADING THE NEEDS ANALYSIS FOR THE IBERIAN REGION
Integrated Dreams has been entrusted with a foundational and critical piece of the project: the Needs Analysis. In the first months of 2026, our team led research and stakeholder engagement focused on the Iberian football community — covering Portugal and Spain — to understand firsthand what accessibility looks like (and where it falls short) at professional football clubs today.
Our work drew on research examining current accessibility practices at clubs such as Real Betis, Atletico Madrid, SC Portugal and Alverca FC; an online stakeholder workshop bringing together clubs, leagues, national associations, and disabled people’s organizations; and a Training Needs Assessment Report that maps the main gaps in matchday accessibility, the priority skill areas for staff training, and the preliminary learning objectives for each of the four strands.
This report is not an endpoint, it is a launchpad. It feeds directly into the curriculum development phase, ensuring that what gets taught across Europe is grounded in the real, lived experience of disabled fans in our region.
WHY THIS MATTERS TO US
Our Football For All Leadership Programme and our broader disability inclusion work have always started from the same place: listening to the people most affected and letting their voices shape the solutions. ELEVATE-SS gives us the chance to do exactly that at a European scale. The fact that the training will eventually be available in 11 languages and delivered through an innovative 3D digital platform, built by CampusAI, means the insights we gather in Lisbon or Seville can ultimately help a wheelchair user feel welcomed in Skopje or Bucharest.
WHAT COMES NEXT
With the needs analysis phase completed, we now enter a period of collaboration and handover, working closely with other partners to ensure our findings are translated faithfully into training content. Over the life of the project, our team will also participate in transnational partner meetings, including in-person gatherings scheduled across Warsaw, Skopje, Bucharest and Paris, culminating in a Multiplier Event in late 2027.
We will continue to share updates here as the project progresses. If you are a club, federation or disability organization from the Iberian region and would like to know more about how you can be involved, we would love to hear from you.
ELEVATE-SS is co-funded by the Erasmus+ program of the European Union.