Who Owns EF Education First?

Bertil Hult founded EF in Lund, Sweden, in 1965. Struggling with dyslexia, he had learned English faster through immersion during a work exchange in London than he ever had in classrooms, so he began selling language trips for Swedish students to England.

The immersion model scaled through the 1970s and 1980s as EF opened schools in Britain and added educational tours. It expanded to the United States and became the world's largest language travel organizer, then layered in cultural exchange through Cultural Care Au Pair and academic credentials through EF Academy and the affiliated Hult International Business School.

EF became an official language training supplier to multiple Olympic Games, a sponsorship that cemented its global brand. The company also built EF English Live (formerly Englishtown), one of the earliest online English schools, and the EF Standard English Test used by millions of learners and employers.

The pandemic battered study-abroad volumes in 2020 and 2021, but travel rebound restored scale. EF celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2025, still family-owned and still headquartered in Switzerland with North American operations anchored on the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts.