Language Courses

Learn a new language to boost your brainpower, explore new cultures or discover work and travel opportunities. Get started with these online language courses from FutureLearn.

Discover a new language or build language skills in a professional context with online language courses and programs.

Choose a Language topic

Learn flexibly online

Discover new opportunities by learning a new language like English or Italian with our online language and culture courses. Start learning for free on desktop, tablet, or mobile.

Buy a course upgrade or subscribe to Unlimited for extra benefits

Buy a course upgrade for ongoing access to the course content, tests, and the chance to gain a Certificate of Achievement. Subscribe to Unlimited for access to hundreds of short courses and the ability to keep access to courses you gain a certificate on.

Boost your career

Improve your ability to teach languages or learn a new language to help you unlock different opportunities in your career. Learn from educators from some of the world’s leading organisations and universities.

Learn a new language online

FutureLearn’s online language courses are perfect for any language learner, whether you’re a complete beginner or someone who wants to improve their vocabulary and skills for a specific use or context. We have courses from the world’s top universities and well-known educators to help you expand your horizons and career prospects.

Flexible learning at your own pace

Everybody learns differently, especially when it comes to picking up new languages. Whether you fly through the course or want to review slowly to improve your confidence, you can work at your own pace. Our courses are available on tablet, mobile, or desktop, and fit around your schedule for complete flexibility.

More than just vocabulary

Learning a new language is more than just memorizing words - it’s immersing yourself in a new culture and way of seeing the world. We offer a variety of courses that help you understand that new culture better and uncover new ways of communicating within your professional and social life.

Find the perfect language course

Choose a short course for a focused outcome or try one of our programs for a more holistic approach to learning a new language. If you’re just starting out, begin your journey with one of the introductory or basic courses to build a solid foundation. When you’ve completed that stage, you can move on to more specific courses to improve your pronunciation, build your understanding for academic or professional environments, or simply move onto the next step within the course series.

Languages and employability

Learning another language can help you boost your career and even your income. Depending on your location and industry, a second language on your CV could increase your income by up to 10-15%, with sales, marketing, and technical support seeing the biggest changes. Studies have shown that the most popular languages among employers include German and Mandarin, while English is still the lingua franca for business.

Meet the people who love FutureLearn

"I instantly thought about FutureLearn to see if there were any Italian language courses available as I knew there was one for Dutch a few years ago. Low and behold I found you have a series of 6 Italian language courses. I liked the voice clips embedded within the course as it’s a great aid in learning a new language."

"A friend first told me about FutureLearn and linked me to the Introduction to Dutch course on the site. I had just been accepted to a master’s programme in the Netherlands and though the course was in English and didn’t require knowledge of Dutch, I still wanted to learn some basic language skills to help with day to day life there. The fact that FutureLearn was offering a free online course was really attractive but I also liked the idea of having other learners to talk to. Learning a new language can be hard and it really helps to have other beginners around, even if you’re just reading the comments."