Best Plant-Based and Vegan Culinary Schools in 2026
- Aug 6
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 12
If you want to cook plants professionally, your options fall into two camps: schools where everything taught is plant-based, and established culinary institutions running a plant-based programme alongside a conventional curriculum.
Both work. They produce different cooks, and they suit different people.
This is the current list of structured, multi-week program available in 2026 — what each one is, how long it runs, and who it's actually built for. We run one of the schools on it, and we've included ourselves on the same terms as everyone else, including where we're not the right choice.
For a full breakdown of fees, living costs and what each programme works out to per taught hour, see our companion guide: what a vegan culinary school actually costs.
How we compiled this list
Every school here offers a structured, multi-week plant-based or vegan culinary programme — not a weekend workshop, a masterclass, or a subscription video library.
Details are taken from each school's own published pages, linked below. Where a programme is delivered online rather than in a kitchen, we've said so, because it's a different thing to buy. Where eligibility is restricted, we've said that too.
Programs get restructured, and fees change. Last reviewed: August 2026. If something here is out of date, let us know, and we'll fix it.
Group 1 — Fully vegan culinary schools
Everything taught is plant-based. No conventional curriculum runs alongside it.
School | Location & format | Programme | Duration |
The Vegan School | Goa, India · in-person | 7-week intensive, 70+ hands-on lessons, batches of 14. Optional 4–6 month internship placement | 7 weeks · 40 taught hrs/week |
Ubud, Bali · in-person | Cooked Vegan Chef Level 1 certification. Raw-Vegan Chef Levels 1 and 2 available separately | 13 days | |
Sweden · hybrid | 12-week plant-based chef school plus an 8-week internship. Includes vegan desserts and plant-based alternatives | 12 weeks · 4 days/week |
Group 2 — Culinary schools with a plant-based programme
Established institutions running a plant-based course within a broader school.
School | Location & format | Programme | Duration |
London, UK · in-person | Diploma in Plant-Based Culinary Arts: Cuisine. Credit-rated by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SCQF Level 8). A separate plant-based pâtisserie diploma can follow | 3 months · 370 hrs total, ~22 taught hrs/week | |
Paris, France · in-person | Plant-Based Gastronomy Cuisine Diploma — technique, food safety and plant-focused modules | 3 months | |
Budapest, Hungary · in-person | Vegetarian Chef programme, beginning with a 600-hour Cook Assistant qualification. Open to EU citizens only | 1 semester | |
Le Bouveret, Switzerland · in-person | Certificate in Vegetarian and Plant-Based Culinary Arts | 11 weeks | |
Los Angeles & New York, USA · in-person | Health-Centered Culinary Arts diploma, formerly Plant-Based Culinary Arts. Includes a 200-hour externship | 8–13 months | |
USA · fully online | Plant-Based Culinary Arts diploma and associate degree. The school states it is not itself a vegan culinary school | Varies |
What actually separates these programmes
Length varies more than you'd expect — from 13 days to 13 months. That's not a quality gradient. A 13-day certification in Bali and an eight-month diploma in Los Angeles are different products for different lives, not better and worse versions of the same thing.
Taught hours per week matter more than programme length. A three-month course running 22 hours a week puts you in a kitchen for fewer hours than a seven-week course running 40. Almost no school advertises this figure — ask for it. Le Cordon Bleu London publishes theirs openly, which is to their credit.
One programme here is fully online. Escoffier's plant-based programmes are delivered remotely. That may suit you — no visa, no relocation, study around a job — but you're not standing in a kitchen. Compare it against other online courses, not in-person ones.
One has a hard eligibility filter. The Culinary Institute of Europe programme is open to EU citizens only. Worth knowing before you get attached to it.
How to choose between them
Three questions usually settle it.
Do you want to train in a fully plant-based environment, or doesn't that matter to you? A plant-based programme inside a conventional school teaches substitution — how to replace the egg, how to replace the cream. A fully vegan kitchen teaches you to build dishes that were never designed around those ingredients in the first place. Both are legitimate training. They produce different cooks.
Where do you plan to work? If it's vegan-focused kitchens, specialist immersion serves you better. If it's mixed venues where classical technique matters, or you want a globally recognised institution on your CV, Group 2 is the stronger choice.
What can you actually commit? Not just money — time, visas, and time away from work or family. An eight-month diploma in Los Angeles and a seven-week intensive in Goa are different life decisions, not just different invoices.
Where The Vegan School sits
We're in Group 1 — fully plant-based, with no conventional curriculum alongside it. Everything taught in our kitchen is vegan, every day, for the whole course.
We cap every batch at 14. Most established schools run larger groups, and the format is often demonstration-led: the chef cooks, you watch, you replicate. Here you're cooking daily from the first week, and the feedback you get is about your technique, not the group's.
In practice:
7 weeks, full-time — Monday to Friday, 10:00am to 6:00pm. That's 40 taught hours a week, plus around 10 hours of self-study
70+ hands-on lessons across world cuisines, baking, fermentation, raw gastronomy and gluten-free work
Cohorts of 14, so there's room to move at your own pace
Around 80% of students arrive as beginners — mostly passionate home cooks rather than trained professionals
Guaranteed internship placement in a vegan kitchen, in India or abroad. We usually receive more offers than we have students
200+ students from 30+ countries since 2022
Frequently asked questions
Which is the best vegan culinary school in the world? There isn't one. The three fully vegan schools listed above are the specialist options, and the right one depends on how long you can commit, where you can travel, and whether you want a short certification or full immersion. If you want institutional brand recognition, a Group 2 school will serve you better than any of them.
Are online vegan culinary courses worth it compared to in-person training? They're a genuine option if relocation isn't possible — Escoffier's programme is the fully online example in the list above. You'll learn theory, technique and recipes. What you won't get is a chef standing beside you correcting your knife grip in real time, or the pace of a working kitchen. If you can do in-person, do in-person. If you can't, online is much better than nothing.
How much does a vegan culinary school cost? Tuition across the schools above ranges from under $2,000 to nearly $35,000, and living costs can add more than the fee itself. We've broken all of it down properly in our full cost guide.
Where to go next
Comparing costs? What a vegan culinary school actually costs in 2026 →
Want to see what seven weeks covers? The full syllabus →
Ready to apply? Applications are open for the 2027 batches →
Comments