ESADE Business School is a private business school located in Barcelona, Spain. It is part of the ESADE (Catalan: Escola Superior d'Administració i Direcció d'Empreses, Spanish: Escuela Superior de Administración y Dirección de Empresas) and is associated with the Ramon Llull University. ESADE has been awarded the triple accreditation by the EQUIS, AACSB, and AMBA.
The ESADE project was conceived in the spring of 1954 by a group of Spanish professionals and entrepreneurs during the period of isolation or autarchy initiated by Francisco Franco's dictatorship. Linked from the beginning to the Society of Jesus, they saw the need to professionalize the training of businessmen.
The school signed an agreement with the Jesuits (Societas Iesu) in October 1958 and started offering its first academic programmes in a small building in the district of Sant Gervasi, Barcelona. In 1958, ESADE was ultimately founded. Two years later, in 1960, executive education programmes were introduced as the Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. In 1964, the university's MBA programme was established. A year later, in 1965, ESADE's Barcelona campus (Pedralbes) opened (Building I). In 2009, Sant Cugat del Vallès campus was inaugurated. In 2025, the school inaugurated its campus in Madrid (Mirasierra).
ESADE Business School offers a range of undergraduate and graduate degrees, as well as doctoral programmes.
The ESADE Business School offers an accelerated, customisable full-time MBA programme. Students can choose between 12, 15 and 18-month tracks. The 12-month programme has classes from September to September of the following year, the 15-monts programme has classes from September to December of the following year and the 18-month programme has classes from September to March of the following year. They allow for either summer internships, exchanges with other MBA programmes worldwide, and both. In the first eight months, students are divided into three sections, with whom they complete a significant portion of their studies in a team format. In the remaining terms, classes are completed on an elective basis. The student body is highly international, with 95% international students who represent 48 nationalities.
ESADE Business School offers a range of programmes aimed at executives and experienced professionals. These programmes include Executive MBA, Executive Master Programmes, InOn Programmes, Online Programmes, Open Programmes, and Blended Programmes.
The ESADE Business School offers a PhD programme aimed at training business school academics. It consists in two parts: