Higher education institutions worldwide are increasingly investing in ‘internationalisation’, although its meanings and measures differ significantly between contexts, countries, and institutions. This article analyses the implementation of internationalisation in three second‐tier higher education institutions specialising in teacher training programmes in Israel under an EU‐funded TEMPUS (Trans‐European Mobility Programme for University Studies) project. We show how internationalisation is implemented at these institutions, where diverse motivations, power relations, and ideas intervene. We discuss the main themes that emerged through semi‐structured interviews with the colleges’ leadership, supporting our findings with a content analysis of the colleges’ strategic plans. Our study provides new insights, revealing how the EU internationalisation agenda is interpreted locally in such settings, thereby highlighting the importance of the particular context in this process.