How do I get institutions?
Instiutions are the driver of technological progress in Europa Universalis 5. They represent major societal changes that spread across the world over time, and adopting them is crucial to keeping up with your rivals in technology. Falling behind on institutions makes it very difficult to compete at all, while getting ahead of them gives you significant advantages.
1. Spawn institutions
Institutions spawn in semi-random locations based on a number of factors. You cannot force institutions to originate in a specific place, nor force them afterwards like in EU4. However, you can improve your odds of getting them to spawn in your country, and being the origin of the institution obviously is the best way to get it quickly. Each institution has its own specific factors that influence where it spawns. To discover what these are for an institution, go to the Advances tab, the Ages subtab, hover over the institution you are interested in, and then hover over the percentage near the top of the tooltip. It will then list all the ways to get such a percent chance to get it each month. Assuming you play on the typical dynamic institution game mode, it will usually require something like building certain buildings and having certain societal values.
In addition, if you meet the requirements to spawn the institution beforehand but do not win the dice roll to spawn it, it will spawn over time in that location afterwards, so trying is still worth it even if you do not get the origin.
2. Be next to institutions
If you missed out on being the origin of an institution, being close does actually help. Institutions naturally slowly spread to neighboring locations over time. So as long as it was a country next to you, you will get eventually as well. Note that it is literally five times as fast if the neighboring location belongs to you or a country with a positive opinion, so you really need to befriend your advanced neighbors to make any progress this way, especially as your border provinces are likely not the most developed ones.
3. Vassalize someone with institutions
There is a diplomatic option in the vassal interaction menu for “Knowledge Sharing”. This will make your vassal share any institutions it has with you, making them appear in your capital at a decent speed.
One cheesy way to hurry your institution spread then is to declare war on a small Italian country, take a province, release it as a vassal, and then have it share knowledge with you.
4. Import from people with institutions
The best way to get institutions over to your country is trade. Specifically, you need to import goods from markets where the market center has the institutions. This spreads it to your market center very quickly and can be done from even far away locations. Note that you will need to disable or lower how much trade is automated and manualy make such trades. Losing your exports and passing by on more profitable routes may hurt your economically, but it is worth it for how much massively faster you get institutions. The AI’s inability to prioritize this is why Hungary for instance lives in the stone age for so long despite being in the middle of Europe—self-sufficiency and gold exports are good for gaining money, but terrible for technology.
Once an institution is fully present in the market center, all locations in that market will get a significant amount of progess per month towards that institution. Plus it still spreads to neighboring locations as well. So rushing for imports from countries that have institutions is by far the best way to get institutions to come to you quickly.
5. Speed it up with modifiers
Some things cannot make you get institutions on their own, but they do give some boosts to how fast they progress from the nearby locations, vassals, and imports. The easiest is to just build a road. Roads in any direction give a 10% boost to institution spread speed. Average pop satisfaction, local works of art, papal bulls, development, exports, and movement cost are also more minor factors that can help speed up institution spread.