The International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) is a membership-led global organization in the field of online, open and technology enhanced education. It consists of more than 200 higher education institutions and organizations in some 84 countries.

Founded in 1938, the ICDE has its permanent secretariat in Oslo, Norway. It is currently partly funded by a grant from the Government of Norway and has been hosted in Oslo since 1988, where is a registered not-for-profit organization in Norway and operates under Norwegian law.

Since 1960, ICDE has a partnership with UNESCO.

ICDE was founded in 1938 in Canada as the International Council for Correspondence Education (ICCE). The first World Conference was held in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada the same year. The idea for holding an international conference came from J. W. Gibson, director of high school correspondence instruction for the province of British Columbia, who attended the National Conference on Supervised Correspondence Study in New York in 1936. Gibson shared with other delegates knowledge he had about correspondence education in several countries and then suggested that an international conference be held. Rex Haight, then chair of the New York conference, supported the idea and later served as president for the first conference.

At the second conference, held in 1948, the delegates voted unanimously to establish a more permanent international council.

The third conference took place in 1953 in Christchurch, New Zealand, where a committee presented a proposed "Constitution and Rules" for the council that was adopted by the delegates. These rules helped the council became more established and conferences began to follow a more regular schedule.

In 1969, the 8th World Conference was held at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris to celebrate the affiliation with UNESCO.

In 1982, during the 12th World Conference held in Vancouver, the organization changed its name to "the International Council for Open and Distance Education" (ICDE).