# How to instantiate multiple crews in a single flow?

**URL:** <https://community.crewai.com/t/how-to-instantiate-multiple-crews-in-a-single-flow/7334>\
**Category:** CrewAI Community Support\
**Tags:** agent, task, crewai, flows\
**Created:** [February 10, 2026, 3:20pm UTC](https://community.crewai.com/t/how-to-instantiate-multiple-crews-in-a-single-flow/7334 "2026-02-10T15:20:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dkain](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/user_avatar/community.crewai.com/dkain/32/4722_2.png) [@Dkain](https://community.crewai.com/u/Dkain)\
**Post date:** [February 10, 2026, 3:20pm UTC](https://community.crewai.com/t/how-to-instantiate-multiple-crews-in-a-single-flow/7334/1 "2026-02-10T15:20:56Z")

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I am trying to build a multi-crew system which will be coordinated by a manager flow, but on running the flow i am getting errors that selected crew is returning a empty crew, i.e no agent or tasks even listed in it let alone user’s input.

```
pydantic_core.\_pydantic_core.ValidationError: 1 validation error for Crew
Either ‘agents’ and ‘tasks’ need to be set or ‘config’. \[type=missing_keys, input_value={‘agents’: [], ‘tasks’: \[…: True, ‘memory’: False}, input_type=dict\]

```

crew itself is running fine on its own, problem only arises when i try to run it from the flow.

Directory structure is something like this,  
Crew’s directory structure is same as default when creating with, crewai create crew1

> - crew1/src/crew1/crew.py
> - Manager/manager/src/manager/main.py

```
crew_collection: Dict[str, Crew | Flow] = {
        "crew1" : Crew_class1,
        "crew2" : Crew_class2,
        "crew3 : Crew_class3,
        "crew4" : Crew_class4
    }
selected_crew = crew_collection[current_crew]()
crew_instance = selected_crew.crew()
result = crew_instance.kickoff(inputs={"content" : curr_input})

```

Any kind of input will be very appreciated.  
Thank you

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Tony\_Wood](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/user_avatar/community.crewai.com/tony_wood/32/1876_2.png) [@Tony\_Wood](https://community.crewai.com/u/Tony_Wood)\
**Post date:** [February 10, 2026, 10:37pm UTC](https://community.crewai.com/t/how-to-instantiate-multiple-crews-in-a-single-flow/7334/2 "2026-02-10T22:37:31Z")

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Welcome to the community

Try using the inbuilt flow [Flows - CrewAI](https://docs.crewai.com/en/concepts/flows)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dkain](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/user_avatar/community.crewai.com/dkain/32/4722_2.png) [@Dkain](https://community.crewai.com/u/Dkain)\
**Post date:** [February 11, 2026, 6:38am UTC](https://community.crewai.com/t/how-to-instantiate-multiple-crews-in-a-single-flow/7334/3 "2026-02-11T06:38:13Z")

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I am using builtin flows, but the problem is actually related to config paths, since each crew has its own configs in a separate folder than flow.py, because of that crews instantiated in flow.py are not able to access configs. I even tried hardcoding the absolute config path in the crews but i still get the same error.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![major\_tiwari](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/user_avatar/community.crewai.com/major_tiwari/32/4908_2.png) [@major\_tiwari](https://community.crewai.com/u/major_tiwari)\
**Post date:** [February 11, 2026, 2:17pm UTC](https://community.crewai.com/t/how-to-instantiate-multiple-crews-in-a-single-flow/7334/4 "2026-02-11T14:17:27Z")

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@Dkain Try this:  
When you instantiate crews from your flow, the config paths ( **`config/agents.yaml`** , **`config/tasks.yaml`** ) are resolved relative to the crew’s own directory.

**Solution:**

1. Ensure each crew uses the `@CrewBase` decorator - This is required for config loading to work properly.

2. The config paths in your crew classes should be relative to the crew.py file location, not the flow. The `@CrewBase` decorator automatically looks for configs beside the class file.

3. For multi-crew flows, use the recommended project structure:

4. **In your crew classes** , keep the default config paths:

\*\*`@CrewBase`\*\*looks for config files beside the class file and safely falls back to empty dicts if files are missing (which explains your empty agents/tasks).

Move your crews into a **`crews/`** folder inside your flow project, or ensure the config paths are correctly relative to each crew’s **`.py`** file location.