Collaborative online international learning/virtual exchange (COIL/VE) has gained increasing attention as a curricular strategy to promote Internationalization at Home and expand access to global learning in English teacher education (ETE). Within this context, recent scholarship suggests that COIL/VE can function as a space for intercultural development and as a site of disciplinary learning, enabling pre-service teachers to engage with core linguistic, pedagogical, and professional concepts through authentic interaction. Against this backdrop, this study examines the impact of COIL/VE on disciplinary learning in initial ETE in Brazil and explores what dimensions of learning might have been missed without participation in a COIL/VE project. Adopting a qualitative, interpretivist approach, the study draws on reflective narratives generated by eight Brazilian pre-service and early-career English teachers who participated in different editions of the project between 2023 and 2025. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis to identify recurring patterns across participants’ accounts. The findings indicate that COIL/VE constituted a qualitatively distinct learning environment that supported disciplinary learning through authentic, collaborative, and intercultural engagement. Participants reported gains in linguistic development grounded in intelligibility and situated practice, pedagogical learning informed by cross-cultural comparison and reflection, and professional identity development oriented toward intercultural mediation and global citizenship. Overall, the study suggests that COIL/VE functions as a pedagogical approach that reshapes how future English teachers conceptualize language, culture, and learning in contexts where physical mobility remains limited.