Horizon Europe

Horizon Europe

Supports institutions accessing broad European funding opportunities across AI, health, energy, space, transport, and quantum.

Eligibility · EU member states

Horizon Europe is the European Union's primary research and innovation funding programme for 2021–2027, with a total budget of EUR 93.5 billion following the MFF Midterm Review — making it the largest single publicly-funded R&I programme in the world. It is structured across three pillars: Pillar I (Excellent Science, covering ERC grants and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions), Pillar II (Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness, covering six thematic clusters including health, digital/industry/space, climate/energy, and food/bioeconomy), and Pillar III (Innovative Europe, including the EIC — catalogued separately under EISMEA). Calls are administered through six executive agencies depending on the thematic cluster, and all applications are submitted via the SEDIA Funding and Tenders Portal. Multiple call waves open each year, each with its own topics, budgets, and deadlines published in the Annual Work Programmes.

Eligible applicants are legal entities from EU Member States and associated countries. Consortium composition requirements, match-funding rates, and TRL bounds vary by call type — some calls accept single entities while others mandate multi-partner consortia spanning at least three countries. For-profit companies, universities, non-profits, and research organisations are all eligible under the standard Horizon framework rules. Horizon Europe is the continuation of Horizon 2020, with approximately 50,000 grants awarded under H2020 between 2014 and 2020 as its predecessor programme.

Because no single award figure or deadline applies at the programme level, applicants should use the SEDIA portal's call search to identify live topics relevant to their sector and technology readiness level. National Contact Points in each Member State provide free advisory support on call selection and proposal preparation. The 2021–2027 framework closes in 2027, and certain Pillar II clusters have multi-deadline topics where rejected proposals can be resubmitted in the same call.