Deadline: 19-Jun-25
The European Innovation Ecosystems Work programme aims to create and expand more connected, inclusive, and efficient innovation ecosystems that support the scaling of companies and spur innovation.
Destinations
- The work programme contains actions under two destinations: CONNECT and INNOVSMES.
- The actions under the CONNECT destination focus on building interconnected and inclusive innovation ecosystems across the EU. Drawing on the existing strengths of national, regional and local ecosystems and encouraging the involvement of all actors and territories, this destination aims to reinforce network connectivity for sustainable business growth and to define and achieve ambitious collective goals for the benefit of society, including green, digital, and social transitions. It supports the flagship actions on accelerating and strengthening innovation in European Innovation Ecosystems across the EU and addressing the innovation divide, funding for deep tech scale-ups and enabling deep tech innovation through experimentation spaces and public procurement under the New European Innovation Agenda.
- The action under the INNOVSMES destination will support the European Partnership on Innovative Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), which will help innovative SMEs to increase their research and innovation (R&I) capacity and productivity and successfully embed in global value chains and access new markets.
Funding Information
- Up to €8m per project
Eligibility Criteria
- In line with Horizon Europe, all the actions supported by this call are open to actors from EU Member States and Horizon Europe Associated Countries.
- Unless otherwise provided for in the specific call/topic conditions, only legal entities forming a consortium are eligible to participate in Horizon Europe actions provided that the consortium includes, as beneficiaries, three legal entities independent from each other and each established in a different country as follows:
- at least one independent legal entity established in a Member State;
- and at least two other independent legal entities, each established in different Member States or Associated Countries (this includes the UK).
Deadlines
- Closing date is 19 June 2025 for the €108m INNOVSMES call “European Partnership on Innovative SMEs”: the CONNECT calls have closing dates of 15 October 2025 or 20 January 2026.
For more information, visit Innovate UK.