- Do you have a high-impact innovative technology, product, service or business model that could create new markets or disrupt existing ones in Europe and even worldwide?
- Are you a start-up or a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) with the ambition and commitment to scale up?
- Are you looking for substantial funding, but the risks involved are too high for private investors alone to invest the full amount needed?
If your answers to the above questions are ‘yes’, then the EIC Accelerator may be the right funding scheme for you.
Applicants to EIC Accelerator can submit proposals through:
- EIC Accelerator Open, which has no predefined thematic priorities and is open to proposals in any field of technology or application
- EIC Accelerator Challenges in predefined thematic topics in areas of emerging and strategic technologies
EIC Accelerator Challenges
For projects that match any of the pre-defined topics of the EIC Accelerator Challenges.
- Advanced Materials for Renewable Energy and Energy Storage Systems
- Alternative Concepts and Key Enabling Technologies for Fusion Power Plants
- Biotech for Regenerating Agricultural Soils
- Boosting the European Critical Raw Materials value chain
- Deep Tech for Climate Adaptation
The overall budget this call's EIC Accelerator Challenges is €220 million.
EIC Accelerator Open
For projects that don't match the EIC Accelerator topics, the EIC Accelerator Open is open to proposals in any field of technology. The overall budget for this call's EIC Accelerator Open is €414 million.
How do you apply?
The application process consists of three main steps:
1. Short proposals which may be submitted at any time and will be evaluated remotely by EIC expert evaluators; Successful short-proposal applicants will be invited to prepare a full proposal. Applicants will have access to dedicated support from an EIC business coach (non-mandatory) to refine their case.
2. Full proposals are reviewed by a technology expert evaluator and assessed by an evaluation panel. The technology expert conducts an in-depth assessment — including an online meeting with the applicants to clarify questions from the proposal. The evaluation panel assesses the proposals in the batch and provides a score and ranking of proposals to invite to interview Interview with an EIC jury for selected applicants as the final step in the selection process.
If selected for funding, you will be invited to prepare a grant agreement for the requested grant component (if you have applied for it) and to start the due diligence for the investment component (if you have applied for it).
Submission of short proposals
You may submit a short proposal at any time via the Funding & Tenders Portal. The short proposal consists of:
- A short 12-page form where you summarise your proposal and respond to questions on your company and team, your innovation and the potential market;
- A pitch-deck of up to ten slides in pdf format;
- A video pitch of up to three minutes where the core members of your team (up to three people) should provide the motivation for your proposal.
The content of your short proposal is designed to be reusable in later stages of the application process should you advance.
From the date of the batching, you will be informed within approximately 4-6 weeks, and you will receive the evaluation result of your short proposal and whether you are successful to proceed to submit a full proposal. Whether successful or not, you will receive feedback from four expert evaluators.
Prepare your full proposal
If you succeeded with your short application under the 2025 or 2026 Work programme, your full proposal can be submitted to any of the following batches during 2026:
Dates of the 2026 cut-offs
- 7/01/2026
- 04/03/2026
- 06/05/2026
- 08/07/2026
- 02/09/2026
- 04/11/2026
