EIC Accelerator Step 2 Full Proposal Statistics: Country Success Rates, Sector Odds, Gender Data, and Year Trends

The EIC Accelerator full proposal stage is where the broad promise of startup funding turns into hard selection math. This dataset contains 12,255 full proposal applications across 51 countries, 15 sectors, and the period 2021 to 2026. Of these applications, 2,797 received GO and 9,458 received NO-GO, producing an overall full proposal success rate of 22.8%.

That means the average applicant pool needed 4.4 submitted full proposals for every GO decision. The number is useful, but the real story is more detailed: countries do not perform evenly, sectors have very different competitive profiles, gender representation is heavily imbalanced, and the year-by-year trend shows a sharp 2024 peak followed by a much tougher 2025 and partial 2026.

Source: EISMEA. The dataset covers full proposal applications with GO and NO-GO decisions across country, sector, gender, and year dimensions.

Executive Summary

The headline number is clear: full proposals are selective, but they are not lottery-level selective. A 22.8% success rate means strong applicants have a real path to a GO decision, but weak execution, poor strategic fit, or a crowded sector can quickly push the odds down.

The strongest country-level success rates among countries with at least 5 applications are led by Armenia (50.0%), Netherlands (30.0%), Sweden (28.9%), France (28.8%), and Denmark (28.7%). Armenia has a very small sample, so the more durable signal comes from the Netherlands, Sweden, France, and Denmark.

On the sector side, the highest success rates among sectors with meaningful volume are Space (26.4%), Engineering & Tech (26.1%), Agriculture (25.8%), Health (25.6%), and Biotechnology (25.0%). The most difficult sectors by success rate are Education & Culture (12.3%), Consumer Products (14.0%), Security (14.8%), and Transport & Mobility (14.8%).

1. Country Success Rates

Countries with at least 5 applications show a very wide performance spread, from 50.0% in Armenia to 0.0% in Malta, Montenegro, and Tunisia. The highest-volume European innovation countries sit in the middle-to-high part of the ranking, with Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom carrying large applicant pools.

Top 5 Country Success Rates

• Armenia: 50.0% (3 of 6 GO)
• Netherlands: 30.0% (244 of 813 GO)
• Sweden: 28.9% (213 of 736 GO)
• France: 28.8% (338 of 1,172 GO)
• Denmark: 28.7% (125 of 435 GO)

Bottom 5 Countries With at Least 1 GO

• Romania: 7.4% (5 of 68 GO)
• Türkiye: 7.1% (9 of 126 GO)
• Ukraine: 6.7% (2 of 30 GO)
• Serbia: 5.3% (1 of 19 GO)
• Cyprus: 2.6% (1 of 38 GO)

Countries With 0% Success Rate

2. Application Volume by Country

The biggest application pools are concentrated in a small group of countries. The top 5 by volume are Germany, Israel, France, Spain, and Italy. Together, they account for 46.6% of all applications.

Large country volume does not automatically mean better odds. Germany combines the largest applicant volume with a solid 25.0% success rate. France combines high volume with a strong 28.8% rate. Italy is also high-volume, but its 16.1% success rate is far below France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and Sweden.

EU-27 vs Non-EU and Associated Countries

EU-27 applicants represent the majority of the dataset and also show a higher success rate. The difference is 4.0 percentage points: 23.8% for EU-27 members compared with 19.8% for non-EU or associated countries.

3. Sector Analysis

Sector selection matters. The dataset shows that some areas produce consistently stronger full proposal conversion, while others face much harsher odds.

Most Competitive Sectors

Most Accessible Sectors

Applications Needed per GO by Sector

The sector ranking is one of the most useful practical views in the dataset. A company in Engineering & Tech sits in a sector where the dataset shows roughly 3.8 applications per GO. A company in Education & Culture sits in a sector where the comparable number is 8.1 applications per GO.

4. Gender Analysis

The gender data contains a strong representation imbalance but not a meaningful difference between male and female success rates at the aggregate level.

The NA group (75 applications, 18.7% rate) is an explicit source-data row for applications where gender is not reported. It is not treated as a separate applicant gender category.

Female applicants have a 0.5 percentage point higher success rate than male applicants in the aggregate dataset: 23.3% compared with 22.8%. The difference is small. The representation gap is not: female applicants represent only 16.6% of male-plus-female applications.

Female Share of Applications by Sector

The sector split is more revealing than the aggregate gender rate. Female applicant share is highest in Education & Culture, Biotechnology, Public Sector Innovation, Consumer Products, Food & Beverages, Environmental Sciences, and Health. It is much lower in Engineering & Tech, Space, Energy, Construction, Security, and Transport & Mobility.

5. Year-over-Year Trends

The annual trend shows a clear peak in 2024 and a sharp decline afterward. The 2026 data is partial, so it should not be treated as a full-year performance benchmark.

The success rate moved from 18.7% in 2021 to 14.5% in 2025, a decline of 4.2 percentage points. The real outlier is 2024, where the success rate reached 35.8%. That level is not repeated in 2025 or the partial 2026 data.

6. Sector-Country Hotspots

The hotspot view asks a different question: for each sector, which country contributed the largest number of GO applications?

Germany appears as the top country by GO decisions in a large number of sectors: Agriculture, Construction, Environmental Sciences, Engineering & Tech, ICT, Transport & Mobility, Education & Culture, Security, and Energy. France leads Consumer Products, Biotechnology, and Space. Israel leads Health with 141 GO applications, the largest single hotspot in the table.

7. Country Specialisation

Country specialisation looks at the dominant GO sector within each country. For most high-volume countries, Health is the leading sector.

The main pattern is Health dominance. The Netherlands, Sweden, France, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Ireland, Austria, Finland, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Israel, Portugal, Lithuania, Italy, Slovakia, Croatia, Poland, and Romania all show Health as the top sector by GO applications.

8. Country GO Efficiency

This metric converts success rate into operational planning language: how many applications were needed for each GO?

This is the most practical table for applicant planning. In the Netherlands, the dataset shows 3.3 applications per GO. In Germany, 4.0 applications per GO. In Italy, 6.2 applications per GO. In Poland, 9.7 applications per GO. In Cyprus, the figure reaches 38.0 applications per GO because only 1 of 38 applications received a GO.

9. Notable Findings

• Busiest sector: Health with 3,881 applications and a 25.6% success rate.
• Highest success sector with at least 50 applications: Space at 26.4%.
• Largest country applicant pool: Germany with 1,383 applications.
• Largest non-EU applicant pool: Israel with 1,284 applications and a 19.2% success rate.
• Busiest year: 2022 with 3,197 applications.
• Best full-year success rate: 2024 with 35.8%.
• Gender imbalance: female applicants represent only 16.6% of male-plus-female applications.
• Single-application countries: Argentina, Azerbaijan, Canada, Faroe Islands, Gibraltar, Mexico, Singapore, Thailand, and United States of America.
• Top 5 countries by application volume: Germany, Israel, France, Spain, and Italy account for 46.6% of all applications.
• Health concentration: Health alone represents 31.7% of all proposals and 995 GO applications.

10. Strategic Interpretation for Applicants

The dataset gives applicants three practical lessons.

First, the full proposal stage is not uniform across Europe. Country context matters. A Netherlands-based applicant, based on the historical aggregate, sits inside a much stronger country-level conversion environment than an applicant from Poland, Greece, Romania, Türkiye, Ukraine, Serbia, or Cyprus. That does not determine any individual result, but it gives useful context for benchmarking.

Second, sector choice matters even when the technology is strong. Space, Engineering & Tech, Agriculture, Health, Biotechnology, and Environmental Sciences show materially stronger full proposal outcomes than Education & Culture, Consumer Products, Security, and Transport & Mobility. A proposal in a lower-rate sector needs especially sharp positioning, stronger proof, and fewer avoidable weaknesses.

Third, the year-by-year trend matters for planning. The 2024 success rate was unusually high. The 2025 rate was much lower. Applicants should not anchor their expectations on the best year in the dataset. The safer planning assumption is that advancing past Step 2 remains difficult and that every section must be built to survive a crowded, high-quality field.

In plain terms: the EIC Accelerator full proposal is winnable, but it is not forgiving. The strongest applicants need a serious evidence package, a defensible market logic, a credible team, a clean risk narrative, and a proposal that makes the evaluator's job easy.