EIC Work Programme 2027: Complete Guide to Funding, Calls and Deadlines

The draft EIC Work Programme 2027 proposes major changes to the European Innovation Council's funding system. The core funding ladder remains in place - EIC Pathfinder for breakthrough research, EIC Transition for technology and business validation, and the EIC Accelerator for market deployment and scale-up - but the route through that ladder changes. Pathfinder Open moves to a two-stage application with an interview, Transition becomes a single-beneficiary instrument, the Accelerator calendar contracts to four full-proposal batches, and a dedicated EIC STEP Scale Up Defence call would provide direct equity for companies developing critical defence technologies. The programme also carries the 2026 Advanced Innovation Challenges pilot into its restricted second stage and introduces new challenge topics spanning energy grids, continual-learning AI, quantum energetics, ocean observation, smart cities, fusion and carbon removal.

Important status notice: The source is the European Commission working draft dated 7 July 2026, which has not been adopted or endorsed by the Commission. As of 11 September 2026, the Commission's public EIC pages still present the EIC Work Programme 2026 as the current adopted EIC work programme. Every 2027 deadline, budget, eligibility condition and application rule below is therefore provisional until the final Commission Decision and call pages are published. Empty budgets, placeholders and internal inconsistencies in the draft are identified explicitly.

Table of Contents

1. EIC Work Programme 2027 at a Glance
2. Draft Status and How to Use This Guide
3. Main Changes in the EIC Work Programme 2027
4. The EIC Funding Ladder and TRL Logic
5. EIC Pathfinder Open 2027
6. EIC Pathfinder Challenges 2027
7. EIC Transition 2027
8. EIC Advanced Innovation Challenges 2027
9. EIC Accelerator 2027
10. EIC Accelerator Challenges 2027
11. EIC STEP Scale Up 2027
12. EIC STEP Scale Up Defence 2027
13. Business Acceleration Services
14. Prizes, Women TechEU and Other Actions
15. Cross-Cutting Eligibility, Security and IP Rules
16. How to Choose the Right EIC Call
17. Applicant Preparation Plan for 2027
18. Unresolved Draft Gaps and Contradictions
19. What the 2027 Programme Signals for 2028-2034
20. Frequently Asked Questions
21. Official Sources and Update Policy

EIC Work Programme 2027 at a Glance

The draft organises 2027 support around seven principal funding routes. Pathfinder, Transition and the Accelerator continue to cover successive stages from scientific breakthrough to commercial scale-up. Advanced Innovation Challenges use an experimental stage-gated model. STEP Scale Up and STEP Scale Up Defence provide much larger equity tickets for major financing rounds, while the Scaleup Europe Fund is intended to operate above the STEP ticket range.

Budget caution: The July draft does not state the overall 2027 EIC budget. Its Annex 1 budget table is blank, and the total budgets for Pathfinder Open, Pathfinder Challenges, Transition, the Accelerator and the general STEP Scale Up call remain placeholders. The challenge-level amounts that are actually written into the draft are EUR 30 million for ocean observation, EUR 50 million for climate-neutral and smart cities, EUR 20 million for fusion, EUR 50 million for carbon removal and circularity, EUR 25 million for Advanced Innovation Challenges Stage 2, EUR 100 million for STEP Scale Up Defence and EUR 400 million for the 2027 Scaleup Europe Fund contribution.

Provisional EIC Deadlines for 2027

Unless a call states otherwise, deadlines are at 17:00 Brussels local time. An applicant should never treat the dates above as submission authority. The final call page in the EU Funding & Tenders Portal controls.

Draft Status: What Is Known and What Is Not

The source document is a working draft marked "DRAFT VERSION 07.07" and accompanied by an explicit disclaimer. That distinction matters for every applicant decision. A draft can reveal the Commission services' intended architecture, allowing teams to prepare evidence and partnerships early, but it cannot create a legal entitlement, open a call or override an adopted work programme.

Details That Are Developed Enough for Early Preparation

• The proposed call architecture and technology-readiness logic.
• The named Pathfinder and Accelerator Challenges and their technical scopes.
• The intended two-stage Pathfinder Open model.
• The intended single-beneficiary Transition model and feeder-project restrictions.
• The intended Accelerator application documents, evaluation stages and four full-proposal batches.
• The 20% single-investor pre-commitment rule for both STEP scale-up calls.
• The primary-defence scope, country restrictions and guarantee mechanism for STEP Defence.
• The shift toward demand-side validation through letters of intent, buyers, users, regulators and pilot environments.

Details That Cannot Yet Be Used as Final Planning Assumptions

• The total EIC Work Programme 2027 budget.
• The total budgets for Pathfinder Open, Pathfinder Challenges, Transition, Accelerator Open, Accelerator Challenges and general STEP Scale Up.
• The allocation between Accelerator grants and investments.
• The STEP Defence submission deadline.
• Several procurement and support-action budgets.
• The final call opening dates.
• The final wording of economic-security restrictions and investment safeguards.
• The final Accelerator interview calendar, because two passages in the draft do not agree.

A sensible preparation policy is therefore to work on durable evidence now - technical validation, customer discovery, IP position, market analysis, team capability, financial model, regulatory pathway and partner commitments - while keeping page counts, forms, dates and budget allocations under change control until adoption.

Main Changes in the EIC Work Programme 2027

The 2027 programme is intended to be the final EIC work programme under the 2021-2027 Horizon Europe framework. The draft describes its changes both as targeted improvements for the current programme and as pilots that can inform the EIC under the next EU research and innovation framework.

1. Pathfinder Open Becomes a Two-Stage Competition

The largest procedural change affects Pathfinder Open. Applicants would first submit an eight-page short proposal covering Excellence and Impact. Proposals would be ranked, with enough invited to Stage 2 to represent requested funding equal to about 2.5 times the available call budget. Shortlisted consortia would then submit a 23-page full proposal covering Excellence, Impact, and Quality and Efficiency of Implementation. Every full proposal above the thresholds would be invited to a ten-minute interview.

This turns Pathfinder Open from a single written competition into a funnel. Scientific quality remains central, but teams would also need to communicate their long-term technology vision and problem relevance in a very compressed first-stage document, then defend the proposal orally.

2. Transition Becomes a Single-Beneficiary Instrument

The draft removes the previous two-to-five-beneficiary consortium route from EIC Transition. A startup, SME or research-performing organisation would apply as the sole beneficiary. Affiliated entities can participate where required, and original project partners can still be involved through other legally defined roles, but they do not become co-beneficiaries under the call.

This change places responsibility for technology maturation, business validation, IP access and route to market in one organisation. It also makes ownership and commercial leadership easier to assess. Teams that previously planned a consortium must redesign governance, work allocation and access rights around one accountable beneficiary.

3. Transition Adds Stronger Demand Evidence and a Video Pitch

Every Transition proposal must include a letter of intent from at least one potential customer or user, with no financial or other incentive exchanged for the endorsement. The Agency can verify the authenticity and operational reality of the relationship. Applicants can be asked for evidence such as a non-disclosure agreement, data-transfer protocol or internal resource allocation approval. The application also includes a three-to-five-minute video pitch.

The evaluator is no longer being asked to accept a generic statement of market interest. The strongest proposals will show a traceable relationship, a specific use case, access to a test environment, named resources and a credible decision process on the user side.

4. The Accelerator Moves to Four Full-Proposal Batches

The draft lists four full-proposal batching dates instead of the six batches used in the adopted 2026 programme. Short applications remain continuously open and are batched for evaluation on the first Tuesday of each month. Full proposals become more detailed than short proposals but are capped at 20 narrative pages, accompanied by financial, ownership, IP, implementation and lump-sum annexes as applicable.

The practical effect is fewer opportunities to enter the full-proposal evaluation during 2027. Teams should plan backward from the desired batch and leave time for the short-application evaluation, which the draft estimates at four to six weeks from the monthly batch date.

5. Reserve Lists Appear Across More Instruments

The draft introduces or reinforces "GO Reserve" outcomes in Transition, Advanced Innovation Challenges, Accelerator and STEP. A reserve decision is not the same as funding. It preserves a route to selection if budget becomes available and if any continuing eligibility conditions - particularly the STEP investor pre-commitment - remain valid.

6. Business Acceleration Services Become More Demand-Oriented

The BAS package adds structured support for pilot tests and proofs of concept with public and private buyers. The proposed implementing action would direct at least 80% of its budget to financial support for EIC companies, with grants of up to EUR 60,000 per pilot and at least half of the third-party support budget allocated to public-sector buyer pilots. Internationalisation services are also strengthened.

7. EIC Funding Opens Further to Dual-Use and Defence

The draft permits potential dual-use applications under the Accelerator, general STEP Scale Up and Scaleup Europe Fund while retaining a civilian-application focus in Pathfinder, Transition and Advanced Innovation Challenges. It then creates a separate STEP Defence call for innovations whose primary application is defence. This separation is important: a company with a predominantly civilian or dual-use product should use the general STEP route, whereas STEP Defence requires a primary defence application.

8. Strategic Intelligence, Women TechEU and Quantum Recognition Expand

The draft expands the use of EIC portfolio data for foresight and evidence-based policy, continues Women TechEU support for early-stage women-led deep-tech companies and proposes a quantum category within the Women Innovators prize. Several details of these actions still contain placeholders.

The EIC Funding Ladder and Technology Readiness Levels

The EIC is easiest to understand as a sequence of different risk-reduction tasks, not as a menu of interchangeable grants.

1. Pathfinder asks whether a radically new technological principle can be made scientifically and experimentally credible. It starts at low TRLs and aims for proof of principle or laboratory validation.
2. Transition asks whether an eligible research result can become a validated application and an investable business proposition. It begins around early TRL 4 and aims for a demonstrator around TRL 6 alongside validated market assumptions.
3. Accelerator asks whether a company with TRL 5 completed can finish innovation activities, enter the market and scale. The grant normally covers TRL 6-8 activities; the investment finances deployment and scale-up.
4. STEP asks whether a critical-technology company can execute a major financing round and become a global leader. It is equity-only and requires prior investor validation.
5. The Scaleup Europe Fund sits beyond the normal STEP range. It is intended for growth companies requiring investments above EUR 30 million and, at the upper end, several hundred million euros.

The right call is determined by the maturity of the integrated innovation in its intended use, not by the maturity of its strongest component. A polished business plan cannot make an early laboratory result Accelerator-ready, and an established company is not automatically a STEP candidate if it lacks the required financing round and qualified-investor pre-commitment.

EIC Pathfinder Open 2027

EIC Pathfinder Open 2027 is designed for interdisciplinary teams pursuing a high-risk scientific breakthrough that can underpin a radically new technology and ultimately solve an important economic, social or environmental problem. It is not a conventional collaborative research call for incremental improvement, routine engineering or implementation of a laboratory-validated technology.

The Four Pathfinder Open Gatekeepers

The draft frames four essential characteristics. A proposal must present:

• A convincing long-term vision for a radically new future or emerging technology, with a project commitment to experimental proof of concept or laboratory validation.
• A concrete, novel and ambitious scientific breakthrough that can underpin that technology.
• A convincing high-risk/high-gain research methodology delivered by an interdisciplinary team.
• An important global challenge or unsolved problem and a high-level path from the proposed technology toward a practical solution.

The expected project output is not a market-ready product or final prototype. It is at least laboratory validation of the core technology through integrated use cases, together with open-access scientific publications, protection of exploitable IP, a future exploitation plan and early consideration of regulation, certification and standardisation.

Who Can Apply to Pathfinder Open?

Only collaborative proposals are eligible. The consortium must contain at least three independent legal entities established in different countries, including at least one in an EU Member State and at least two additional entities in different EU Member States or Horizon Europe Associated Countries. Universities, research organisations, startups, SMEs, industrial partners and natural persons can participate, subject to the final general and call-specific rules.

Funding and Project Support

• Indicative project contribution: up to EUR 4 million, with a larger request possible when duly justified.
• Funding rate: 100% of eligible costs.
• Funding form: lump sum based on a reasoned estimate of project costs.
• Call budget: still an "EUR XXX million" placeholder in the draft.
• Additional support: Business Acceleration Services, Programme Manager interaction, Booster grants of up to EUR 50,000, potential Transition eligibility and a possible Fast Track route to the Accelerator.

The New Two-Stage Pathfinder Open Application

Stage 1: Eight Pages for Excellence and Impact

The proposed Stage 1 deadline is 25 February 2027 at 17:00 Brussels time. Sections 1 and 2 of Part B - Excellence and Impact - have a combined maximum of eight A4 pages, excluding references. Each intended beneficiary must also provide a commitment letter. The consortium composition and letters are used to prepare Stage 2 but are not disclosed to or assessed by the Stage 1 evaluators.

At least three evaluators score Excellence and Impact out of five. Excellence has a threshold of 4/5 and a weight of 60%; Impact has a threshold of 4/5 and a weight of 40%. There is no fixed overall score threshold for Stage 2. Instead, proposals are ranked and the invitation line is set so that shortlisted proposals request about 2.5 times the available budget.

Stage 2: Full Proposal and Interview

Invited teams would submit by 16 September 2027. Excellence, Impact, and Quality and Efficiency of Implementation have a combined maximum of 23 A4 pages, excluding references. The consortium is expected to match the Stage 1 commitment letters, although duly justified changes are permitted.

The full-proposal weights are 50% Excellence, 30% Impact and 20% Implementation, with thresholds of 4/5, 4/5 and 3/5 respectively. Every proposal above the thresholds would proceed to an interview approximately 10 to 14 weeks after the deadline. Teams receive no more than ten minutes to pitch, followed by questions. Final ranking combines the written evaluation, interview and committee consensus. Tie-breaks prioritise Excellence, Impact, gender balance among work-package leaders, SME participation, country diversity and then other call-objective factors.

What a Competitive Pathfinder Open Proposal Must Prove

• The breakthrough is scientific and technological, not just a novel use of an existing tool.
• The long-term technology vision is connected to a specific problem of genuine scale and urgency.
• The research hypotheses are falsifiable and the validation plan can establish whether the technology principle works.
• The team combines the disciplines and future exploitation actors needed to move toward the envisioned solution.
• The risk is productive: failure modes are understood, but success would create a step change rather than an incremental result.
• The IP, regulatory, standardisation and exploitation pathway begins during the research project instead of being deferred to its final months.

For a detailed comparison point, see the existing EIC Pathfinder 2026 guide. The two-stage submission and interview described above are specific to the 2027 draft.

EIC Pathfinder Challenges 2027

Pathfinder Challenges support predefined research areas through coherent project portfolios. A Programme Manager establishes a common roadmap, coordinates activities and can steer the portfolio as scientific and technological conditions evolve. Projects are selected not only on standalone quality but also on how they contribute to a balanced portfolio.

Common Rules for Pathfinder Challenges

• Typical starting point: around TRL 2, aiming for proof of concept or laboratory validation at TRL 3-4.
• Eligible structures: one legal entity, two independent entities from two different eligible countries, or a larger consortium meeting the standard three-country rule.
• Single beneficiaries cannot be mid-caps or large companies.
• Indicative project contribution: up to EUR 4 million, with larger amounts possible if justified.
• Funding rate: 100% through a lump sum.
• Provisional deadline: 29 September 2027 at 17:00 Brussels time.
• Part B page limit: 30 A4 pages for Excellence, Impact and Implementation.
• Recommended portfolio work package: at least ten person-months.
• Total call budget: not yet populated in the draft.

The first evaluation step applies thresholds and weights of 4/5 and 50% for Excellence, 3.5/5 and 30% for Impact, and 3/5 and 20% for Implementation. Proposals above all thresholds enter the portfolio-selection step. The committee maps proposals by factors such as technical approach, building block, application, risk and TRL, then selects the combination expected to produce the strongest Challenge portfolio. Applicants should therefore read the final Challenge Guide carefully: a technically excellent proposal can remain unfunded if it duplicates an already stronger portfolio element.

Pathfinder Challenge 1: Advanced Materials for Future Energy Grids

This challenge targets advanced materials, including nanomaterials, that can deliver a step change in one of three electricity-grid pillars:

• Generation: breakthrough generators with higher efficiency, durability and cost-effectiveness while reducing dependence on Critical Raw Materials.
• Storage: sharply improved energy density, cycle life, safety and sustainability for grids with high renewable penetration, decentralisation and demand flexibility.
• Transmission: next-generation grid technologies that reduce energy losses, increase capacity and improve resilience.

Every project must focus on practical device or system implementation for grid integration and provide a mid- to long-term integration roadmap with measurable advantages over existing solutions. AI can be used to accelerate materials development. The intended portfolio will balance generation, storage and transmission, with no more than three projects under each pillar and an emphasis on cross-pillar synergies.

Pathfinder Challenge 2: Safe Continual Learning for Reliable AI Agents (CLOWAI)

CLOWAI addresses a core limitation of deployed AI: most systems are trained offline, frozen and then personalised through external memory or retrieval rather than controlled changes to their parameters. The challenge asks how long-lived agents can adapt after deployment when tasks, data distributions, users, software services and physical environments change.

Projects can address one or more of four capability groups:

1. Open-world novelty management: unknown detection, distribution-shift diagnosis, calibrated uncertainty, adaptive thresholds and abstention or escalation policies.
2. Reliable continual adaptation: stability-plasticity balance, prevention of catastrophic forgetting and harmful drift, safe incorporation of new concepts, and monitor-detect-adapt-verify-rollback loops.
3. Memory, grounding and verification: provenance-aware long-term memory, conflict handling, trusted evidence, detection of de-grounding, safe exploration and constraint checking.
4. Robustness, security and resilience: protection against poisoning and adversarial manipulation under non-stationarity, safe degradation, recovery, sensor failure and partial observability.

Every funded project must make learning and model changes auditable and explainable. Expected outputs include a TRL 4 demonstrator evaluated over long horizons under drift or novelty, quantitative improvements over strong baselines, at least one reusable portfolio asset and a governance package defining monitoring, triggers, provenance, rollback and quarantine. Proposals should validate across at least two application domains or deployment settings unless they provide a scientifically compelling reason for single-domain validation.

Pathfinder Challenge 3: Quantum Energetics

Quantum Energetics studies the energy cost of creating and using quantum coherence across computing, communication and sensing. It looks beyond processor power to the full system: cooling, control and readout electronics, error correction, classical co-processing, lasers and supporting infrastructure.

Projects can focus on full-stack quantum computing or on quantum communication and sensing. The research can develop energy-aware compilers and algorithms, full-stack energy metrics, fault-tolerance benchmarks, energy-per-secure-bit measures, sensing sensitivity per watt and experimentally grounded definitions of quantum energetic advantage. Starting at TRL 2, projects must reach TRL 3-4 with a prototype or testbed showing lower energy use than an appropriate classical counterpart - or, for fault-tolerant quantum computing, a competitive energy advantage over state-of-the-art quantum solutions.

The portfolio is intended to balance Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum platforms, fault-tolerant platforms, quantum communication and quantum sensing. Competitive proposals will need rigorous system boundaries and fair baselines; a narrow component-level efficiency gain is insufficient if the full stack consumes more energy.

EIC Transition 2027

EIC Transition 2027 is intended for a single organisation that can turn an eligible EU-funded result at early TRL 4 into a technology demonstrated around TRL 6 and a validated, investment-ready route to market. It funds technology and business readiness in parallel. Neither a research-only work plan nor a consultancy-led market study satisfies the instrument's purpose.

Eligible Feeder Projects

The proposal must build on results generated by one of the project groups named in the draft:

• EIC Pathfinder projects, including specified Horizon 2020 EIC pilot, FET-Open, FET-Proactive, CoCo and FET Flagship calls.
• European Research Council Proof of Concept projects funded under Horizon Europe.
• Research and Innovation Actions from Horizon 2020 Societal Challenges and Leadership in Industrial Technologies, Horizon Europe Pillar II and the European Defence Fund, where the result is at an eligible TRL.
• Research and Innovation Actions funded under the Horizon Europe Research Infrastructures part.

Results at TRL 5 or higher are not eligible. For an ongoing feeder grant, its start date must generally be more than 18 months before the Transition cut-off; the ERC Proof of Concept exception uses six months. For a completed feeder project, the application must be submitted within 24 months after the grant end date.

IP Rights and Result Identification

The Transition applicant does not need to have participated in the feeder project. If it did participate, it must confirm ownership or sufficient rights to commercialise the relevant results throughout the Transition project. If it did not participate, it must include a commitment from the result owner to negotiate fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory access covering the entire Transition project and at least one year afterward.

The application must identify the feeder grant number, acronym and the location where the relevant result was reported. Omitting this dedicated information makes the proposal incomplete and inadmissible. For ERC Proof of Concept results, only one proposal can be submitted per originating project; multiple detected proposals would all become ineligible.

Single-Beneficiary Eligibility

The applicant must be a single startup, SME or research-performing organisation established in an EU Member State or Associated Country. A university, research organisation, principal investigator or inventor team can apply through the relevant research-performing entity when it intends to create a spin-off. Larger companies cannot apply as sole beneficiaries, although they can participate through permitted third-party roles or letters of intent. An applicant that is already the beneficiary of an ongoing Transition project is not eligible to submit another application under the draft.

Commercial Evidence and the Letter of Intent

Every admissible proposal must include the prescribed letter of intent from at least one interested third party such as a potential customer or user. A useful letter should identify the problem, proposed solution, use case, validation environment, data or infrastructure access, personnel commitment, decision criteria and the commercial or procurement pathway if validation succeeds. A vague endorsement creates little evaluation value and can be checked by the Agency.

Funding, Duration and First-Year Review

• Requested EU contribution considered appropriate: more than EUR 0.5 million and less than EUR 2.5 million.
• Duration: one to three years.
• Funding rate: 100% of eligible costs through a lump sum.
• Total call budget: still a placeholder.
• Provisional deadline: 16 September 2027 at 17:00 Brussels time.
• Application: up to 22 A4 pages for the cover page and Sections 1-3 of Part B, plus a three-to-five-minute video pitch and letter of intent.

The first year becomes a real continuation gate. Projects must define technological objectives and measurable KPIs in the grant agreement, then demonstrate that they have been met. A review can continue, reorient or terminate a project. Teams should treat first-year milestones as decision-grade evidence points, not as soft reporting indicators.

Transition Evaluation

At least three remote evaluators score the proposal. Excellence, Impact, and Quality and Efficiency of Implementation each have a 4/5 threshold. The highest-ranked proposals representing about two to 2.5 times the available budget advance to interview. The selection mechanism seeks, where possible, an interview pool in which at least 30% of invited proposals are women-led, while maintaining the stated score and threshold conditions.

The draft says the European Patent Office can provide the jury with a non-binding assessment of technological novelty, inventive merit and future IP strategy. Up to five proposal team members can represent the applicant at the interview. The jury can recommend GO, GO Reserve or NO GO, and remotely scored proposals meeting all thresholds can receive a Seal of Excellence even when they are not funded.

What Transition Evaluators Will Look For

• A clear deep-tech breakthrough and substantiated performance advantage.
• Specific first-year and end-of-project milestones that retire the decisive technical and commercial risks.
• Defined users and paying customers, not a generic market category.
• A credible business model, business plan, route to market and evidence of significant demand.
• A team that can perform customer discovery, commercial validation and business development internally.
• Evidence supporting every technical and market claim.
• A proportionate lump-sum budget tied to measurable work-package outcomes.

For the previous call architecture, see the EIC Transition 2026 guide. The single-beneficiary structure, mandatory demand evidence and first-year continuation gate are the defining elements of the 2027 draft.

EIC Advanced Innovation Challenges 2027

The Advanced Innovation Challenges pilot is an ARPA-inspired but Horizon Europe-compliant experiment in stage-gated, demand-driven funding. Stage 1 was launched under the 2026 programme with EUR 300,000 lump sums for up to nine months. The 2027 draft contains only the restricted Stage 2 competition for the selected Stage 1 participants.

Stage 2 Eligibility and Funding

• Only proposals that participated in and were selected for Stage 1 can apply.
• Applicants can continue as one eligible entity, form a two-entity consortium across two eligible countries, or form a maximum three-entity consortium meeting the standard country rule.
• Stage 2 grant: up to EUR 2.5 million.
• Maximum duration: 2.5 years.
• Funding rate: 100% through a lump sum.
• Total Stage 2 budget: EUR 25 million.
• Current indicative deadline: 18 June 2027 at 17:00 Brussels time; the July draft listed 15 June 2027.
• Application length: 22 A4 pages for the cover and Sections 1-3 of Part B.

Applicants submit a PDF presentation for a 15-minute live pitch. It must show the Stage 1 results, explain how those results convinced users, customers or regulators to engage in Stage 2, set out scale-up milestones and present an initial business plan. Updated letters of intent are encouraged. All eligible proposals are interviewed by a jury of up to six people, including the responsible Programme Manager; the jury can also include user representatives or observers. Up to three project representatives can attend.

Stage 2 evaluation focuses on demonstrated breakthrough performance, a credible development and deployment work plan, market-creation potential, verified user interest, team execution capacity and appropriate resources. The jury can recommend GO, GO Reserve or NO GO. The draft also permits the Stage 2 start date to be aligned retroactively with notification of the evaluation result, allowing work to begin without waiting for the full grant-signature process.

Advanced Innovation Challenge 1: Physical AI

The Physical AI challenge seeks embodied systems that combine at least two of five capability groups: intelligent perception and cognition; adaptive learning and optimisation; autonomous decision-making and collective intelligence; human-AI collaboration; and novel physical integration through sensors, actuators or materials.

Solutions must address at least one of three application areas: disaster response and civil security, autonomous laboratories for scientific discovery, or personal and professional robot assistants. Stage 2 requires at least two build-and-test deployment loops, progress toward TRL 6-7, scalability and manufacturability work, compliance and certification preparation, structured engagement with end users and regulators, and a commercialisation roadmap. The final system should operate autonomously in a complex or semi-structured real-world environment while demonstrating reliability, adaptability, resource efficiency and safe human interaction.

Advanced Innovation Challenge 2: New Approach Methodologies

This challenge aims to move New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) into practical biomedical use, reducing or replacing animal testing in preclinical research and in the safety, efficacy or quality testing of medicinal products and medical technologies. In-scope approaches include organoids, organ-on-chip and disease-on-chip systems, in-chemico methods, digital twins, virtual patients, AI-enhanced prediction, mechanistic or integrated in-silico systems and advanced three-dimensional human tissue models.

Stage 2 should produce a functional, scalable NAM prototype around TRL 6. Activities can include benchmarking against animal models or human trials, relevant-use demonstration, engagement with industry, regulators, contract research organisations and standards bodies, external testing, regulatory-grade data packages and documentation of scalability and standardisation. The expected result is not only scientific validity but a route to regulatory, industrial or clinical uptake.

See the 2026 Physical AI and NAMs challenge analysis for the first-stage foundations. A new 2027 applicant cannot enter directly at Stage 2 under the July draft.

EIC Accelerator 2027

The EIC Accelerator 2027 is intended for a single deep-tech company with TRL 5 completed, a high-impact innovation, international scale-up potential and a financing gap that market investors cannot cover alone at the required risk and scale. It combines grant support for innovation activities with direct or quasi-equity investment for deployment and growth.

Who Can Apply?

• A single SME, including a startup, established in an EU Member State or Associated Country.
• A single small mid-cap with up to 499 employees for investment-only support, or exceptionally for blended finance where rapid scale-up requires it.
• One or more natural persons or legal entities intending to establish or invest in an eligible company, subject to the establishment and agreement conditions in the call.
• An entity from a non-associated third country intending to establish or relocate an SME to an eligible country, provided effective establishment is proven by the full-proposal stage.
• An eligible project entering the full-proposal stage through an approved Fast Track or Plug-in route.

Concurrent submissions across the Accelerator, STEP Scale Up and STEP Defence are prohibited. If more than one proposal is active before feedback on the earlier submission, only the most recently submitted proposal is evaluated under its own call rules.

Accelerator Funding Options

The grant reimburses up to 70% of eligible costs, normally up to EUR 2,499,999, through a lump sum. The beneficiary finances the remaining 30% of grant work-package costs from its own resources. Grant activities normally cover demonstration, prototyping, system-level validation, R&D, regulatory and standardisation work, IP management and marketing approval from TRL 6 to TRL 8. They should normally finish within 24 months, with a longer period possible when well justified.

The investment component ranges from EUR 1 million to EUR 10 million under the 2027 draft. Terms are negotiated case by case under the EIC Fund Investment Guidelines. The investment is intended to bridge the funding gap and crowd in other capital; the absence of a committed co-investor at the initial Accelerator evaluation does not itself prevent an EIC Fund investment. Companies seeking EUR 10-30 million and already organising a much larger round should examine STEP instead.

Step 1: Short Proposal

Short proposals remain continuously open and are batched on the first Tuesday of each month at 17:00 Brussels time. A short proposal contains:

• A 12-page form covering the company, team, innovation and market.
• A pitch deck of up to ten slides.
• A video of up to three minutes featuring no more than three core team members.

Four experts evaluate the short proposal. At least three GO assessments produce a successful result; at least two NO GO assessments produce rejection. Feedback is expected about four to six weeks after batching. A successful applicant can receive one optional three-day coaching package for that proposal and can submit a full proposal to a later batch.

Step 2: Full Proposal

The July draft lists four 2027 full-proposal batches: 3 February, 1 April, 1 September and 3 November. Applicants with a successful short proposal under the 2026 or 2027 work programme can use these dates, subject to the final transitional wording and submission limits.

The full proposal contains:

• A narrative form of no more than 20 pages aligned with the short-application questions.
• A PDF pitch deck and an up-to-three-minute video, reused or updated from Step 1.
• Financial data and the company ownership structure or cap table.
• An IP strategy, including a freedom-to-operate analysis when available.
• An implementation plan and milestones for proposals requesting a grant.
• A detailed lump-sum budget table for proposals requesting a grant.

One external technology expert conducts an in-depth assessment, including an online clarification meeting with the applicant. A thematic evaluation panel of at least three experts then reviews the proposals, considers the technology expert's report and determines final scores and ranking. The draft indicates that proposals requesting around 2.5 times the available grant budget will be invited to interview. Applicants reaching all thresholds but not invited can receive a Seal of Excellence and, for relevant Challenges, a Sovereignty or STEP Seal.

Step 3: EIC Jury Interview

The jury receives the full proposal and evaluation-panel report. It can recommend:

• GO: recommended for funding within the available budget.
• GO Reserve: placed on a ranked reserve list, under the draft's specified interview-session rules.
• NO GO with Seal of Excellence: the quality threshold is confirmed but funding is unavailable or not recommended.
• NO GO: the application does not satisfy the required evaluation outcome.

The jury can recommend a lower grant because some activities are above TRL 8, but it cannot change the requested form of support. It does not substitute a grant for equity or blended finance for grant-only. For investment, its observations are passed into EIC Fund due diligence rather than becoming final investment terms.

Accelerator Evaluation Criteria

At the full-proposal stage, the overall threshold is 13/15, with individual thresholds of 4/5 for each of three criterion groups:

1. Excellence: deep-tech and breakthrough nature, completed TRL 5, credible development path, adequate IP protection and a sound market-entry IP strategy.
2. Impact: market size and obtainable share, growth potential, competition, business and revenue model, realistic financials, European technological leadership, reduced dependencies and broader environmental or social impact. Challenge and STEP alignment apply where relevant.
3. Level of risk, implementation and need for Union support: team and governance, risk management, grant implementation plan and costs, financing risk, investor traction, leverage effect and the EIC's additionality.

Dual-use proposals are assessed against the same criteria and receive no preferential treatment. The proposal must win because the innovation, market, team, execution plan and financing case are strong, not merely because the topic is politically strategic.

Accelerator Resubmission Limits

The draft retains the Horizon Europe rule introduced in 2024: after three unsuccessful submissions of the same or improved proposal by the same legal entity across any Accelerator stage, Open or Challenge route, and any funding form, the entity cannot apply again to the Accelerator during Horizon Europe. Applicants are expected to make significant improvements after feedback. A short-proposal evaluation review is available only when the rejected proposal received exactly two of four GO assessments and the complaint concerns procedural flaws rather than disagreement with expert judgment.

For broader context, see the complete EIC Accelerator 2026 guide and the comparison of the 2023 and 2026 EIC Fund Investment Guidelines.

EIC Accelerator Challenges 2027

The draft defines four Accelerator Challenges. All are considered within the scope of STEP and can therefore lead to a Sovereignty or STEP Seal under the stated conditions. Their combined call budget remains a placeholder, but each challenge contains an indicative allocation.

Challenge 1: Advanced In-Situ Ocean Observation

Indicative budget: EUR 30 million. This challenge seeks scalable, persistent and high-resolution marine-monitoring technologies that can support climate resilience, biodiversity, the blue economy, maritime security and underwater infrastructure protection.

In-scope priorities include autonomous sensor networks and marine vehicles, underwater communication, integrated observation and mapping, AI-ready interoperable data platforms, persistent civil and security monitoring, and biodiversity systems using technologies such as environmental DNA and AI-based species or habitat detection. Applicants are encouraged to engage operational end users in weather and climate services, shipping, fisheries, aquaculture, offshore energy, telecommunications, insurance and environmental protection.

A competitive proposal should show how the technology moves from a local pilot to economically sustainable deployment. Hardware endurance, maintenance, power, communications, biofouling, data standards, environmental footprint and integration with European ocean-data infrastructures are commercial issues as much as technical ones.

Challenge 2: Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities

Indicative budget: EUR 50 million. This challenge supports deployable deep-tech and nature-based solutions in three priority groups:

• Energy and buildings: retrofit technologies, building efficiency, district-level renewable integration, smart grids, waste-heat use, thermal networks and bidirectional EV charging.
• Transport and mobility: vehicle-to-grid charging, SAE Level 4 public-mobility solutions, AI and edge-enabled traffic management, multimodal modelling and predictive analytics.
• Resource management: advanced recycling and upcycling of urban waste, circular construction and electronics streams, water planning and wastewater treatment.

Applicants are strongly encouraged to engage at least one city participating in the EU Mission for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities and obtain a letter of intent. The best commitment will define a deployment site, decision owner, procurement route, data access, integration responsibilities, success metrics and post-pilot adoption pathway. BAS is intended to connect funded companies with Mission cities through innovation procurement support.

Challenge 3: Fusion Power Plant Concepts and Enabling Technologies

Indicative budget: EUR 20 million in 2027. Supported by a transfer from the Euratom Research and Training Programme, this challenge covers alternative magnetic, inertial and magneto-inertial concepts as well as enabling materials, tritium fuel-cycle technologies, high-power lasers and optics, plasma-heating systems, magnets, digital twins, AI-enabled control and inertial-fusion targets.

The challenge explicitly accommodates starting TRLs from 4 to 6 because fusion subsystems mature unevenly. Every company must show how its innovation advances the relevant TRL or removes a critical cost, engineering, materials or operational bottleneck for a commercially viable plant. At least 50% of the indicative budget is expected to go to entities established in countries associated with both Euratom and Horizon Europe.

Challenge 4: Carbon Removal and Circularity

Indicative budget: EUR 50 million. This challenge combines climate mitigation with industrial resilience. It covers:

• Direct air and ocean capture and capture from eligible biogenic or mixed-biogenic waste streams.
• Permanent carbon removal and storage in products, including DACCS, BioCCS, biochar, enhanced weathering, alkalinity enhancement and mineralisation.
• Carbon capture and utilisation for fuels, chemicals, materials, food, feed, proteins and fertilisers.
• Quantification, monitoring and verification of climate and environmental effects, including leakage.

Storage of captured fossil carbon dioxide as an untransformed gas and hydrogen-production technologies are outside scope. Beneficiaries are intended to receive facilitated access to the EU Carbon Removal and Carbon Farming buyers' club, connecting technical validation with early offtake and revenue signals.

A note in the draft says the policy text on integrating certified removals into the EU Emissions Trading System must be updated. Applicants should therefore anchor their regulatory claims in the final adopted call and current carbon-removal certification legislation rather than repeat the bracketed draft statement.

EIC STEP Scale Up 2027

EIC STEP Scale Up 2027 is an equity-only call for an SME or small mid-cap developing an innovation in a critical digital, deep-tech, clean, resource-efficient or biotechnology sector and already raising a major funding round. It is not a larger version of the Accelerator grant. The defining eligibility signal is an existing equity pre-commitment from one qualified investor.

Technology Scope

1. Digital and deep technologies: semiconductors, AI, quantum, connectivity, navigation, advanced sensing, robotics, autonomous systems and other deep-tech innovation.
2. Clean and resource-efficient technologies: renewable energy, storage, grids, heat pumps, geothermal, hydrogen, sustainable biogas, carbon capture and utilisation, nuclear technologies, advanced materials, industrial decarbonisation, manufacturing, recycling, water and circular-economy technologies.
3. Biotechnologies: DNA and RNA, proteins, cell and tissue engineering, process biotechnology, gene and RNA vectors, bioinformatics, nanobiotechnology and critical medicines and components.

The technology must either bring an innovative, emerging and cutting-edge element with significant economic potential to the EU internal market or reduce or prevent a strategic dependency. Potential dual-use applications can be supported when their development advances civilian application use.

The 20% Single-Investor Pre-Commitment Rule

A single qualified investor with relevant market, technology and jurisdiction experience must pre-commit at least 20% of the entire target financing round. That qualifying portion must still be uninvested when the letter is issued. Separate investors cannot aggregate smaller commitments to cross the threshold; a syndicate is ineligible if no individual participant reaches 20%.

This rule changes the order of work. A company should not start with proposal writing and postpone fundraising validation. It must first define the round, build a defensible financing plan and secure one investor capable of providing the qualifying commitment in the official form.

Investment Size and Target Round

• EIC investment request: EUR 10 million to EUR 30 million.
• Target round: generally EUR 50-150 million or more.
• Leverage: the target round must be at least three to five times the requested EIC contribution.
• Funding form: equity-only; no grant component.
• Total 2027 call budget: still a placeholder.

Who Can Apply and What Must Be Submitted?

An eligible SME or small mid-cap with up to 499 employees can apply, and an investor can submit on the company's behalf with prior agreement. The company and any investment holding entity must meet the country-establishment conditions. The application includes a business plan of up to 50 pages, a pitch deck of up to 15 pages, the official pre-commitment, a financial plan, freedom-to-operate evidence or a justified statement, and CVs of key personnel.

2027 Evaluation Calendar and Outcomes

Applications are continuously accepted and provisionally batched on 28 January, 29 April, 6 September and 22 November 2027. The draft uses a first-come, first-served model, while limiting jury recommendations in the first six months to no more than 70% of the annual budget. If the annual budget is fully allocated after the third batch, the fourth batch will not take place.

Eligibility review covers STEP scope, applicant status and the investor commitment. External technology due diligence can be commissioned before interview. A jury of up to six members then applies binary criteria covering breakthrough quality, technical feasibility, IP, market, business model, STEP impact, team, investment risk, leverage and risk management. A GO authorises the EIC Fund to begin detailed investment due diligence; it is not an executed investment. The final amount and terms can still change or the investment can be rejected for justified due-diligence reasons.

The Commission award decision can authorise flexibility of up to EUR 5 million above the requested amount if company developments and a larger co-investment opportunity justify it and sufficient EIC Fund resources are available.

For historical context and the earlier instrument design, see the EIC STEP Scale Up 2026 guide.

EIC STEP Scale Up Defence 2027

The proposed EIC STEP Scale Up Defence call would provide EUR 10-30 million in EIC Fund equity to SMEs and small mid-caps whose technology has a primary defence application. Its provisional 2027 budget is EUR 100 million. Unused funding would move to the general STEP Scale Up call.

Defence Technology Areas

• Air and missile defence.
• Artillery and precision strike.
• Missiles, ammunition, warheads and propellants.
• Drones, swarming and counter-drone systems.
• Strategic enablers, space assets, critical infrastructure and energy security.
• Cybersecurity, command-and-control AI, information and electronic warfare, optronics and radiofrequency systems.
• Military mobility, logistics and additive manufacturing for combat maintenance.
• Ground combat and soldier systems.
• Maritime awareness, surface, underwater, seabed and anti-submarine systems.
• Air-combat systems, early warning, transport, rotorcraft and air-to-air refuelling.
• Military medical technologies and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear countermeasures.

A technology with a predominantly civilian or dual-use application belongs in the general STEP Scale Up call. The defence call also requires STEP criticality: the innovation must offer a cutting-edge element with significant economic potential or reduce a strategic EU dependency.

Country and Control Restrictions

Participation is limited to eligible SMEs, startups and small mid-caps established in the EU, Ukraine or an EEA country associated to Horizon Europe. An otherwise eligible company controlled directly or indirectly by another third country or an entity from that country is excluded unless it supplies guarantees approved through the national procedure of its country of establishment and accepted for the call.

The applicant must perform and submit a control self-assessment. If control requiring guarantees is identified, the guarantees should be submitted with the application. If the issue is found later, the draft imposes a two-week response period after interview or due-diligence request, with failure leading to ineligibility or termination of the grant-preparation or agreement process.

Financing and Application Requirements

The financing logic matches general STEP: EUR 10-30 million in EIC Fund equity, a target round of EUR 50-150 million or more, leverage of at least three to five times the EIC request, and a fully uninvested commitment covering at least 20% of the target round from one qualified investor. The application also requires a 50-page business plan, a 15-page pitch deck, financial plan, freedom-to-operate material, key-person CVs and the ownership-control self-assessment.

Evaluation, Security and Ethics

The jury tests defence-specific technology readiness, freedom to operate without undue third-country export-control dependence, traction with defence users, the realities of defence procurement and certification, contribution to the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base, team clearances and sector knowledge, investment risk, leverage and defence-specific risk management.

Applicants must not upload classified supporting information through the normal Funding & Tenders Portal. A company wishing to submit classified documents must contact EISMEA at least 30 working days before the deadline to arrange an approved delivery route. The deadline itself remains unresolved in the July draft.

Investment agreements must contain at least one economic-security safeguard and can address ownership changes, governance, IP location, operational location and supply-chain security. AI-enabled weapon systems must preserve meaningful human control over selection and engagement decisions. Successful and threshold-meeting companies can receive a STEP Seal, BAS access and fast-track access to European Union Defence Innovation Scheme business-acceleration services.

Business Acceleration Services in 2027

EIC support extends beyond the grant or investment. Business Acceleration Services are intended to help beneficiaries build commercial skills, use testing and scale-up facilities, connect with customers and investors, enter new markets and manage the transition from technology development to a scalable company.

Indicative BAS Access by Participant Type

• Successful Accelerator short-proposal applicants: three coaching days and access to ecosystem-partner services.
• Most Horizon Europe EIC awardees: 12 coaching days, with more possible if justified; access to BAS activities; investment-readiness support; up to 50% co-funding of ecosystem services capped at EUR 60,000; and up to EUR 60,000 for buyer pilots.
• Seal of Excellence and STEP Seal holders: three coaching days, ecosystem services, BAS activities and up to 50% service co-funding capped at EUR 60,000.
• Women TechEU recipients: three coaching days, Women Leadership training and mentoring, and ecosystem-partner services.
• Scaleup Europe Fund companies satisfying EIC eligibility: ecosystem-partner and BAS access.

Coaching is mandatory for EIC grant projects unless a call-specific justification applies, but it is not automatically mandatory for equity-only companies. Services include intellectual-property and regulatory expertise, trade fairs, corporate partnerships, innovation procurement, the Scaling Club, Women Leadership, Tech2Market, co-investor matching and ESG reporting.

Buyer Pilot Support

The new buyer-pilot action addresses a recurring commercial gap: a public authority or corporate customer is interested but unwilling to bear the first deployment risk, while the startup cannot divert enough resources to customisation and testing. The proposed scheme would:

• Provide up to EUR 60,000 per selected pilot.
• Require a formal commitment from the public or private buyer.
• Allocate at least 50% of the third-party support budget to public-sector pilots.
• Publish validation reports and a pilot catalogue to support replication.
• Track follow-on procurement, commercial agreements and investment.

The action's own budget remains a placeholder, so companies should not treat the pilot grant as an entitlement. It is a proposed downstream service with a separate competitive selection.

EIC Prizes, Women TechEU and Other Actions

European Prize for Women Innovators

The draft describes three EIC prize categories:

• Women Innovators: EUR 100,000, EUR 70,000 and EUR 50,000 for first, second and third place.
• Rising Innovators: EUR 50,000, EUR 30,000 and EUR 20,000.
• Quantum Challenge: one EUR 100,000 prize.

The draft timetable is not aligned with the already published official 2027 European Prize for Women Innovators page, which states a 1 December 2026 application deadline for the launched 2027 edition. Applicants should follow the live official contest page, not the July working-draft timetable.

European Capital of Innovation Awards

• European Capital of Innovation: EUR 1 million for the winner and EUR 100,000 for each of two runners-up; normally for cities with at least 250,000 inhabitants.
• European Rising Innovative City: EUR 500,000 for the winner and EUR 50,000 for each of two runners-up; normally for cities with 50,000 to 249,999 inhabitants.

Cities are assessed on experimentation, ecosystem building, scale-up support, citizen involvement and evidence of concrete results. The draft envisages opening in Q1-Q2 2027, submission in Q2-Q3 and awards in Q4 2027 or Q1 2028.

Scaleup Europe Fund

The Scaleup Europe Fund is intended to address Europe's late-stage financing gap with investments above EUR 30 million and reaching several hundred million euros at the upper end. Its scope spans digital and intelligent systems, physical and industrial systems, and life and health sciences. The draft assigns a EUR 400 million 2027 contribution to a dedicated EIC Fund compartment, implemented through the European Investment Bank and an appointed fund manager.

Booster Grants

Pathfinder and Transition results can receive fixed Booster grants of up to EUR 50,000 for commercialisation exploration or portfolio activities. Eligible tasks include market and competitor analysis, technology assessment, certification, IP consolidation, freedom to operate, business-case development, customer pilots, spin-off preparation and incubation. Booster grants cannot finance research already included in the original project.

A Pathfinder project can normally receive up to three Booster grants; a Transition project can normally receive one. More are possible only in exceptional, justified cases. Proposals are invitation-based and evaluated on Excellence, Impact and Implementation using a GO/NO GO approach.

Women TechEU

Women TechEU continues as a support scheme for early-stage women-led deep-tech startups. The beneficiary profile in the draft requires at least six months of establishment in an EU Member State or Associated Country, a woman founder or co-founder, and a woman in a top management position. The scheme includes grant support, coaching, mentoring, investor readiness, sponsorship relationships, IP training, corporate and buyer introductions and a possible project-review route into the Accelerator Fast Track.

The draft lists 1 April 2027 as the call opening and 1 September 2027 as the deadline, but the budget is still a placeholder. These dates require confirmation in the adopted call.

Additional 2027 Actions

The work programme also funds EIC Board operations, external monitoring and ethics expertise, communication and events, data and IT integration, strategic-intelligence capacity, EIB investment-management tasks and a EUR 300,000 Irish Presidency conference on the future of European innovation policy. Most budgets in these operational sections remain placeholders and are primarily relevant to service providers or institutions rather than ordinary EIC applicants.

Cross-Cutting Eligibility, Security and IP Rules

Economic Security

The draft strengthens economic-security controls through three mechanisms:

1. Eligibility restrictions: call conditions can exclude entities controlled from non-eligible third countries, including in strategically sensitive grant-only Accelerator actions.
2. Investment safeguards: EIC Fund agreements can impose ownership, governance, IP, operational-location or supply-chain measures. Safeguards apply to all STEP investments and to specified Accelerator investments in advanced semiconductors, AI, quantum and biotechnology.
3. IP-transfer notification: beneficiaries must inform the Agency when EIC-generated IP is proposed for transfer to an entity in a non-associated third country.

The EIC Fund also applies sanctions, anti-money-laundering, counter-terrorist-financing and non-cooperative-jurisdiction rules. Breach can interrupt the investment process.

China, Russia, Belarus and Communications-Network Restrictions

The general conditions exclude legal entities established in China from Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Actions and Innovation Actions in any capacity, subject to case-by-case justified exceptions. Entities in Russia, Belarus and non-government-controlled territories of Ukraine are also excluded, and the draft extends specified restrictions to entities outside Russia with more than 50% Russian ownership. Applications involving 5G, post-5G or technologies linked to the evolution of European communications networks are subject to high-risk-supplier and security restrictions.

Ethics and Classified Information

Every applicant must complete an ethics self-assessment. Projects with ethics issues undergo review and can receive binding ethics deliverables. Projects handling sensitive or classified information undergo security appraisal. Top-secret projects cannot be funded, and other classification levels require appropriate facilities, personnel and document-handling arrangements. STEP Defence adds international-humanitarian-law and meaningful-human-control requirements.

Gender Equality

Public bodies, research organisations and higher-education institutions established in Member States or Associated Countries must have a gender-equality plan by grant signature and maintain it during the grant. Minimum requirements cover publication, resources, data and monitoring, and training. The requirement does not apply to private for-profit SMEs merely because they participate in an EIC proposal, although gender balance remains relevant in several evaluation or tie-break mechanisms.

Lump-Sum Funding Does Not Remove Cost Justification

Pathfinder, Transition, Advanced Innovation Challenges and the Accelerator grant component use lump sums. Applicants still need a credible work-package budget based on reasonable estimates and normal cost-eligibility principles. Purchases and subcontracting must demonstrate value for money and avoid conflicts of interest. A lump sum changes payment and reporting mechanics; it does not permit arbitrary costing.

Fast Track and Plug-In Access to the Accelerator

Fast Track allows designated funding bodies to review an existing supported project against criteria equivalent to the Accelerator short stage, confirm no double funding and refer an eligible company directly to the full-proposal stage. The 2027 draft includes Pathfinder and Transition, relevant EIT KIC schemes, Eurostars-3 and the Innovative SMEs partnership, certain prior Accelerator grant-only companies, Pre-Accelerator and Women TechEU awardees, and a pilot involving selected health projects.

The Plug-in scheme similarly allows certified national or regional funding bodies to nominate a limited number of companies from approved programmes directly to the Accelerator full-proposal stage. Neither route guarantees funding. Referred applicants face the same full-proposal evaluation and submission limits as standard Accelerator applicants.

IP and Exploitation for Pathfinder and Transition

Pathfinder and Transition beneficiaries can be required to share information about preliminary or final results within protected EIC networks to explore further innovation opportunities. Confidentiality obligations apply, and result owners can object when legitimate commercial, security, privacy or IP interests require it. Consortium agreements must settle ownership, background IP, access rights and dissemination governance.

Beneficiaries must use best efforts to exploit results, prioritising entities in Member States or Associated Countries. Where a not-for-profit beneficiary does not adequately support an inventor's exploitation request within six months, the draft can require sufficient access rights, royalty-free by default if no support is provided. The Agency can promote undisclosed results when the owner neither protects, disseminates nor credibly exploits them, subject to the detailed safeguards and procedures in Annex 6.

How to Choose the Right EIC Call in 2027

Open Call or Challenge?

Choose a Challenge only when the project's core technical objectives, expected outcomes, end users and impact logic genuinely fit the complete challenge text. Keyword overlap is not enough. A Challenge proposal must accept portfolio coordination and, where applicable, additional scope-specific eligibility restrictions. Open calls are not weaker or less strategic; they exist for excellent innovations outside the named topics.

Accelerator or STEP?

Use the Accelerator when the company needs up to EUR 10 million of EIC investment, a grant for TRL 6-8 work or both. Use STEP when the company is already raising a round of at least EUR 50 million, needs EUR 10-30 million from the EIC Fund, falls within a critical technology sector and has one qualified investor committed to at least 20% of the total round. A company cannot keep concurrent applications alive to test both options.

A Practical EIC 2027 Preparation Plan

For Pathfinder Open Teams

1. Define the future technology and the important problem it will solve in one testable chain of logic.
2. Separate the scientific breakthrough from the downstream product vision.
3. Design integrated laboratory use cases that can validate the core principle.
4. Build the minimum consortium that contains every critical discipline and a credible bridge to exploitation.
5. Obtain commitment letters early and ensure the legal-entity and country structure satisfies the call.
6. Prepare an eight-page Stage 1 story that gives 60% of its scoring emphasis to Excellence without neglecting the scale and urgency of the problem.
7. Maintain a full work plan, risk register, budget and interview narrative in parallel so that a Stage 2 invitation does not trigger a rushed rebuild.

For Transition Applicants

1. Verify the feeder project, grant dates, exact result, reported result location and TRL before drafting.
2. Secure ownership or a compliant access-rights commitment covering the project and the required post-project period.
3. Select one accountable beneficiary and map all other contributors to legally valid roles.
4. Define a route to market: direct exploitation, spin-off, licensing or another explicit path.
5. Obtain a substantive customer or user letter supported by real collaboration evidence.
6. Set first-year stop/go KPIs that test the decisive assumptions rather than only record completed activities.
7. Build technology maturation, customer learning, regulation, IP and business-model testing into the same work-package logic.

For Accelerator Applicants

1. Document completion of every relevant TRL 5 element in the final intended application environment.
2. Quantify the performance and cost advantage against current and emerging alternatives.
3. Resolve ownership, freedom-to-operate and cap-table issues before the full proposal.
4. Connect market sizing to named customer segments, buying processes, adoption constraints and obtainable share.
5. Build a financial model that reconciles hiring, development, regulatory, manufacturing, sales and financing assumptions.
6. Explain why private capital cannot finance the whole risk now and how EIC support changes the financing outcome.
7. Choose the funding form from the use of funds: grant for eligible innovation, equity for deployment and scale, or both.
8. Prepare the written proposal, deck, video, technology-expert meeting and jury interview as one evidence system with consistent claims and numbers.

For STEP and STEP Defence Applicants

1. Confirm that the company, technology and country structure fit the exact STEP scope.
2. Define the target round and ensure the requested EIC amount satisfies the three-to-five-times leverage logic.
3. Secure one qualified investor for at least 20% of the entire round using the final official template.
4. Keep the qualifying commitment uninvested and valid through the relevant evaluation and reserve period.
5. Prepare a diligence-grade business plan, financial plan, cap table, data room and freedom-to-operate position.
6. Show concrete contribution to the EU internal market or reduction of strategic dependencies.
7. For defence, complete control, export-control, classification, security-clearance, supply-chain and humanitarian-law workstreams before submission.
8. Plan for EIC Fund due diligence after a GO; a successful jury does not complete the investment.

Unresolved Gaps and Contradictions in the July Draft

The July draft contains the following unresolved items, all of which require confirmation against the adopted work programme:

• Overall budget: the introduction says "EUR XXXX billion" and Annex 1 contains no amounts.
• Core call budgets: Pathfinder, Transition, Accelerator and general STEP totals are placeholders.
• Accelerator Challenge allocation: individual challenge amounts total EUR 150 million, but the combined Accelerator Challenges budget and grant-equity split are not populated.
• Advanced Innovation Challenges deadline: the July draft lists 15 June 2027, while the current EIC pilot page lists an indicative deadline of 18 June 2027.
• STEP Defence deadline: the call is described as one batch, but its submission date is "xx/xxx/2027".
• Accelerator interviews: one passage says an interview follows every second batch, which implies two sessions for four batches; another says interviews occur three times per year.
• Accelerator Open restriction list: the draft contains "XXXXXXX" where scope-specific grant-only restrictions should be identified.
• Women Innovators timetable: the working draft's 2027 timing differs from the Commission's live page for the already launched 2027 edition.
• Booster action dates: the draft pairs a January 2027 opening with an April 2026 deadline, an evident chronological error.
• Carbon-removal policy text: a bracketed instruction says part of the regulatory description must be updated.
• Support-action budgets: coaching, buyer pilots, internationalisation, IT, communications, expert contracts, EIB fees and Women TechEU retain placeholders.
• Call openings: several footnotes use placeholder opening dates even where submission deadlines are stated.

These are not minor formatting defects for an applicant. A missing budget affects competition intensity, a missing restriction can affect eligibility, and an inconsistent interview calendar changes preparation planning. The final Commission Decision, Funding & Tenders topic conditions, application templates and Challenge Guides must be treated as the authoritative package.

What the 2027 Work Programme Signals for 2028-2034

The draft presents 2027 as a bridge to the next EU research and innovation framework. The Commission has proposed a 2028-2034 Horizon Europe programme connected to the European Competitiveness Fund, with an innovation pillar that includes a reinforced EIC. The final structure remains subject to legislation by the European Parliament and Council.

Several 2027 design choices indicate the direction of travel:

• Shorter first-stage applications and interviews even for early-stage research.
• More active portfolio management and milestone-based continuation decisions.
• Stronger demand-side evidence through users, buyers, regulators and procurement.
• A continuous financing ladder from research grants to very large growth equity.
• Explicit alignment with strategic autonomy, economic security and defence capacity.
• More structured use of EIC portfolio data for foresight and policy.

Applicants should expect the next-generation EIC to assess not only scientific or commercial quality in isolation, but the speed and credibility with which a project can turn knowledge into validated technology, adoption, resilient European value chains and globally competitive companies.

Frequently Asked Questions About the EIC Work Programme 2027

Has the EIC Work Programme 2027 been adopted?

No. The document analysed here is a working draft dated 7 July 2026 and states that it has not been adopted or endorsed by the Commission. The adopted Commission Decision and live Funding & Tenders call pages will be authoritative.

What is the total EIC budget for 2027?

The July draft does not provide it. The overall total and most core call allocations remain placeholders, and Annex 1 is unpopulated. No definitive overall figure can be derived from this version.

What are the EIC Accelerator deadlines in 2027?

The draft lists 3 February, 1 April, 1 September and 3 November 2027 for full proposals. Short proposals remain continuously open and are batched on the first Tuesday of each month. All dates require confirmation after adoption.

What changed in EIC Pathfinder Open for 2027?

The draft introduces an eight-page Stage 1 proposal, a 23-page Stage 2 proposal for shortlisted teams and an interview for Stage 2 proposals above the evaluation thresholds. This is the most important Pathfinder Open process change.

Can a consortium apply to EIC Transition 2027?

Not as multiple beneficiaries under the July draft. Transition becomes a single-beneficiary instrument. Affiliated entities and other permitted third-party roles can still support implementation, but one eligible startup, SME or research-performing organisation signs as beneficiary.

Is a letter of intent mandatory for EIC Transition?

Yes under the draft. At least one interested customer or user must provide the prescribed letter, and the relationship must not be bought or otherwise incentivised. The Agency can verify the commitment and ask for operational evidence.

Can a new applicant enter the Advanced Innovation Challenges in 2027?

No under this draft. The 2027 call is restricted to Stage 2 proposals from projects selected in the 2026 Stage 1 Physical AI and NAMs competitions.

How much funding does the EIC Accelerator provide in 2027?

The draft retains a grant below EUR 2.5 million, normally funded at 70%, and an investment component from EUR 1 million to EUR 10 million. Blended finance combines both. The total call budget is not yet specified.

What is the difference between Accelerator Open and Accelerator Challenges?

Open accepts technologies in any field. Challenges require direct alignment with one of four predefined 2027 topics: ocean observation, climate-neutral cities, fusion or carbon removal and circularity. All four proposed Challenges are STEP-relevant and can produce a STEP Seal under the call rules.

What is the difference between the Accelerator and STEP Scale Up?

The Accelerator can provide a grant, equity or both and supports companies from completed TRL 5 through market entry and scale-up. STEP is equity-only, provides EUR 10-30 million, targets critical technologies, expects a EUR 50-150 million or larger round and requires one qualified investor to pre-commit at least 20% of the whole round.

Can dual-use companies apply?

The draft permits potential dual-use applications under the Accelerator, general STEP Scale Up and Scaleup Europe Fund. Pathfinder, Transition and Advanced Innovation Challenges retain a civilian-application focus. A technology whose primary application is defence should use STEP Defence rather than general STEP.

What is the EIC STEP Scale Up Defence budget and deadline?

The draft provides an indicative call budget of EUR 100 million and individual investments of EUR 10-30 million. It does not provide a usable deadline; the date is still a placeholder.

Does a jury GO guarantee an EIC Fund investment?

No. A GO authorises the investment process to proceed. The EIC Fund and its adviser still perform due diligence, negotiate valuation, structure, safeguards and other terms, and can reduce or reject the investment for justified reasons.

Can the same company apply simultaneously to Accelerator and STEP?

No. Concurrent submissions across Accelerator, STEP Scale Up and STEP Defence are prohibited. If overlapping proposals are submitted before feedback on the earlier one, only the latest proposal is evaluated under its respective call.

How many times can an applicant resubmit?

For the Accelerator, three unsuccessful submissions of the same or improved proposal across stages and funding forms exhaust the applicant's Horizon Europe eligibility for that proposal route. The general STEP draft applies a three-failure limit from 1 January 2026; STEP Defence applies a combined STEP/Defence three-failure rule from 1 April 2026. Final wording should be checked carefully because failures can occur at eligibility or interview stage.

Are the 2027 dates safe to use in a proposal calendar?

They are suitable for provisional internal planning only. Do not use them for irreversible travel, procurement or financing decisions until the adopted work programme and live call page confirm them.

Official Sources and Update Policy

This article was prepared by comparing the 7 July 2026 working draft with the current public EIC and Horizon Europe information available on 11 September 2026. Applicants should monitor:

• European Innovation Council for adoption news, work-programme documents, FAQs, Challenge Guides and information days.
• EU Funding & Tenders Portal for legally operative topic conditions, templates, opening dates and deadlines.
• Official EIC Accelerator FAQs for current submission and resubmission guidance.
• Official EIC Pathfinder FAQs for consortium, TRL, lump-sum and portfolio guidance.
• Official Advanced Innovation Challenges FAQs for the Stage 1 pilot and expected Stage 2 continuation.
• Horizon Europe work-programme library for adopted programme documents.