FAQs - EIC Accelerator

As a current or previous beneficiary of the above programmes, you may apply under the following conditions: 

- You may apply for grant-only if you have not already received a grant-only under the current Horizon Europe EIC Accelerator. As per the EIC Work Programme 2026 grant-only support under the EIC Accelerator can only be provided once to a beneficiary during Horizon Europe for a maximum of EUR 2.5 million to cover activities of TRL 6 to 8. Moreover, beneficiaries of ongoing or finalised grant-only projects selected under a Horizon 2020 EIC pilot Accelerator or under Horizon Europe EIC Accelerator call may be eligible to submit a proposal for a blended finance or an equity-only support under an EIC Accelerator call. 

- Beneficiaries of ongoing blended finance projects selected under a Horizon 2020 EIC pilot Accelerator calls may be eligible to apply for a related investment component under Horizon Europe EIC Accelerator call. 

- Beneficiaries of blended finance projects where the grant component of the blended finance project is finalised may apply for blended finance, grant only or equity only. 

In summary: 

• Horizon 2020 beneficiaries
  • Grant only
    • Project finalised -> You may apply for grant only, blended or equity only.
    • Project ongoing -> You may apply for blended finance or equity only.
  • Blended
    • Project finalised -> You may apply for grant only, blended or equity only.
    • Project ongoing -> You may apply for equity only.
• Horizon Europe beneficiaries
  • Grant only
    • Project finalised -> You may apply for blended or equity only.
    • Project ongoing -> You may apply for blended finance or equity only.
  • Blended
    • Project finalised -> You may apply for grant only, blended or equity only.
    • Project ongoing -> If the grant component is finalised, you may apply for blended, grant only or equity only.
  • Equity only -> You may apply for grant only, blended or equity only.

Having a Seal of Excellence does not in itself give the right to apply directly to the full proposal. In order to be able to submit a full proposal, the applicant must have a GO on a short proposal as laid out in the 2026 EIC Work Programme. If the GO on short proposal or invitation for Fast Track/Plug-in scheme was received under the 2025 or 2026 EIC Work Programme, you may submit a full proposal. This concerns all short applications submitted after the adoption of the 2025 Work Programme on 29 October 2024. Proposals which received a GO under the 2024 work programme and have already submitted a full proposal will be eligible to submit a full proposal in 2026 as long as they remain within their submission limitations.

If your company is located outside the EU but established in an associated country to Horizon Europe, it is eligible to apply for funding under the EIC Accelerator calls the same way as a company from a Member State (unless an exception applies – please see EIC Work Programme 2026 and List of Participating Countries in Horizon Europe and, in particular, the third countries associated to HE that cannot participate in the EIC Fund, if you plan to apply for blended finance or equity-only). If your company is based in a non-associated third country but intends to establish an SME (including start-ups) or to relocate an existing SME to a Member State or an Associated Country, your company may submit a short proposal as a company from a non-associated third country, but must prove its effective establishment in a Member State or an Associated Country at the time of submission of the full proposal. The jury may make recommendations to be taken into account when negotiating the grant or investment component. 

Please also take into account that in some cases, economic security measures may apply (see detailed information int he EIC Work Programme). 

In case further clarifications are needed please see FAQ "In Horizon Europe, what is the status of participants from non-EU, Associated or Third Countries?".

The sister/parent company based in the associated country/EU Member State is eligible to apply itself as long as it meets the eligibility requirements (including SME status). Activities run in other countries are not taken into account to check your eligibility (although relying on entities established in an EU Member State or Associated country entitled to participate in the EIC Fund, in case of blended finance or equity only, should not be used to circumvent the eligibility conditions). Alternatively, the company based in the non-associated country may submit the short proposal but must prove its effective legal establishment in the Associated Country or EU Member State at the time of submission of the full proposal.

The consequences of losing the SME status during the implementation of the grant component will be assessed on a case-by-case basis, taking in consideration, in particular, the causes for losing the SME status. A change to the ownership situation of the beneficiary that calls into question the decision to award the grant may constitute a ground for terminating the grant agreement and considering not eligible the costs incurred as from the date of the completion of the transaction (i.e. loss of SME status). For projects with an investment component, if the loss of the SME status takes place before a final decision on the investment component is taken by the EIC Fund, the investment component might also be revoked in line with the EIC Fund Investment Guidelines. Please note that the EIC Accelerator may also support small mid-cap companies which are defined as having up to 500 employees.

If your proposal is successful at the short proposal stage under the 2025 or 2026 work programme, you may submit a full proposal at any time in 2026 (see below) or 2027 (dates to be established in the 2027 EIC Work Programme). 

The proposals will be batched at 17:00 Brussels time on the following dates:

• 7 January 2026
• 4 March 2026
• 6 May 2026
• 8 July 2026
• 2 September 2026
• 4 November 2026 

Proposals which received a GO under the 2024 work programme and have already submitted a full proposal will be eligible to submit a full proposal in 2026 as long as they remain within their submission limitations. 

Please note that if your short proposal is successful, you will be entitled to receive coaching support from the EIC Business Acceleration Services to prepare a full proposal.

The remote evaluators will not see any previous submission or evaluation reports from previous evaluators. At the interview stage jury members will have access to the full proposal documents including the technology expert and evaluation panel comments from the full proposal only. Proposals submitted will be assessed independently from previous submissions and based on their own merits according to standard Horizon Europe practice. The applicant is encouraged to describe any improvements made in the narrative part B of the application form, however there is no structured format to include this information.

From January 1, 2024, you may submit up to 3 unsuccessful applications (i.e. your application can be rejected maximum 3 times), at any stage of the process (Short Proposal, Full Proposal remote or Interview) and for any form of support (Challenge, Open, Grant only, Blended finance, Equity only) up until the end of the programme under Horizon Europe (until the end of 2027). After the third rejection, you will not be able to submit again to the EIC Accelerator under the Horizon Europe Framework Programme. 

If you are successful at the short proposal stage, this does not count within the limit of three applications. If you are successful at the remote evaluation stage of a full proposal but then unsuccessful at the interview phase, this counts as one unsuccessful application. For example:

•  If you are successful at your first submission to the short proposal stage, you may apply up to three times at full proposal stage.
• If you are rejected one time at short proposal stage, you may still apply two further times at short proposal stage. If you are successful the second time at short proposal you may then apply two times at full proposal stage.
• If you are rejected one time at full proposal (at either the remote evaluation or the jury interview), you may still submit up to two further times at the full proposal stage (unless you have been unsuccessful at the short proposal stage which will be counted as one of the three unsuccessful applications). 

Please note that applications submitted before 2024 are not taken into account for the purpose of the 3 rejections limit (your counter restarts from zero as from 1 January 2024).

For the short proposal stage, applicants will be invited to submit a 12 page proposal to illustrate their innovation and submit a 10-slide presentation and a 3-minute video pitch. Applicants will also have to estimate the costs required to develop their idea, in the form of grant or investment, and they will have to demonstrate the need for EU support. Please note that at this step, the amounts are indicative and nonbinding. 

The full proposal consists of a questionnaire with focused questions related to the evaluation criteria as well as full information on the finances of the company and company structure. Applicants will also need to propose a set of milestones to be used as a basis for the EIC to manage the funding for their innovation. Applicants are requested to define at this stage the type of funding (Blended, investment only, grant only) they are applying for and provide a lump sum budget table for the grant component and a financial plan document.

You may adjust the EIC funding request when submitting your full proposal because the short proposal only requires an estimate while the full proposal should demonstrate your complete business plan and financial needs.

All applications are evaluated on an equal basis against the relevant evaluation criteria for the type of funding requested and there are no pre-set allocations of funding to the different forms of support.

 However, if your application is for “grant only”, you must demonstrate in your application that you have access to the resources needed to commercialise and scale up your innovation (given that the EIC Fund will not be able to provide equity investments and help attract other investors).

The Jury may not propose to change the type of funding requested by the applicant (e.g. blended finance proposal to “grant only”). However, the jury may recommend lowering the grant amount (for example to exclude TRL9 activities) and may make observations in view of the grant agreement preparation, e.g. on the milestones or on proposed coaching activities, as well as observations on the investment amount (which will then be considered by the EIC Fund).

Any significant information which changed between the submission of the full application and the interview should be highlighted to the EIC Jury during the interview and will be assessed accordingly by the EIC Jury. Any change will be assessed whether it has an impact on the eligibility of the applicant, e.g. SME status. Any major change after the outcome of the interview should be taken into account during the negotiation process to structure the potential investment agreement during compliance checks, due diligence, syndication of potential co-investors, tranches of investment and related objectives and milestones, etc.

In line with the objective and target of the EIC Accelerator, all projects need to describe market activities even when they are not requesting investment/equity. Projects requesting grant only support also need to describe market activities, and to indicate which are the other sources, other than the EIC, that they can use to finance their market activities. The market activities should be explained under the relevant questions in the submission form especially on commercialisation questions.

Milestones are checkpoints produced at a specific point in a task while deliverables are tasks results such as reports, studies, tests, etc. While milestones can sometimes correspond to the completion of a deliverable, the two are not necessarily linked. It is not necessary to have a milestone for every deliverable. However, the most important deliverables can be good indications of where you want to place milestones.

The duration of the grant agreement will be set in alignment with the indicated duration of the “innovation activities work packages” flagged by you (in your proposal) as to be co-financed by the grant component during its duration, even if the resulting duration is more than 24 months. 

Nevertheless, as there are no restrictions to the use of the investment component, equity can be requested and used to co-finance “innovation activities work packages" if you decide to do so and you flag/present such work packages as to be covered by the investment component when submitting your proposal. Such “innovation activities work packages" flagged as to be covered by the investment component will not be part of the work packages included in the Annex 1 – Part A of the Grant Agreement, hence they will not have an impact on the duration of the grant agreement.

Each Work Package should include at least one deliverable. Where a Work Package includes several tasks, there should not be more than one deliverable per task.

For the EIC Accelerator, the applicant should demonstrate, in the proposal and through the evaluation process, that at least all activities for TRL 5, i.e. “Validation in relevant environment”, has been achieved. For more information regarding the "Technology Readiness Levels” please refer to the Glossary of the EIC Work Programme.

You may use graphs and pictures everywhere, and you are encouraged to do so where it efficiently supports your message and particularly in your pitch deck. The only limitations you have are 12 pages for a short proposal, 20 pages for a full proposal. For your pitch deck, it should not exceed 10 pages at the short proposal stage while for the full application, there is no maximum number of slides, although you only have 10 minutes to present it should you be invited to the interview stage.

For the EIC Accelerator applications, you must upload the Part B questionnaire and in addition: 

• Pitch deck. There is no pre-defined template nor limit of slides, however, please keep in mind that you will have 10 minutes to present this pitch deck if you are invited to the face-to-face interviews. The pitch deck should be provided in PDF file format.
• Video. You must upload a video pitch of up to three minutes. You may decide to reuse or update the video pitch submitted with your short proposal.
• Lump Sum (mandatory for grant only and blended finance proposals). Please use the template for the lump sum detailed budget breakdown.
• Implementation plan (mandatory for grant only and blended finance proposals) – 10 pages max. Please use the template with description of work packages and deliverables, including milestones, resources and timings.
• Financial plan and equity needed (both for grant only and blended finance proposals). Please use the template provided.
• Results of the freedom to operate (FTO) analysis. If you do not have one, please upload a note of maximum 2 pages outlining your freedom to operate and providing as much information as possible on this issue. In cases where the FTO is not relevant (e.g. software), please upload a simple statement.
• Letters of intent. Please use the guidance template available in the Funding & Tender Portal.
• Ownership control declaration. Only for proposals submitted in the Challenge 2.4 “Boosting the European Critical Raw Materials value chain” and Open proposals in the scope of the aforementioned Challenge requesting a GRANT ONLY funding.

EISMEA will not transfer proposals from one call to another, nor declare your proposal out of scope if you submit to Open despite meeting the requirements of a Challenge. The applicant has the responsibility to make the choice and take the decision to submit his/her proposal either to the EIC Accelerator Open call or to one of the EIC Accelerator Challenges. Please note, however, that Challenges are identified as strategic areas/technologies for Europe, with a clearly assigned budget target. Also, there may be different eligibility conditions applying. 

Proposals submitted to a Challenge call will be evaluated by technology experts and – if successful at the full proposal stage – an EIC Jury panel composed of experts for this specific challenge. Successful EIC Accelerator Challenge proposals will benefit from specific targeted support as part of an EIC Accelerator Challenge portfolio. 

Please take a close look at the sections in the relevant Work Programme regarding the EIC Accelerator Challenge areas of strategic relevance in order to take the decision. 

Nevertheless, should you make an obvious clerical error and submit to the wrong topic by mistake, please contact the helpdesk as soon as possible and ask for the proposal to be moved the correct topic.

As an applicant to the grant only component of the EIC Accelerator challenge Boosting the European Critical Raw Materials value chain, you will have to provide an ownership control declaration as an annex to the application form. Proposals under the Open call whose scope is identified as falling under this Challenge (for 2026, Boosting the European Critical Raw Materials value chain) will have to fill in the same declaration, only if they are selected for funding. On top of this declaration, successful applicants will be requested to provide documents describing their ownership/control structure. These documents will then be assessed in order to determine whether your company is directly or indirectly controlled by a non-eligible third country or a legal entity in a non-eligible third country. 

In case the applicant is found to be controlled directly or indirectly by the above-mentioned entities, the proposal may be rejected as ineligible.

Applicants with proposals within the scope of the Challenge calls are encouraged to submit to the Challenge as there is reserved budget specifically for the Challenge. 

Proposals under the Open call which are identified as falling under the Challenges with ownership control restrictions and are requesting grant only support, should also fill in an ownership control declaration. On top of this declaration, successful applicants will be requested to provide documents proving their ownership/control. 

In case the applicant is found to be controlled directly or indirectly by the above-mentioned entities, the proposal may be rejected as ineligible.

A GenAI proposal that will consider, for instance, explainability, dealing with hallucinations, transparency, trust, reliability, Multimodality, Models size, etc is "deep tech". TRL 5 achieved means that the technology is tested and validated in relevant environment (industrially relevant environment in the case of key enabling technologies). Which means that the AI system is tested and validated in a simulated or laboratory environment that closely mimics real-world conditions. This includes using real datasets to evaluate and validate the system’s performance and making necessary adjustments.

Each applicant is entitled to submit up to three unsuccessful applications, so you have (in case of a first or second submission) another chance. Nonetheless, if you believe that there has been a procedural error in the evaluation, you will find the means of redress in your rejection letter.  Please keep in mind that such means of redress cannot be used to challenge the technical and scientific assessment made by the evaluators. For more information, please refer to section “E. EVALUATION REVIEW PROCEDURE” of the EIC Work Programme.

Short proposals are collected for evaluation on the first Tuesday of every month at 17h00 Brussels time, and the results transmitted to applicants within 4 to 6 weeks of the date at which the evaluation is started. 

It is therefore recommended to submit a short proposal at least 10 weeks ahead of the foreseen submission of a full application (up to 6 weeks to evaluate the short application, leaving at least 4 weeks to prepare the full application). However, it is recommended to submit earlier than this, in particular to benefit from the coaching services provided to successful applicants at the short proposal stage.

The full proposal is continuously open, and you may apply at any time. Proposals will be batched for evaluation every two months at 17:00:00 (CET) on 

• 7/01/2026;
• 04/03/2026;
• 06/05/2026;
• 08/07/2026;
• 02/09/2026;
• 04/11/2026 

It is highly recommended to submit your proposal as early as possible and at least 48 hours before the batching date if you want to ensure you are included in that evaluation session. Like this you will avoid technical problems (system requirements, local configuration settings, system congestion, etc).

You will not receive an error message in response to your late proposal submission. Your proposal status will be listed as “submitted” and will be retained for evaluation under the following batching date unless it is the batching of the year. If you would like to make any changes once submitted, you must contact the Funding and Tender Portal Service Desk EC-FUNDING-TENDER-SERVICE-DESKec [dot] europa [dot] eu (EC-FUNDING-TENDER-SERVICE-DESK[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu) to ask to withdraw the proposal, update it and then submit in time for the upcoming deadline. Withdrawing the proposal before receiving the evaluation result will not count towards the resubmission limit.

Applicants who managed to reach the stage of submitting full proposals will be given a possibility to provide their consent and share specific project-related data: 

- basic information about the proposal limited to the name, phone, email of the CEO or person in charge of managing innovation/company, proposal acronym, title, company’s name (country, city), abstract, requested budget, evaluation result (GO/NO GO). 

By selecting the option above, the applicants give ‘consent’ to share this information with National Contact Points (NCPs) of their Member State or Associated Country, Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) members, relevant public organisations from the EU, EU Member States and Horizon Europe associated countries (including regional innovation organisations, European Structural and Investment Funds managing authorities). These entities may assist Seal of Excellence (SoE) holders in receiving additional support at national level. In particular, the EEN has been contracted by the EIC to support SoE holders to obtain funding from private and/or public sources. (This service will be offered to a limited number of companies) 

In case applicants choose not to share the above-mentioned data, the SoE may not be activated.  The data will be made available subject to the fulfilment of confidentiality obligations agreed with the NCPs, EEN members and relevant authorities

National Contact Points, Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) Members and Knowledge Innovation Communities of the European Institute of Innovation and Technologies (EIT KICs), may be useful sources of information and support the preparation of full proposals. This is the reason why, the EIC gives the possibility for applicants to give consent i.e. to share specific data with them: 

- basic information about the proposal limited to the name, phone, email of the CEO or person in charge of managing innovation/company, proposal acronym, title, company’s name (country, city), abstract, requested budget, evaluation result (GO/NO GO). 

The data will be made available subject to confidentiality obligations of the NCPs, KICs and EEN members. 

All personal data will be processed in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies and on the free movement of such data.

The role of national Contact Points (NCPs) is among others to support applicants to prepare for the EIC calls. They have access to the latest information about EIC calls and can provide practical advice and support on how to apply. NCPs are appointed by each country. The EIC provides additional funding to NCPs in order to network, exchange best practice and build capabilities in particular in widening countries. 

The Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) has members in the EU and Associated Countries. It provides comprehensive information and support on different funding opportunities. For the EIC it complements the support provided by the NCPs, for example by proactively identifying and encouraging more companies to apply to the EIC Accelerator, in particular from widening countries and women led companies. In addition, the EEN will provide support to Seal of Excellence holders to find alternative sources of funding. 

It is up to applicants to decide if they choose to receive services from NCPs and EEN members and they will be given such an option in the application tool.

If your proposal meets the overall threshold at the full proposal of 13/15 but is not invited to interview. In addition, if your proposals receives a NO GO at the interview it will normally be awarded a Seal of Excellence to facilitate funding from alternative funding sources and access to EIC Business Acceleration Services.

If your application is successful at the full proposal stage, you will receive a letter inviting you to an interview with a panel composed of a maximum of 6 jury members. The interview will take place either in Brussels or remotely (via video conference tool). In addition to the jury members, EIC Programme Managers and representatives from EIC Fund may also participate in the interview and ask questions, however they will not be members of the jury and will not take part in the jury’s decisions (no right to vote). 

The interview will last 45 minutes which will begin with a 10-minute pitch by the applicant (using the same pitch deck that was submitted for the full proposal application) and then followed by a 35 minute Q&A session with the jury members, EISMEA Programme Managers and/or EIC Fund representatives. The jury will provide their assessment in the binary GO/NO GO. You will be informed of the result of the interviews approximately 3 weeks after the interview week session ends. 

The persons participating in the interview must be directly affiliated to the applicant’s company/legal entity and/or are meant to be working on the project for its entire foreseen duration. Thus, participation is limited to: 

• employed staff
• board members
• investors 

Existing investors or investors that submitted a proposal on behalf of an applicant that is subsequently invited to the interview, are also eligible to attend the interview among the three representatives of the company. Investors are expected to explain how they are supporting and/or intend to support the company if it is retained for the EIC support. 

Consultants or other third parties must not take part in the interview. Any misrepresentation discovered during or after the interview could result in rejection of a proposal for funding. 

Applicants will not be reimbursed for costs related to participation in the interviews.

A) Are they considered to be an innovation activity? Under which component (grant or equity) can they be co-financed? 

YES. Clinical trials can be included in the grant component (as part of innovation activities, for TRL 6 to 8.). The company can therefore apply for grant support for these activities. In addition, the investment amount can cover both types of activities: innovation (up to TRL8) and market/scale-up (above TRL8) activities. The company can therefore split the clinical trials in several work packages and have some of them supported under the grant component and others under the equity component.

B) How are clinical trials considered with reference to TRLs?

For the correspondence between TRLs and clinical trials steps, the following considerations are made (Euraxess website: https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/career-development/researchers/manual-scientific-entrepreneurship/major-steps/trl. TRL5 stands for animal testing and clinical protocols for phase 1 clinical testing, TRL 6 for exploratory phase 1 trials support proceeding to phase 2, TRL 7 for phase 2 clinical trial completed, and TRL8 stands for completed phase 3 clinical trials and regulatory approval.

EIC beneficiaries requiring access to supercomputing resources to perform artificial intelligence and data intensive activities can apply to the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking calls for access to their supercomputers. All information is available here: 30 Access to Our Supercomputers - EuroHPC JU (europa.eu).

Yes please, if you need extra columns because your timeline to market is longer, feel free to adapt the file adding column(s). Also adapt the worksheet on equity needed, adding a line for each column added in the financial plan worksheet.

The budget is intended to be divided to encourage applicants to apply evenly across the different batches. Applicants are advised to submit when their proposals are fully ready, allowing the applications to be spread out rather than concentrated in a single round.

There is no specific timing required, but the application should align with the applicant’s needs and be consistent with their go-to-market plan. In any case, it is essential to demonstrate how market activities will be funded. Fast-tracking is also possible.

Applicants can flag any experts they believe may have a conflict of interest. Before the interview, they are informed about the assigned tech expert, providing an opportunity to raise any concerns. Other situations are assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Yes, but it does not include the panel report.

The limit is three rejections. Applicants are not notified during the submission process, but the rejection letters will indicate when the maximum number of attempts has been reached.