29 Sep 2026
EC allocates additional € 500 million to Horizon Europe and publishes two monitoring reports
On 29 September 2026, the European Commission allocated an additional €500 million to Horizon Europe for 2026 and 2027. With this additional amount, the total budget reaches now around €14.8 billion for the two years.
In addition, the Commission will also extend the scope of Horizon Europe by including two new cross-cutting calls to tackle major research and innovation challenges, such as next-generation AI-driven digital platforms for a more affordable, secure and sustainable European energy system; skills for innovative SMEs; addressing the biodiversity benefits and impacts of the clean and digital industries and accelerate transformative change for biodiversity.
The two new horizontal calls are:
- Transformative Change Towards a Nature-Positive Economy and Society, with a budget of €237 million;
- Bridging Actions 2027, with a total financing of €260 million.
The Nature-Positive call will fund 11 research and innovation actions supporting the EU's biodiversity goals and help meet the 10% biodiversity spending target set out in the Horizon Europe Strategic Plan 2025-2027.
The Bridging Actions 2027 call will prepare the ground for the EU's next research and innovation programme, Horizon Europe 2028-2034, and its links with the future European Competitiveness Fund. It introduces the ‘innovation to investment journey' to better connect research with market deployment. Sixteen actions under this call will support advanced technologies with strong commercial potential, tackling topics such as EU AI Media Platform, a modular multilingual public-interest infrastructure for European news and audiovisual media. Autonomous Drive Ambition Cities; Research and technology infrastructures as strategic assets for talent to Choose Europe and Advanced scaling frameworks New European Bauhaus
In addition, the amended work programme will support the New European Bauhaus Academy including with the upskilling and reskilling of workers in the construction ecosystem.
Horizon Europe helps researchers choose Europe, as confirmed by two monitoring reports published on 29 September 2026 by the Commission. They show that Horizon Europe remains highly attractive for researchers, innovators and companies from across Europe and beyond.
The monitoring report Horizon Europe State of Play shows that the current programme, launched in 2021, has so far invested €61 billion in grants and a further €1.3 billion in equity in nearly 23,000 projects. These projects involve more than 34,000 organisations, including 20,000 companies. Most funding has gone to universities and research centres, while the private sector has also received over €11 billion.
Horizon Europe projects have so far produced over 32,300 peer-reviewed publications, most of them openly accessible. They are also supporting more than 151,000 early career researchers, including PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers.
The second monitoring report, Is Horizon Europe attractive for new participants?, shows that 55% of beneficiaries are newcomers to EU research and innovation programmes, with two-thirds being businesses. It also highlights a challenge: the average newcomer participates in only one project, compared with multiple grants for more experienced organisations.
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