Commission adopts 2026 European Innovation Council work programme

Brussels, November 6 the European Commission has adopted the European Innovation Council (EIC) work programme, allocating €1.4 billion to support Europe's most promising deep tech entrepreneurs and researchers. The new programme focuses on what European innovators need most: simplified access to substantial funding, investment and easier access to customers and partners across Europe and beyond.

Building on this support, the Commission is also preparing to launch the Scaleup Europe Fund, a market-based, privately managed and co-financed initiative under the EIC Fund. Created in partnership with private investors, the Fund will bridge the investment gap faced by Europe's deep-tech scale-ups and provide the late-stage growth capital needed to help them expand internationally while remaining anchored in Europe. Together, the 2026 EIC work programme and the new Fund form a stronger European framework for turning world-class research into globally competitive companies.

The new programme introduces key improvements, including a simpler, faster application process for the EIC Accelerator and the launch of pilot Advanced Innovation Challenges, inspired by the US Advanced Research Programme Agency (ARPA) approach.

The EIC Board played an important advisory role in shaping the 2026 work programme, providing strategic guidance and proposing improvements to make EIC support faster, more targeted, and better aligned with innovators' needs.

The main highlights include:

Piloting EIC Advanced Innovation Challenges bridging to the next Horizon Europe Programme

The 2026 EIC work programme will test a new bold, challenge-driven funding approach inspired by the US ARPA model. These Advanced Innovation Challenges will back high-risk, high-reward projects in fields where Europe leads in research but often lags to turn ideas into real-world products and businesses.

Building on the experience of EIC programme managers, these Challenges will introduce a staged funding approach with a first stage to support a range of projects offering different solutions to the challenge, followed by a second stage with more substantive funding to support the most promising solutions to prototype and user test.  EIC programme managers will oversee the process and bring in potential users, including public and private buyers.

Faster, simpler and more robust application process for the EIC Accelerator

The EIC Accelerator, the EU's flagship programme combining investment grant support and business acceleration services for Europe's highest-potential start-ups and small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). Since 2021 over 15,000 companies have applied. From 2026, the application process will be simpler, with full proposals forms cut from 50 to 20 pages; faster, with evaluations every two months instead of every six months) and more robust, with deeper technology assessment anticipating the due diligence needed for investments.

Supporting the Startup and Scaleup Strategy

The 2026 work programme supports implementation of actions under the Startup and Scaleup Strategy. This includes the European Corporate Network, building on the successful EIC corporate days and strengthened services to support access to international markets and partners, and a Gender Index to track the participation of women in the innovation ecosystem.

It also introduces targeted challenges complementing the open calls, including for critical raw materials, nuclear fusion, AI, climate adaptation. The Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) call, launched in 2025 to provide larger investments (up to €30 million) will continue following high demand in 2025.