Horizon Europe
Horizon Europe – the successor of Horizon2020 – is the EU's Research and Innovation framework programme for 2021-2027 with a budget of €95.5 billion. It is built on three pillars offering different funding opportunities for frontier and collaborative research: (i) Excellent science (ii) Global challenges and European industrial competitiveness and (iii) Innovative Europe.
More about Horizon Europe.
Excellent Science
Driving scientific excellence and supporting the EU’s position as a world leader in science. This pillar supports frontier research and breakthrough scientific ideas, teams up the best researchers from Europe and beyond and equips them with skills and word-class research infrastructures.
European Research Council
The fundamental activity of the European Research Council (ERC) is to provide attractive, long-term funding to support excellent investigators and their research teams to pursue ground-breaking, high-gain/high-risk research. The objective is to fund projects that set a clear and inspirational target for frontier research across Europe. The ERC's frontier research grants operate on a 'bottom-up' basis. Individualresearchers/Principal Investigators of any age, from any discipline, from any country, can apply.
The following funding opportunities are relevant to ESC Members:
- Starting grant is a support for excellent Principal Investigators at the career stage at which they are starting their own independent research team or programme (two to seven years of experience after PhD).
- Consolidator grant is a support for excellent Principal Investigators at the career stage at which they may still be consolidating their own independent research team or programme (7-12 years of experience after PhD).
- Advanced grant is a support for excellent Principal Investigators at the career stage at which they have already established research leaders with a recognised track record of research achievements.
Other grants: proof of concept, synergy grants.
Consult the 2026 Work Programme.
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) have become the EU’s reference programme for doctoral education and postdoctoral training. MSCA fund excellent research and innovation, hence its position in Horizon Europe’s first pillar, Excellent science. At the time of the proposal submission, eligible candidates must hold a doctoral degree (PhD) or have carried out at least four years of full-time equivalent research experience. The budget for the MSCA under Horizon Europe is €6.6 billion. Read about the Principles of the programme.
Intervention areas relevant to ESC Members:
- doctoral networks,
- postdoctoral fellowship,
- staff exchange,
- COFUND,
- MSCA and citizens.
Consult the 2026-2027 work programme.
Global and European Competitiveness
The pillar 'Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness' is established through clusters of research and innovation activities, in order to maximise integration and synergies across the respective thematic areas while securing high and sustainable levels of impact for the Union in relation to the resources that are expended.
Health Cluster
The Health Cluster, with a budget of €7.7 billion for the period 2021-2027, aims to promote health, healthy lifestyle and well-being of all ages, to diagnose, treat and cure disease, improve healthcare systems to become resilient, cost-effective and sustainable.
Destinations/priorities of the work programme relevant to ESC Members:
- Staying healthy in a rapidly changing society.
- Living and working in a health-promoting environment.
- Tackling diseases and reducing disease burden.
- Ensuring access to innovative, sustainable and high-quality healthcare.
- Unlocking the full potential of new tools, technologies and digital solutions for a healthy society.
- Maintaining an innovative, sustainable and globally competitive health-related industry.
Consult the 2026-2027 work programme
European Partnership for Personalised Medicine
In line with the European Commission's ambition to simplify the funding landscape of the different initiatives in the new funding period (2021-2027), the European Partnership for Personalised Medicine which builds on the success of the International Consortium for Personalised Medicine (ICPerMed) and the ERA PerMed, will become a co-funded partnership under Horizon Europe's pillar II, Health Cluster. Three specific research and innovation objectives of the new partnership are:
- integrating big data and ICT solutions for health;
- translating basic research into clinical applications;
- providing socio-economic evidence for the uptake of personalised medicine by the healthcare systems.
The long-term impact of the partnership should be a complete overhaul of the way healthcare is operated in the EU in a modern, technology-driven equitable and sustainable way.
The partnership's Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) is under development. The partnership started in 2023-2024 and will run until 2030. The SRIA will determine the main priorities of the call for proposals that this partnership will launch.
More information on the European Partnership for Personalised Medicine Home - European Partnership for Personalised Medicine - EP PerMed.
Innovative Health Initiative
The Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) is an institutionalised partnership under Horizon Europe. It builds on the Innovative Medicine Initiative (IMI) Programme although there is a significant difference between the two programmes. Whilst the former IMI had a narrower focus on the pharmaceutical industry, the IHI has taken a broader range of industries under its wing, such as biopharmaceutical, biotech, diagnostics, imaging, digital health, (personalised) treatment, medical devices, etc. The total budget proposed for IHI is €2.4 billion for the period 2022-2027. The initiative intends to:
- create EU-wide health research and innovation ecosystem,
- foster the development of safe, effective, people-centred and cost-effective innovations,
- drive cross-sectoral health innovation for a globally competitive European health industry.
The ‘public’ partner in the partnership will be the European Union, represented by the European Commission. The IHI industry partners will be COCIR, EFPIA, EuropaBio, MedTech Europe and Vaccines Europe.
Consult the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda that enshrines the priorities and objectives to which the calls will be aligned.
Upcoming calls.
Innovative Europe
By reinforcing close cross-border collaboration between multiple actors, including academia, the public sector, industry and individual entrepreneurs, Horizon Europe aims to develop solutions to pressing societal challenges and fostering sustainable economic growth and employment. Through ‘Innovative Europe’, the programme will focus on supporting the development of disruptive and market-creating innovations and on enhancing European innovation ecosystems.
European Innovation Council
The European Innovation Council (EIC) aims at identifying and supporting breakthrough technologies and game-changing innovations with the potential to scale up internationally and become market leaders.
Financial support is provided through three main funding schemes: (i) the ‘EIC Pathfinder’ for advanced research on breakthrough/game-changing technologies; (ii) ‘EIC Transition’ for transforming research results into innovation opportunities; and (iii) and the ‘EIC Accelerator’ for individual companies to develop and scale up breakthrough innovations with high risk and high impact.
The majority of funding will be awarded through open calls with no predefined thematic priorities. The EIC Open funding is designed to enable support for any technologies and innovations that cut across different scientific, technological, sectoral and application fields or represent novel combinations.
The challenge-driven approach provides funding to address specific technological and innovation breakthroughs.
Consult the EIC 2026 work programme.
EIT Health
EIT Health establishes a knowledge-innovation community and ecosystem by connecting research – business and education for better healthcare delivery.
The most relevant programme for ESC Members is the Education programme that strives to bridge the gap between academia and business. The main scope of the programme is upskilling of the workforce to enable them to use new technologies and provide practical knowledge. The open opportunities are listed on the EIT Health website.
Other opportunities with EIT Health: participate in the Think Tank Round Table discussions about the most recent and impactful topics in health innovation and raise your/your organisation’s profile.
EU4Health
EU4Health is the successor of the Health Programme but with a ten times bigger budget than its predecessors. It was brought to life as the EU’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It aims to (i) improve public health in the Union, (ii) protect people from serious cross-border health threats, (iii) improve access to medical products and devices and (iv) strengthen the resilience of national health systems. The budget for 2024 is €726M and €5.3 billion for the period 2021-2027.
Consult the 2025 work programme.
Digital Europe Programme
The Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL) focuses on the wide deployment of digital technologies both for the public and the private sector. The Digital Europe Programme will provide strategic funding to projects in five key capacity areas: (i) supercomputing, (ii) artificial intelligence, (iii) cybersecurity, (iv) advanced digital skills, and (v) ensuring a wide use of digital technologies across the economy and society. The budget for 2025 is €435.6 million.
Priorities interesting to ESC Members:
- supporting patients’ access to their health data in the context of healthcare services,
- demonstrating the in-service use of the European Electronic Health Record Exchange Format (EEHRxF) in healthcare settings,
- support for Health Data Access Bodies to foster efficient pathways for AI in healthcare.
Consult the 2025-2027 work programme
Erasmus+
The new Erasmus+ programme financing training and education witnessed a double increase of its budget to €26 billion for the whole period of 2021-2027 whose 30% will be earmarked for collaborative projects. Individuals and organisations can apply. The most relevant priority for ESC members is the digital pillar supporting the implementation of the Digital Education Action Plan. From the action types, the most pertinent for universities is the Key Action 2 (KA2) cooperation among organisations and institutions and within that the Cooperation Partnership between higher education which will allow amongst others the roll-out of the European Universities Initiative as well.
Proposals are submitted either to the National Agencies or to the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA).
Consult the 2026 work programme.
European Structural and Investment Funds and REACT-EU
The formally known five funds bundled together under the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) have been simplified in the new programming period under five priorities out of which the following are interesting for the health and care sectors:
- Smart Europe (innovation, digitalisation, and support for SMEs);
- Green Europe (greening of the sector);
- Connected Europe (digital networks and digital transformation of health and care);
- Social Europe (social rights, quality employment, education, and social inclusion).
As a response to the coronavirus outbreak, a crisis repair initiative was launched under the name Recovery Assistance for Cohesion and the Territories of Europe (REACT-EU). It is a new instrument under the Next Generation EU amounting to € 50.6 billion. These entirely new funds are designed to supplement and enhance the cohesion allocations for 2021-2027, thereby expanding the budget approved for the same period in the Multiannual Framework.
One of the investment areas of REACT-EU is strengthening health and care systems in the Member States. The Member States prepare and present their recovery plans to the European Commission. Member States can channel these complementary funds through their European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) or the European Social Fund (ESF), or support the most vulnerable parts of the society, under the Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD). Call for proposals are launched and managed in the Member States.
More about React-EU.
European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST)
COST is an intergovernmental programme funding interdisciplinary research networks between researchers and innovators in a wide range of topics. 38 countries finance the programme whose researchers are eligible to apply. Application is continuous, there are two cut-off dates per year when the submitted applications are evaluated.
More about COST.
