The European Commission has published the current 2025 work program for the European Innovation Council (EIC) as part of Horizon Europe.

The EIC focuses on supporting the identification, development and implementation of ground-breaking, disruptive and technology-oriented innovations. In addition to the necessary basic research, the funding is aimed at market entry and rapid market growth (scale-up) - especially for innovative small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The work program now published contains the calls for proposals for 2025 in the four main funding lines of the EIC with a total budget of EUR 1.4 billion.

The EIC Pathfinder supports market-oriented technology research in multidisciplinary consortia with approximately EUR 4 million/project. These are both thematically open ("Open") and thematically linked ("Challenges"). The call for proposals ends on May 21, 2025 (Pathfinder Open) and October 29, 2025 (Pathfinder Challenges).

In Pathfinder Challenges, consortia can address the following topics

• Biotech for climate-resilient plants and plant-based bioproduction
• Generative AI-based agents to revolutionize the medical diagnosis and treatment of cancer
• Autonomous robot collectives that perform collaborative tasks in dynamic, unstructured construction environments
• Waste-to-value devices - circular production of renewable fuels, chemicals and materials

The EIC Transition aims to bring research results from previous EU projects to market readiness (validation, demonstration, commercialization). Such projects should have been funded under one of the following instruments: EIC Pathfinder/FET Open, ERC Proof of Concept, European Defense Fund or Horizon Pillar 2 ("Societal challenges and Leadership in Industrial Technologies"). Both consortia and individual applicants can apply for funding of up to EUR 2.5 million/project and submit their proposals by September 17, 2025.

The EIC Accelerator supports activities of start-ups and SMEs that want to develop or strengthen innovations with high market potential.

The EIC STEP Scale Up program is part of the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) and offers financial support in the form of investments in start-ups, SMEs and small mid-cap companies in the amount of 10 to 30 million euros.

The Business Acceleration Services offer all EIC-funded projects access to advisors, mentors and experts as well as a wide range of networking opportunities with corporates, investors and others.

An EIC Information Day took place on November 5 as an online event. Another online information day on the Accelerator Challenges took place on November 6, 2024. You can access the recordings and presentations of the two information days here and here.

Further information:

• EIC 2025 work program
• EIC website
• EPC call overview for Horizon Europe (internal link)

Are you planning an application for one of the call topics? Please feel free to contact us! The EPC team will be happy to support you!

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© EPC

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Ms Katharina Amsel

Horizon Europe

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