EIC Accelerator 2025 - Short application

To be an eligible applicant to EIC Accelerator, you must apply as one of the following eligible entities:

• a single company classified as a SME, and established within a Member State or an Associated Country (see Annex 2 of the EIC Work Programme 2025); or
• a single company classified as a small mid-cap (up to 499 employees) established in a Member State or an Associated Country, but only for exceptional cases for rapid scale up purposes; or
• one or more natural persons (including individual entrepreneurs) or legal entities, which are either:

a. from a Member State or an Associated Country intending to establish an SME or small mid-cap (as defined above) in a Member State or Associated Country by the time of signing the EIC Accelerator grant agreement or, in case the equity only is awarded, at the latest at the date of signature of the agreement on its investment component;

b. intending to invest in an SME or small mid-cap established in a Member State or an Associated Country and may submit a proposal on behalf of that SME or small mid-cap, provided that a prior agreement exists with the company. The grant agreement and/or the investment agreement will be signed with the beneficiary/final recipient of funding company only; or

c. from a non-associated third country intending to establish an SME (including start-ups) or to relocate an existing SME to a Member State or an Associated Country. Your company must prove its effective establishment in a Member State or an Associated Country at the time of submission of the full proposal.

The standard admissibility and eligibility conditions are detailed in Annex 2 of the EIC Work Programme 2025.

There are limitations on the number of times you can submit a proposal described in the section Application submission limits of the EIC Work Programme 2025.

If you are currently a participant in an eligible project funded by Horizon Europe or Horizon 2020 then you may be able to apply through your existing project under the Fast Track scheme (see Annex 3 of the EIC Work Programme 2025). This scheme is managed by the funding body responsible for the existing project and applies to funding bodies listed in Annex 3 of the EIC Work Programme 2025.

Applicants may also be able to apply if they have a project financed by an eligible programme managed by a Member State or an Associated Country under the pilot Plug-in scheme. The Plug-in scheme to apply to the EIC Accelerator is detailed in Annex 4 of the EIC Work Programme 2025.

Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System

The application process consists of a number of steps:

Submission of short proposals

Applications may be submitted at any time via the Funding and Tender Opportunities Portal (as from the 29 October 2025). Short applications will be batched and sent for evaluation the first Tuesday of every month. From the date of the batching, you will be informed within approximately 4-6 weeks, and you will receive the evaluation result of your short proposal specifying whether or not your proposal met the admissibility, eligibility and award criteria evaluation elements and can therefore proceed to submit a full proposal. In both cases, you will receive feedback from the assigned four expert evaluators.

Submission of full proposals

If your short proposal is successful, then you will be entitled to receive coaching support to prepare a full proposal from one of the business coaches from the EIC Business Acceleration Services. You can only receive this support once for a proposal.

The optional coaching support is designed to improve the value proposition, business plan and investor pitch. However, it is your decision how to respond to the feedback and support, and the content of your proposal is your sole responsibility.

If you succeeded with your short application under the 2025 Work programme, your full proposal can be submitted to any of the following cut-offs during 2025, and any of the cut-offs for 2026. Applicants who succeeded with a positive evaluation of their short proposal under the 2023 or 2024 EIC Work Programme may apply to any of the following cut-offs in 2025. You may decide which cut-off to apply to.

The two cut-off dates for 2025 are:

1. March 12
2. October 1

The cut-off dates for 2026 will be announced in the 2026 Work Programme due to be adopted in Autumn 2025.

The applicants that are eligible to apply for a full proposal will receive the links to the submission environment and will be able to submit the full proposal for the following topics: 

EIC Accelerator Open, which has no predefined thematic priorities and is open to proposals in any field of technology or application;

If an application falls within the scope of the Challenges topics below, grant funding is subject to eligibility in accordance with the specific conditions applicable to those topics:

GenAI4EU: Creating European Champions in Generative AI (Section IV.2.3 of the EIC Work Programme 2025)

Innovative in-space servicing, operations, space-based robotics and technologies for resilient EU space infrastructure (Section IV.2.4 of the EIC Work Programme 2025)

EIC Accelerator Challenges in the following predefined areas of emerging and strategic technologies:

Challenge 01 - Acceleration of advanced materials development and upscaling along the value chain

Challenge 02 - Biotechnology driven low emission food production systems

Challenge 03 - GenAI4EU: Creating European Champions in Generative AI

Challenge 04 - Innovative in-space servicing, operations, space-based robotics and technologies for resilient EU space infrastructure

Challenge 05 - Breakthrough innovations for future mobility

Once you submit your full proposal, it will be assessed remotely against award criteria evaluation elements by three EIC expert evaluators. Within approximately eight-nine weeks you will be informed about the result of the remote evaluation. If successful, you will be invited to attend an interview with an EIC Jury.

Interviews with an EIC Jury

All companies receiving a GO from the remote evaluation stage will be invited to an interview with an EIC jury in Brussels as the final step in the selection process. Interviews will be organised approximately three to four weeks after applicants are informed of the result of the remote evaluation (or longer if there is a need for a further set of interviews). At the interview, you will be assessed by a panel of maximum six jury members. You will be informed about the result of the interview within approximately two-three weeks. Expenses incurred by applicants attending the in-person interviews will not be reimbursed.

Invitation to negotiate grant component and due diligence process for investment component

If selected for (potential) funding, you will be invited to negotiate a grant agreement for the requested grant component (if you have applied for it) and to start the due diligence for the investment component (if you have applied for it).

For further information please see the EIC Work Programme 2025.

described in Annex 2(B. Eligibility) of the EIC Work Programme 2025. Applicants from the United Kingdom can apply to the EIC Accelerator, but can only request and receive funding in the form of “grant only”.

described in Annex 2(General conditions for proposals) of the EIC Work Programme 2025. 

described in Annex 2(C. Financial and Operational Capacity) of the EIC Work Programme 2025. 

described in section IV of the EIC Work Programme 2025.

described in section IV of the EIC Work Programme 2025.

described in section IV of the EIC Work Programme 2025.

described in Annex G of the HE Main Work Programme 2023–2025 – 13. General Annexes.