The European Capital of Innovation Award (iCapital)

Applications must be submitted before 18 June 2025 – 17:00:00 CET (Brussels).

Applications must be submitted electronically via the Funding & Tenders Portal Electronic Submission System (accessible via the Topic page in the Search Funding & Tenders section). Paper submissions are NOT possible.

Applications (including annexes and supporting documents) must be submitted using the forms provided inside the Submission System ( NOT the documents available on the Topic page — they are only for information).

Applications must be complete and contain all the requested information and all required annexes and supporting documents:

• Application form Part A — contains administrative information about the applicant organisations (to be filled in directly online)
• Application form Part B — contains the technical description of the application (to be downloaded from the Portal Submission System, completed and then assembled and re-uploaded as PDF in the system)
• Mandatory annex (to be uploaded as PDF file): Each application must contain a specific endorsement to apply, signed by the city Mayor (or the equivalent highest political representative) of maximum 2 pages. The required level of representation has to be respected.

Your application must be readable, accessible, printable.

Applications are limited to maximum 30 pages (Part B). Evaluators will not consider any additional pages.

You may be asked at a later stage for further documents (for legal entity validation, bank account validation, ethics review, declaration of honour, etc).

For more information about the submission process (including IT aspects), consult the Online Manual.

The candidate towns and cities must be located in one of the EU Member In order to be eligible, the applicant has to be a city^[1] and must comply with the following criteria:

1. The candidate cities must be located in one of the EU Member States or Associated Countries to Horizon Europe.

1. For the category of European Capital of Innovation, the candidate city must have a minimum population of 250 000 inhabitants. In countries where there are no such cities, the city coming closest to 250 000 inhabitants is eligible to apply for the European Capital of Innovation category, provided that it has a minimum population of 50 000 inhabitants and that the city is not applying at the same time for the European Rising Innovative City category.
2. For the category European Rising Innovative City, the candidate city must have a population comprised between 50 000 and 249 999 inhabitants^[2]. In countries where there are no such cities, the largest city by number of inhabitants is eligible.

[1]         A city is a Local Administrative Unit or a group of Local Administrative Units where a majority of the population lives in an urban centre of at least 50 000 inhabitants. Local Administrative Units and their respective population figures should be those set out in the latest available validated or partially validated LAU correspondence table published by Eurostat (Local administrative units (LAU) - Eurostat (europa.eu)) at the time of the submission of the application. Local authorities may represent one city defined as a Local Administrative Unit, or a “greater city” or Metropolitan region, taking account of Functional Urban Areas when relevant. Legal entities with separate legal personality from cities, even if founded and funded by the cities, are not eligible to apply.

[2]         For population data in both categories, Eurostat will be the source of reference. For countries not covered by Eurostat, the Agency will perform specific checks when assessing the eligibility criteria, and might ask any concerned cities to prove they comply with this requirement.

1. Winners of former European Capital of Innovation Awards editions, as well as runners-up of the edition 2024 are not eligible. This does not apply to previous finalist cities.

1. Applicants that have already received an EU or Euratom prize cannot receive a second prize for the same activities.

Joint applications by a group of applicants are not accepted and will be rejected as ineligible.

Described in article 7 of the rules of contest and on Annex C of the Work Programme General Annexes.

If admissible and eligible, the applications will be evaluated and ranked against the following award criteria:

1. award criterion 1: Experimenting – innovative concepts, processes, tools, and governance models proving the city's commitment to act as a test-bed for innovative practices, while ensuring the mainstreaming of these practices into the ordinary urban development process.

1. award criterion 2: Escalating – promoting the acceleration of the different actors of the local innovation ecosystem, supporting growth of highly innovative start-ups and SMEs, establishing innovation friendly legal framework, creating an environment that stimulates growth and attracts private and public investments, resources, diversity and talents; and driving innovation demand through efficient innovation public procurement.

1. award criterion 3: Ecosystem building – unlocking cities potential as local innovation ecosystem facilitators by fostering synergies among different innovation ecosystem players, from public, industry, startups, civil society, citizens to academia, to contribute to the development of an innovation ecosystem within the city.

1. award criterion 4: Expanding – acting as a role model for other cities by supporting the dissemination and replication of tested solutions that boost the local innovation ecosystem; by promoting mutual learning, knowledge transfer and capacity building; and by enhancing cooperation and synergies between cities that are front-runners in driving the local innovation ecosystem, and those that are still exploring and testing their role as innovation enablers.

1. award criterion 5: City innovative vision – applicants should demonstrate their long-term strategic vision/plan, highlighting the innovative initiatives that have positively contributed to the transformation of the city and which will further support the development of a sustainable and resilient innovation ecosystem ensuring the green and digital transition.

1. award criterion 6: Citizens’ rights – the use of innovation to strengthen democracy, to protect citizens' rights, to foster social cohesion, and ensure integration with a special view on minorities, gender, disability, or race.

Maximum points: 60 points.

Individual thresholds: 6/10 points.

Overall threshold: 36 points.

Applications must pass both all the individual thresholds AND the overall threshold. The prize will be awarded to the applications ranked 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd with the best scores in each category. Other applications will be rejected.

Applications will be subject to a formal evaluation by a jury in each category.

If there are more than 60 applications in one category, there will be a pre-selection phase in that category to select the best 60 applications to pass to the jury review. Otherwise, all eligible applications will pass directly to jury review.

The pre-selection panel and jury usually have a different composition, but jury members may participate in the pre-selection panel.

The pre-selection panel/jury will evaluate each application against the award criteria.

For applications with the same score, the pre-selection panel/jury will determine a priority order according to the following approach: the score for the criterion No 5 will be given a weight of 2 and the score for criterion No 2 will be given a weight of 1.5.

If two or more applications still tie for any rank or category at the pre-selection phase, those applications will be admitted to the next phase of the evaluation.

If two or more applications still tie for any rank or category at the jury review, those applications will be admitted to the hearings.

The six best ranked applications in each category will be invited for a hearing with the jury in Brussels. This hearing may take place remotely.

If two or more applications still tie for any rank or category, the prize will be equally divided and awarded to all applications with the same score.

On the basis of the evaluation by the jury (and after the mandatory checks: ethics review, security scrutiny, legal entity validation, non-exclusion, double funding and plagiarism, etc), the awarding authority will decide on the award of the prize.

All applications will be informed about the evaluation result (evaluation result letter). Successful applications will be awarded the prize; the not successful ones will be rejected.

If you believe that the evaluation procedure was flawed, you can submit a complaint (following the deadlines and procedures set out in the evaluation result letter). Please note that notifications are deemed to have been accessed (and received) 10 days after sending and that deadlines will be counted from then (see also Funding & Tenders Portal Terms and Conditions).

The call is open until 18 June 2025 (17:00:00).

The jury members will evaluate the proposals received between July and September.

The hearings will take place in September – October.

Information on the evaluation results / award will take place in November - December 2025.

Described in Annex G of the Work Programme General Annexes.