EU Programmes: how to find grants for innovation
Innovation is moving faster than ever, with public funding playing a central role in helping companies, startups, and research organisations turn ideas into real impact. From deep tech to climate solutions, from AI to health innovation, grants are one of the main tools the European Union uses to stay competitive globally.
But knowing how to find grants for innovation is still one of the biggest challenges for businesses. Opportunities are fragmented, eligibility changes, competition is intense and timing matters more than you think. With that, understanding how the ecosystem works is no longer optional; it’s a strategic advantage.
To help guide your business through the potential of grants, here we explain the basics of what you should know before starting to apply for innovation funding.
What are innovation grants?
Innovation grants are non-dilutive public funds designed to support research, technology development, and market deployment of new solutions. Unlike loans or equity investment, grants allow businesses to build and scale innovation without giving up ownership or taking on financial risk.
Across Europe, funding is not slowing down. The EU budget for 2026 alone reached around €192.8 billion in total commitments, with roughly €14 billion allocated specifically to research and innovation, most of it channeled through Horizon Europe. This is not a short-term effort. It is part of a long-term strategy to strengthen Europe’s competitiveness, resilience, and technological sovereignty.
Innovation grants typically support activities such as R&D, prototyping, pilot testing, and cross-border collaboration. Many programmes prioritise projects aligned with major European transitions, including green, digital, and industrial competitiveness.
When businesses learn how to find grants for innovation early in their growth journey, they unlock access to capital that can significantly accelerate product development and market entry.
Who can apply for these calls?
The European R&I ecosystem is designed to be collaborative and inclusive. While universities and research centres are major players, businesses are increasingly central to funded innovation projects.
Startups, SMEs, scale-ups, corporates, research institutes, NGOs and public bodies can all participate depending on the call structure. In many cases, especially in Horizon Europe collaborative calls, funding is awarded to international consortia combining technical expertise, market validation and research excellence.
The ecosystem is also becoming more cross-sectoral. In recent years, participation has expanded beyond traditional engineering and life sciences into social sciences, humanities and interdisciplinary innovation. In 2025 alone, across five major calls from Horizon Europe, more than 3,400 project proposals were submitted, with record participation in areas such as social sciences and humanities. This reflects a shift in how Europe approaches innovation: not only as technology development, but as an overall transformation.
Still, competition is high. Success rates for Horizon Europe proposals often sit around 15% to 20%, and funding based success can be even lower, meaning many technically strong projects still do not secure funding.
Horizon Europe: the EU’s flagship programme for R&I
If you are trying to understand how to find grants for innovation, Horizon Europe is the starting point. With a total budget of €95.5 billion for 2021 to 2027, it is the largest transnational research and innovation programme in the world.
The programme funds everything from fundamental science to breakthrough innovation and deep tech commercialisation. It supports mission-driven projects targeting areas like climate neutrality, health resilience and ocean restoration, often bringing together companies, universities and public authorities across multiple countries.
The programme’s scale is massive. According to cumulative data from the Horizon Europe Dashboard, since 2021, it has already attracted more than 124,000 eligible proposals, leading to around 19,000 signed grant agreements. Across these projects, over 31,000 organisations have participated in funded activities, representing roughly €52 billion in EU funding commitments so far.
And the next phase is already taking shape. The Horizon Europe Work Programme 2026 to 2027 alone represents around €14 billion in new investment to strengthen European leadership in research and innovation, and support a more competitive and resilient economy.
Some examples of Horizon Europe calls for innovation in various fields include:
• EU Frontier AI Initiative - to strengthen European capabilities in frontier AI development;
• R&D for the next generation of scientific instrumentation - to boost scientific competitiveness, environmental sustainability, resilience, and digital efficiency;
• European Startup and Scaleup Hubs pilot - to accelerate the market expansion of European deep tech startups by fostering collaboration across the continent;
• Microbiome for early cancer prediction - to develop microbiome-based tools that can predict and prevent cancer before it starts;
• Large-scale production of liquid advanced biofuels - to support the demonstration of innovative production of biofuels and non-biological renewable fuels;
Understanding changes in 2026’s Work Programme
Here’s where strategy becomes a real funding opportunity.
The 2026-2027 cycle marks a clear shift in how R&I grants should work, looking to support Europe’s ambition to become more sustainable, competitive, and resilient in a fast-changing global landscape.
One of the biggest changes is simplification. The new Work Programme is around 33% shorter than the previous cycle, with roughly 35% fewer topics. In practice, this means fewer but larger opportunities, often funding multiple projects per topic instead of single winners. For applicants, this changes the game. Instead of reacting to highly detailed technical scopes, organisations now have more flexibility to design solutions and shape project approaches.
Another major evolution is the push for accessibility and faster execution. Around half of the calls are expected to use lump sum funding models (instead of reimbursing actual costs, the EU agrees a fixed grant amount upfront and pays it when work packages are completed), alongside more two-stage evaluations and simplified templates. The goal is to reduce administrative burden, speed up evaluation, and make participation easier for newcomers, such as startups, scale-ups, and SMEs.
Strategically, three priorities dominate this cycle: accelerating AI adoption across R&I, strengthening European resilience and competitiveness, and achieving climate neutrality.
At least 35% of the total budget will support climate related objectives, including new horizontal calls linked to the Clean Industrial Deal and industrial decarbonisation.
At the same time, the EU is accelerating investment in digital and deep tech initiatives, particularly AI, data, and emerging technologies. Finally, the programme strongly reinforces resilience and competitiveness, investing in research careers, infrastructure, and strategic value chains.
For businesses, this means discovering the right opportunity is increasingly about aligning roadmaps with European strategic priorities. Success is becoming less about matching a specific technical call and more about demonstrating how your innovation supports the EU's long-term missions.
Where to find grants for innovation
Finding grants for innovation can be a challenge, especially if your company has never applied for funding or if you’re unsure which opportunities are the best fit.
While there are many official portals, national agencies, and regional funds that list numerous calls, these sources can make the process feel like a real hunt. The information is spread in different channels, the requirements are complex, and the whole process can be very time-consuming.
The EU Funding and Tenders Portal is the main entry point for most EU programmes. It centralises open calls, submission tools, documentation, and statistics. However, for those unfamiliar with the system, it can be overwhelming. There are dozens of PDFs to read, eligibility criteria to verify, and tight deadlines to meet. Even after all that, you still can’t be sure if a specific opportunity is the best fit for your business or project.
If you’re looking for some inspiration or solid references of what kind of project gets approved, CORDIS offers information on all EU-supported R&D activities, including programs (Horizon Europe, H2020, and older), awarded projects and results. But again, it’s not always clear how your project could benefit from those programs.
In addition to the European portals, national funding agencies and regional funds provide complementary programmes, but the variety of sources and rules only adds complexity.
So what’s the best option to optimize this step?
Finding the right grant shouldn’t be a solo task or a lengthy process. With the right tools, it can be streamlined, accessible, and much more effective. This is where AI-powered grant discovery platforms start to play an important role.
Rather than replacing official sources, these platforms simplify them. They aggregate information from EU portals, national agencies, and regional funds into a single environment, reducing the need to manually search across dozens of websites and documents.
By structuring call data and cross-referencing eligibility rules, timelines, budgets, and priorities, AI makes it easier to understand which opportunities are actually relevant for a specific company or project. Instead of reading multiple PDFs from start to finish, organisations can focus on calls that already match their objectives, technology maturity, and geographic profile.
This type of automation does not remove the need for careful analysis, but it significantly reduces the time spent on discovery. For companies that are new to grants or that do not have dedicated internal teams, this can be the difference between missing an opportunity and building a long-lasting funding strategy.
Platforms like the AI Grant Consultant follow this logic: using AI to centralise opportunities, structure fragmented information, check eligibility, and support faster, more informed decision-making across the grant lifecycle. The goal is not to completely replace humans, but to make the process of applying for grants more accessible, from start to finish.
Step by step: how to find grants for innovation
By now, you probably think finding grants for innovation is practically impossible, especially if you don’t have a dedicated team for that. But it doesn’t have to be. Here are a few tips to help you structure your next steps and make the process simpler, more efficient, and less overwhelming for your business.
Define your innovation scope
Start by clearly outlining what your innovation is and what stage it’s at. Are you testing a prototype, scaling a solution, or exploring a breakthrough concept? Understanding your technology readiness, target market, and impact goals helps you filter grants that truly match your needs.
Check eligibility basics
Before getting excited about an opportunity, make sure you meet the fundamental requirements. Some grants are limited to specific countries, types of organisations, or consortium structures. Others may require a minimum level of technical maturity or proof of concept. Early eligibility checks save time and prevent wasted effort.
Match funding priorities
Grants are designed to support specific goals, whether it’s digital transformation, green technologies, or health innovation. Analyse the programme priorities and criteria, and align your project to show how it addresses them. Strong applications connect the innovation to the EU's objectives.
Prepare timeline and resources
Innovation grants have schedules and deadlines, but planning doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Knowing the key dates for calls, evaluation cycles, and potential partnerships lets you stay ahead without stress. Breaking the process into manageable steps makes the application much simpler.
Plus: get an AI agent to help you
Tracking calls, eligibility, and deadlines can be time-consuming. With an AI agent, you’ll be able to streamline this process, having that extra help to discover the right grants, match the call’s criteria, and even prepare the application.
How AI is changing how businesses find grants
Speaking of AI, one of the biggest changes in the grant ecosystem right now is how businesses access and manage opportunities.
Traditionally, finding grants meant manual searches, tracking newsletters, or relying on consultants. It was a slow, fragmented, and often resource-heavy process.
With AI coming to the picture, technology starts to play a bigger role in the grant journey. AI agents won't just help you find grants for innovation and other fields, it will guide you through every stage. From scanning thousands of calls to scoring your eligibility against specific criteria, AI highlights the opportunities that are the best match to the project and company goals.
It can even help structure and draft applications, aligning your proposal with the EU priorities, so submissions are stronger. And the support doesn’t stop after a grant is awarded. AI can track reporting deadlines, manage deliverables, and streamline post-approval management, turning what was once a complex process into a clear, manageable workflow.
Simplify your funding journey with Granter
Finding grants for innovation shouldn’t take weeks of manual searching and hours scanning through scattered data or disconnected tools.
Granter was built to streamline the entire grant journey, even for companies with established processes and experienced teams. From discovering opportunities and checking eligibility to drafting applications and managing post-award requirements: the AI Grant Consultant centralizes and accelerates each step, helping you save time and reduce complexity.
If you want to find grants for innovation with more clarity, speed, and confidence, join the waitlist.
