Lantern Grants

EIC Accelerator 2026 - Short proposal

Funder
European Commission · Horizon Europe · European Innovation Council
Award amount
Not specified
Deadline
November 4, 2026
Eligible countries
European Union, United Kingdom, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Israel, Global

Summary

Open EU call topic HORIZON-EIC-2026-ACCELERATOR-01 · HORIZON EIC Accelerator. Part of call HORIZON-EIC-2026-ACCELERATOR-01: EIC Accelerator 2026 - Short application. Next deadline 2026-11-04. Topic page: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/HORIZON-EIC-2026-ACCELERATOR-01

Scope: The EIC Accelerator supports companies (principally SMEs, including start-ups) to scale up high impact innovations with the potential to create new markets or disrupt existing ones. The EIC Accelerator provides a unique combination of grant and investment funding and Business Acceleration Services (see Section VII of EIC Work Programme 2026). The EIC Accelerator focuses in particular on innovations building on scientific discovery or technological breakthroughs (‘deep tech’) and where significant funding is needed over a long timeframe before returns can be generated (‘patient capital’). Such innovations often struggle to attract financing because the risks and time period involved are too high. Funding and support from the EIC Accelerator is designed to enable such innovators to attract the full investment amounts needed for scale up in a shorter timeframe. The EIC Accelerator supports the later stages of technology development as well as scale up. The technology component of your innovation must therefore have been tested and validated in a laboratory and other relevant environment (e.g., at least Technology Readiness Level 5 completed). The EIC Accelerator looks to support companies where the EIC support will act as a catalyst to crowd in other investors necessary for the scale up of the innovation. Applicants to EIC Accelerator can submit proposals through: - EIC Accelerator Open - which has no predefined thematic priorities and is open to proposals in any field of technology or application - EIC Accelerator Challenges - in predefined areas of emerging and strategic technologies.

For further information please see the EIC…

Summary as listed by the funder. Always read the full announcement for eligibility, limits and how to apply.

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What European Union reviewers look for

  • Most Horizon Europe calls score three criteria (the ERC uses excellence alone). Excellence: clarity and ambition of the objectives, and the soundness of the methodology.
  • Impact: credible pathways to the expected outcomes, and measures to communicate and exploit results.
  • Quality and efficiency of implementation: the work plan, resources and the consortium's capacity.

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