#BeActive EU Sport Awards 2026: €125,000 in Erasmus+ Prize Money Across Five Categories, With €15,000 per Winner and €5,000 per Finalist, Closing 17 September 2026

#BeActive EU Sport Awards 2026: €125,000 in Erasmus+ Prize Money Across Five Categories, With €15,000 per Winner and €5,000 per Finalist, Closing 17 September 2026

The European Commission has reopened its main recognition prize for grassroots sport. The #BeActive EU Sport Awards call, published on 25 June 2026 under the reference ERASMUS-SPORT-2026-EU-AWARDS, opened for applications on 30 June 2026 and closes at 17:00 CEST on 17 September 2026. It puts €125,000 on the table for organisations — and, in one category, individuals — whose work has already got people in Europe moving.

This is a prize competition, not a project grant. You are not proposing something you intend to do with EU money; you are entering something you have already done and asking a jury to recognise it. That distinction shapes everything about how you should prepare an entry, and it is the single most common reason applications from otherwise excellent organisations fall flat.

Key Details at a Glance

What the Prize Money Actually Looks Like

The €125,000 budget is divided evenly and predictably. Each of the five categories carries €25,000, split three ways: €15,000 to the category winner and €5,000 to each of the two other finalists shortlisted in that category. Fifteen awards are made in total across the competition — five winners and ten finalists.

That structure matters when you are deciding whether an entry is worth your time. Because two finalists in every category are also paid, the effective odds are better than a winner-takes-all prize with the same headline value. Reaching the shortlist is itself a €5,000 outcome, plus a place on the stage at the awards ceremony in Brussels and the visibility that comes with being named by the European Commission.

Prize money from an EU award is not tied to a work programme or a reporting cycle the way an Erasmus+ Sport grant is. It recognises past work rather than financing a defined future project, which makes it unusually flexible money for a small club or association — the kind of unrestricted funding that is hard to find anywhere else in the European sport sector.

The Five Categories and What Each One Rewards

The 2026 call keeps the five-category structure introduced in recent editions. Read the category definitions carefully before you choose, because entering the wrong one is a genuine risk when a project touches several themes.

Physical Activity. For initiatives that get people moving in everyday settings — schools and other education contexts, workplaces, and the wider community. This is the broadest category and the natural home for municipal programmes, school-based movement schemes, and workplace activity campaigns.

Inclusion. For work that uses sport to advance social inclusion and break down barriers to participation. Entries here typically involve people who face structural obstacles to sport: people with disabilities, people on low incomes, migrants and refugees, or groups underrepresented in a particular sport.

Volunteering. For initiatives that strengthen and recognise volunteering in sport. This is also the one category where an individual aged 18 or over can apply in their own name rather than through an organisation — the closest thing the competition has to the old “Local Hero” award.

Across Generations. For projects that bring different age groups together through sport and build inter-generational connections in a community. A programme that simply serves older adults is not automatically an Across Generations entry; the jury is looking for genuine contact between generations.

Peace. For work that uses sport to support dialogue, mutual understanding and peaceful coexistence. This category has become more prominent in recent editions and often draws entries working across community divides or with displaced populations.

If your initiative could plausibly fit two categories, pick the one where the evidence is strongest, not the one where the ambition sounds biggest. A jury assessing an Inclusion entry wants to see who was included and how you know; a jury assessing a Physical Activity entry wants participation numbers and behaviour change. Match your category to the data you can actually show.

Who Can Apply

Eligibility for the #BeActive EU Sport Awards is defined by legal status and country of establishment.

Applicants must be legal entities. That includes private bodies, public bodies and international organisations — so sports clubs, federations, NGOs, charities, municipalities, schools, universities, employers and public agencies are all within scope, provided they are properly constituted.

Applicants must be established in an eligible country: an EU Member State, an overseas country or territory linked to a Member State, or a non-EU country associated with the Erasmus+ Programme or currently in ongoing association negotiations. The Erasmus+ association list is not static, so if your country’s status is unclear, confirm it against the current Erasmus+ Programme Guide before you invest time in an entry.

The Volunteering category carries the one significant exception to the legal-entity rule: natural persons aged 18 or over may apply. If you want to recognise a single volunteer’s contribution rather than a programme, that is the route.

There is no application fee, and there is no requirement to have received Erasmus+ funding previously. Grassroots organisations with no prior EU funding history compete on the same terms as established federations — and, on the evidence of recent editions, win.

How to Apply Through the Funding & Tenders Portal

Applications are submitted electronically through the European Commission’s Funding & Tenders Portal, under the topic page for ERASMUS-SPORT-2026-EU-AWARDS. There is no paper or email route, and late submissions are not accepted.

The practical sequence is the same as for any EU prize or grant handled through the portal:

1. Create an EU Login account. This is the personal account that gets you into the portal. If you already have one from any other Commission service, reuse it.
2. Register your organisation and obtain a Participant Identification Code (PIC). The PIC is a nine-digit code that identifies your organisation across all EU funding. If your organisation already has one, do not create a second. Individuals applying in the Volunteering category still need to complete portal registration.
3. Open the topic page and start a submission. The portal generates your application forms and gives you the current Rules of Contest, which is the binding document for this competition. Download and read it in full — it sets out the formal eligibility conditions, the award criteria the jury applies, and what must be attached.
4. Complete the forms and upload your annexes. Follow the page and format limits exactly.
5. Submit before 17:00 CEST on 17 September 2026. The portal enforces the cut-off automatically.

Do not leave registration to the final week. PIC validation and EU Login setup are administrative steps that regularly consume more time than applicants expect, and no part of that process is under the awards team’s control.

Timeline: From the September Deadline to the March 2027 Results

The evaluation runs from September 2026 to March 2027, with results notified in March 2027. That is roughly a six-month wait from submission to answer, which is normal for an EU prize assessed by an independent jury.

Winners and finalists are then celebrated at an awards ceremony in Brussels. The ceremony for the preceding edition was held on 23 June 2026 at Bozar in Brussels, tied to Olympic and Paralympic Day, and was streamed live.

One point of genuine confusion is worth stating plainly. The call reference contains “2026” because the call was published in 2026, but the winners of this round will not be announced until March 2027. Meanwhile, a separate set of winners was already announced in June 2026 under the previous round. If you are searching online and find #BeActive winners from June 2026, those are not from the competition you are entering now. The date that identifies your competition is the 17 September 2026 deadline.

What the Last Edition Tells You About the Competition

The preceding round drew 279 submissions and produced 15 finalists selected by an independent jury before the winners were chosen. That is a shortlist rate of roughly one in nineteen across the whole competition, and about one in fifty-six for the top prize in a category — competitive, but not the long odds of a major research grant.

The winners announced in June 2026 give a useful picture of what succeeds:

• Physical Activity — Município de Oeiras, Portugal
• Inclusion — Planinska zveza Slovenije (Alpine Association of Slovenia)
• Volunteering — United Way Hungary
• Across Generations — Running Club Marathon 95 Varaždin, Croatia
• Peace — New Humanity International Association, Italy

The spread is instructive. A municipality, a national mountaineering association, a charity federation, a local running club and a faith-linked international association all took top prizes in the same year. There is no institutional profile that wins this award. A running club in a Croatian city of under 50,000 people can beat a national federation, provided its story and its evidence are stronger.

Building an Entry That Holds Up

Because this is a prize for completed work, the jury is assessing what happened, not what you plan. Structure your entry around that.

Lead with the specific, not the mission statement. “We promote inclusion through sport” tells a jury nothing. “We ran 42 sessions across 11 months for 180 participants, 60% of whom had never joined a club before” tells them everything. Numbers, dates and places do the persuading.

Show evidence you actually hold. Registration lists, attendance records, pre- and post-participation surveys, partner confirmations, local press coverage, evaluation reports. You do not need an academic evaluation, but you do need to be able to say how you know what you are claiming. Vague impact claims with no source behind them are the weakest part of most entries.

Make the European dimension visible. These are EU awards, and the categories map to EU sport policy priorities — health-enhancing physical activity, social inclusion, volunteering, inter-generational solidarity, and sport as a route to peace. Say explicitly which priority your work advances and how.

Explain what makes it transferable. Part of the point of the awards is to surface practice other organisations can copy. If another club in another country could run your model, describe what they would need. That is a real differentiator against entries that read as one-off local successes.

Write for a non-specialist reader. The jury will not know your national school system, your funding structures or your local acronyms. Explain context in one sentence rather than assuming it.

Keep it in scope. Describe one initiative properly rather than summarising your organisation’s entire portfolio. Entries that try to cover everything an organisation does tend to demonstrate nothing in particular.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Treating it as a grant application. Proposing future work rather than presenting completed work is the fundamental misread of this competition.
• Choosing the category by ambition rather than evidence. A weak Peace entry loses to a strong Physical Activity entry describing the same project.
• Starting portal registration in September. EU Login and PIC validation are not instant. Begin in August.
• Ignoring the Rules of Contest. It is the binding document. Formal eligibility and award criteria come from there, not from news pages or summaries — including this one.
• Submitting unsupported impact claims. “Transformed our community” without participation data reads as filler.
• Missing the time, not just the date. The cut-off is 17:00 CEST, not midnight.
• Assuming small means ineligible. Grassroots clubs win these awards regularly.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there an application fee? No. Entry is free.

Can an individual apply? Only in the Volunteering category, where natural persons aged 18 or over are eligible. All other categories require a legal entity.

Do I need to have received Erasmus+ funding before? No. Prior EU funding is not a condition and confers no advantage.

Can I enter more than one category? The Rules of Contest on the portal set out any limits on multiple entries — check them before preparing more than one submission, and in any case do not submit the same initiative twice hoping something sticks.

Is the prize money restricted? It is award money recognising past achievement rather than a grant against a budgeted work programme. Any conditions attached to payment are set out in the Rules of Contest.

What language should I apply in? Language requirements are specified in the Rules of Contest and application forms on the portal. English is the safest working assumption for an EU-level competition, but confirm against the official documents.

When will I hear back? Results are expected in March 2027, following evaluation between September 2026 and March 2027.

Does my activity have to have taken place within a particular period? The call documents define the eligible period for the activity being entered. This is not something to guess at — read the Rules of Contest and check your dates against it before you write anything else.

Official Links and Contacts

• Call topic page and application (EU Funding & Tenders Portal): https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/erasmus-sport-2026-eu-awards
• European Commission announcement: https://sport.ec.europa.eu/whats-new/news/beactive-eu-sport-awards-2026-apply-now
• Questions: [email protected]

Next Steps

If your organisation has run something over the past year that got people active, brought generations together, opened a sport to people who were shut out of it, mobilised volunteers, or used sport to bridge a divide, this is a low-cost, unrestricted €5,000–€15,000 opportunity with no fee and a genuinely reachable shortlist.

Start this week with three things: download the Rules of Contest from the portal topic page and confirm you meet the formal conditions; begin EU Login and PIC registration if you do not already have them; and pull together your participation data before you start writing. The deadline of 17:00 CEST on 17 September 2026 leaves enough time to do this properly — but only if the administrative work starts now rather than in the final fortnight.