#BeActive EU Sport Awards 2026: €125,000 prize fund (Historical Reference)

The European Commission’s results notice, published on 24 September 2026, confirms that the 2026 #BeActive EU Sport Awards call is closed. It says the application period ran from 30 June to 17 September 2026 and attracted 237 applications. Applications are undergoing admissibility and eligibility checks followed by evaluation, which runs from September 2026 to March 2027. The 15 finalists, three in each category, will compete for the grand prize, and the winners are due to be announced at the awards ceremony in June 2027. The original call notice says information will be sent to applicants in March 2027. The Commission’s awards overview explains the programme and its categories; its page footer gives 26 May 2026 as its last-updated date. The later results notice provides the post-submission status. Neither official page announces a subsequent application round or gives an opening date for one. This page is therefore a historical record of the closed call, not an invitation to submit an application now.

The awards recognise initiatives that use sport and physical activity to improve health, strengthen communities, advance inclusion and support shared European values. The competition rewards work that has already taken place. It is different from an Erasmus+ Sport project grant: an entrant presents an initiative and its achievements for recognition rather than requesting a grant to carry out a proposed project. That distinction remains useful to organisations reviewing the competition for future planning, but the 2026 submission window has ended.

Status of the 2026 call

The official call results notice confirms that 237 applications were submitted across the five categories. Applications are now subject to admissibility and eligibility checks before evaluation. The evaluation period is identified as September 2026 to March 2027. After assessment, three finalists in each category—15 in total—are to compete for the award. The Commission says the winners will be announced during the #BeActive EU Sport Awards ceremony in June 2027.

Those are post-submission milestones, not additional application dates. An organisation that did not submit by the closing time cannot use the evaluation period to enter late. The published results notice does not describe an extension, a late-submission process, a waiting list, or an open rolling intake. The call should therefore be treated as closed even while evaluation continues.

The official notice reports 237 applications, while the prize arrangement describes 15 finalists. Those figures refer to different stages: the former is the pool of submissions received; the latter is the planned finalist group after evaluation. The notice does not publish category-by-category application totals or selection odds, so those should not be inferred from the overall number.

Award amount and categories

The total prize fund is €125,000. It is distributed across five categories. In each category, one winner receives €15,000 and two finalists receive €5,000 each. That makes one winner and two finalist awards per category, for five winners and ten finalist awards overall if the announced structure is completed as described.

The five categories are:

Physical activity: initiatives that encourage people to be active.
Inclusion: initiatives that use sport and physical activity to make participation more inclusive.
Volunteering: work that recognises the contribution of volunteers to sport.
Across generations: initiatives that connect people of different ages through sport and physical activity.
Peace: work that uses sport to support dialogue, tolerance, cooperation and peaceful coexistence.

The Commission’s awards overview presents the competition as a way to surface good practice, recognise sport organisations and individuals, and encourage people across Europe to stay active. The categories describe the contribution an initiative makes; they are not separate grants with different budgets announced in the available results notice. Entrants in the closed call selected the category that best fitted the work they were presenting.

Eligibility in the closed round

For the 2026 call, the official application announcement said eligible organisations based in EU countries and other countries associated with the Erasmus+ Programme could apply. It also specified an exception for the Volunteering category, where individuals aged 18 or over could apply. Eligibility was tied to the applicant and the relevant call rules, not simply to whether a project used sport or had a European audience.

That short public description is not a substitute for the call’s Rules of Contest. The detailed rules and portal forms governed formal admissibility, country status, applicant registration, the eligible initiative and supporting material. For a future round, applicants should use the new round’s documents if and when the Commission publishes them. They should not assume that every condition, eligible country, evidence requirement or portal step will remain identical from one edition to the next.

The public summary does establish several useful boundaries. This was a prize competition for initiatives that had successfully promoted sport and physical activity. It was not a general-purpose operating grant, and it did not invite an applicant to pitch an untested future idea. The Volunteering category had a specific individual route for applicants aged 18 or over; that exception should not be generalized to the other categories.

How applications were submitted

Applications for the 2026 round had to be submitted through the European Commission’s Funding & Tenders Portal. The public call announcement gives a closing date and time of 17 September 2026 at 17:00 CEST. Because that deadline has passed, the portal route described here is included only to document the prior process. There is no application step a reader can complete now for this cycle.

The official application notice verifies the submission channel and cutoff, but it does not document a click-by-click portal workflow. The one confirmed submission step was to send the application electronically through the Funding & Tenders Portal by 17:00 CEST on 17 September 2026. The notice directs applicants to the call but does not say which portal screens, registrations or uploads every applicant encountered, so this archive does not present those details as a verified sequence.

The public summary also does not enumerate the full annex list, word limits, evidence formats, language conditions or evaluation scoring. Those details were governed by the 2026 call documentation and portal forms while the call was open. They should be checked in the formal documents for the relevant edition rather than reconstructed from this summary or guessed from another Erasmus+ action. Since the 2026 call is closed, those documents describe the previous process; they do not establish requirements for a future round.

For future applicants, the practical lesson is to separate the enduring preparation from the round-specific process. It is reasonable to maintain clear records of participation, delivery, partners and outcomes for a completed initiative. It is not safe to assume that a future edition will keep the same categories, amount, eligibility or forms until its own official call is published.

Timeline and what happens next

The 2026 call was published on 25 June 2026, and applications opened on 30 June 2026. The deadline was 17 September 2026 at 17:00 CEST. The Commission’s subsequent update, published on 24 September 2026, confirmed closure and gave the next stages: checks for admissibility and eligibility, then evaluation from September 2026 to March 2027. It states that winners will be announced at a ceremony in June 2027. The ceremony held on 23 June 2026 celebrated winners from the earlier edition, whose 2025 call received 279 applications; it was not the awards ceremony for submissions to the 2026 call. The 2026 application notice itself links to that earlier ceremony for inspiration, which can make the overlapping dates easy to confuse.

The later update is the appropriate source for the current status of the submitted applications. Earlier promotional material described the award while entries were open; its call-to-action is now out of date. Readers checking older links should distinguish application guidance from the results update and should not mistake the announced assessment timetable for an extension of the application period.

The latest official results update does not announce a 2027 application call or give a date for another round. The call notice’s March 2027 milestone concerns information for applicants to the closed 2026 round; it is not an opening date for another call. This page does not predict whether or when another round will be launched. If the European Commission publishes a new call, its official announcement and formal call documents will set the new deadline, award amount, eligibility and submission steps. Until then, the 2026 dates below remain part of the historical record only.

What entrants needed to communicate

Although the formal application requirements belong to the call documents, the purpose of the awards points to the kind of account an entry needed to make: what the initiative did, who took part, how it addressed the selected category and what its results showed. For a completed programme, a clear description is stronger when it distinguishes activities from outcomes. A schedule of sessions tells the reader what was delivered; attendance, retention, participant feedback or documented partnerships can help show what changed or who was reached.

Evidence should be proportionate to the claims. A small community club need not present itself as a research institute, but it should be able to explain where its figures came from and what period they cover. If an initiative says it reached people who had not previously participated in sport, it should be clear how that was established. If it claims to connect generations, the account should show how people of different ages interacted rather than merely listing age groups served separately.

Category choice also affects the story. An inclusion entry should make the participation barrier and response clear. A physical activity entry should explain how it encouraged movement. A volunteering entry should describe the volunteers’ role and the value of their contribution. An Across Generations entry should show the intergenerational element. A Peace entry should explain how sport supported dialogue, trust or cooperation. These are planning observations based on the published categories, not a replacement for official award criteria.

For future editions, organisations can keep a concise evidence file as work happens: dates of delivery, attendance counts, participant consent and feedback where appropriate, partner roles, accessible photographs or materials where authorized, and notes on adjustments made. This is useful general preparation, but applicants must still follow the next call’s rules. The 2026 application window cannot be reopened by assembling materials after its deadline.

Reading the results as a separate stage

Submission does not mean that an entry has passed eligibility or been selected as a finalist. The official update describes admissibility and eligibility checks before the evaluation period. It then identifies a finalist group of three per category. These steps are consequential: an entry may be received by the portal yet still be screened against formal requirements, and finalist status is distinct from winning.

The published notice does not provide individual application outcomes, finalist names for this round, jury scores, or the reasons an application may be excluded. It would therefore be premature to describe any applicant as a finalist or to promise an outcome. The stated announcement point for winners is the ceremony in June 2027. Applicants from the closed round should rely on official communications for their own status and any actions required of them.

The Commission also does not present the €125,000 as a fund that applicants can claim in proportion to costs. It is a prize structure with awards at finalist and winner levels. Organisations reviewing the opportunity should plan accordingly: the call recognised an initiative; it did not offer a budget line for future project expenses in the way a grant agreement typically does.

Official information and contacts

The primary status source for this archive is the European Commission’s 2026 call results announcement. It confirms the number of applications received, the closed application dates, the prize structure, evaluation timetable and planned ceremony month. The Commission’s award overview explains the purpose and categories of the programme. Its earlier 2026 application announcement records the opening period, eligibility summary and portal submission requirement for the completed cycle. The first-edition finalists announcement documents the separate earlier cohort whose winners were celebrated in June 2026.

The application announcement listed [email protected] for questions during the call. Since the round is closed, this address should not be read as evidence that applications remain open. For future information, use the official Commission programme pages and a newly published call notice. No subsequent round is announced in the results update linked above.

Historical reference summary

The 2026 #BeActive EU Sport Awards offered a €125,000 prize fund across Physical Activity, Inclusion, Volunteering, Across Generations and Peace. Each category had one €15,000 winner and two €5,000 finalists. Eligible organisations in EU and Erasmus+ associated countries could apply, with an individual route for people aged 18 or over in Volunteering. Entries were submitted through the Funding & Tenders Portal by 17 September 2026 at 17:00 CEST.

That competition is over for applicants. The Commission recorded 237 submissions, set out an evaluation period through March 2027 and said winners would be announced at the ceremony in June 2027. A new cycle has not been announced in the cited official update. Keep the award in mind as a possible future recognition route, but wait for a new official call before relying on any date, rules or prize terms.