CDTI NEOTEC Technology Startup Grant

CDTI NEOTEC Technology Startup Grant

This page is a historical reference for the NEOTEC 2026 call run by the Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico y la Innovación (CDTI). The official CDTI page states that the call is closed. Applications were accepted from 14 April 2026 through 14 May 2026 at 12:00 noon, peninsular time. No later application date is announced on the official NEOTEC page, so this entry does not present the closed call as an opportunity that can still be submitted.

NEOTEC 2026 supported the creation of technology-based companies with growth potential and the transfer of knowledge from public research organisations and universities into businesses. The program was aimed at a defined kind of startup: a small, innovative Spanish mercantile company whose business strategy depended on continuing to develop technology. It was not a general-purpose grant for any new company, nor was it designed primarily for a consultancy that delivers services using third-party tools without developing its own technology.

At a glance

The figures in this table describe the 2026 call and should not be carried over automatically to a later call. A future NEOTEC call could change its budget, dates, limits, or eligibility conditions.

What NEOTEC 2026 was designed to support

The official call described funding for putting into operation new business projects that required technologies or knowledge developed from research activity and whose business strategy was based on developing technology. The call allowed projects in any technological or sectoral field. That breadth did not remove the central test: the plan had to show an ongoing technology-development effort and a credible business purpose for it.

The call expressly said that projects based primarily on services to third parties without their own technology development were not suitable. A company could therefore work in software, biotechnology, energy, mobility, manufacturing, cybersecurity, materials, or another field, but its plan needed to explain what technical capability it was developing and why that capability was central to the business.

The program could support direct execution costs needed to start the new project when they were included in the business plan and necessary for its development. The official FAQ identifies these categories:

• fixed tangible and intangible assets;
• personnel costs for researchers, technicians, auxiliary staff, and eligible autonomous partners, including new doctoral hires;
• materials and consumables;
• external services and subcontracting, excluding the cost of preparing the grant application;
• rent, supplies, royalties and licences;
• filing and maintaining patents and other industrial-property rights;
• insurance and other related costs;
• promotion and dissemination;
• ordinary training costs up to €10,000, apart from the special training in the call annex; and
• travel connected with qualifying training activities, up to €8,000.

Subcontracting could reach up to 50% of the eligible budget. For a subcontracting expense of at least €15,000, the FAQ required at least three offers from different suppliers unless a single-provider report was justified. This is an important distinction from treating the grant as unrestricted operating cash: costs needed a direct connection to the approved business plan and had to comply with the call’s procurement and justification requirements.

Eligibility requirements from the 2026 call

The applicant had to be a mercantile company that qualified as a small enterprise and as an innovative company under the applicable CDTI rules. It also had to be validly constituted, have its own legal personality, and have tax residence in Spain. The age test was measured from the registration entry in the relevant mercantile register. For this call, the company had to be no more than three years old at the closing date and had to have been constituted at least six months before that closing date.

The financial and ownership conditions were specific. The company needed at least €20,000 of fully paid and fully registered share capital, or the permitted combination of share capital and share premium or assumption premium. The FAQ says the capital evidence was supplied through registered incorporation documents and, where relevant, registered capital-increase or articles-amendment documents. The company could not be listed on a stock exchange, except for an alternative trading platform, and it must not have distributed profits.

Previous NEOTEC support also mattered. The official FAQ states that the aid was incompatible with another previous or subsequent NEOTEC aid granted under the relevant rules, as well as with aid that expressly declared itself incompatible with NEOTEC. Applicants had to disclose other public support and check the detailed accumulation rules rather than assume that two grants could pay for the same cost.

The project budget had to fall between €175,000 and €750,000 of eligible costs, excluding the special training costs in the relevant annex. The general aid intensity was up to 70%, with a maximum grant of €250,000 per beneficiary. A project including the qualifying employment of at least one doctor could receive up to 85%, with a maximum grant of €325,000. The higher percentage was conditional; it was not an automatic increase for every company that happened to employ someone with a doctorate.

The call also reserved at least €5,000,000 for women-led companies under the conditions in its annex. In addition, qualifying applications could request training through MIT or the Enterprise Innovation Institute at Georgia Tech. The official page states possible increases of up to €18,300 for MIT training or €10,000 for Georgia Tech training, subject to the annex requirements. Those training amounts were not a general cash supplement available without requesting and satisfying the applicable training conditions.

How applications were submitted in the closed cycle

The following describes the 2026 procedure for archival and planning purposes. It is not an instruction that an applicant can use to submit now.

1. Confirm the official call and company fit. Applicants first needed to read the official call, its annexes, the applicable bases, and the FAQ. The company should have checked its legal form, Spanish tax residence, registration dates, capital evidence, innovation status, previous NEOTEC support, and whether its business model developed technology rather than mainly providing third-party services.

2. Build the business plan and eligible-cost model. The project plan needed to explain the technology or research-derived knowledge, the problem and customers, the development work, the team, the milestones, and the route to business growth. Each budget line needed a defensible link to an eligible cost category. The total eligible budget needed to meet the €175,000 floor without exceeding the €750,000 ceiling, apart from the separate treatment of special training costs.

3. Prepare evidence and annexes. The application pack needed the information and documents required by the call and its electronic forms. In practice, this included corporate and registration evidence, capital documentation, the business plan, budget, technical and commercial information, team details, declarations about other aid, and any evidence required for doctoral hiring, women-led status, training, or subcontracting. The exact annex instructions controlled; a generic investor deck was not a substitute for the official forms.

4. Register in CDTI’s electronic system. The call required applicants to register in the CDTI entity system and use the electronic headquarters at sede.cdti.gob.es. The legal representative had to submit the application, responsible declarations, and attachments using the required qualified or advanced electronic signature based on an appropriate representative certificate. The application also needed an email address for electronic notices, communications, and requests for corrections.

5. Submit inside the published window. The formal window ended on 14 May 2026 at noon peninsular time. A team preparing a similar future application should allow time for account access, document conversion, signature problems, attachment limits, and portal validation. The closed 2026 deadline cannot be extended by setting a new internal date on this page.

6. Monitor the electronic file after submission. The call used electronic communications for the procedure. Applicants needed to monitor the designated email and CDTI electronic file in case the administration requested corrections or additional information. A correction request did not reopen the application window; it was part of the processing of an application already submitted.

Project timing and grant mechanics

Approved 2026 projects had to start on 1 January 2027. An annual project could run through 31 December 2027, while a multi-year project could run through 31 December 2028. These were project-execution boundaries in the call, not an announcement that applications remained open during those years.

The grant was a subsidy rather than a loan. The official CDTI page states that, after the definitive award decision, a beneficiary could request an advance payment of up to 60% of the awarded subsidy, subject to a maximum of €150,000 and the call’s conditions. That payment mechanism did not remove the need to finance the part of the eligible budget not covered by the grant or to document expenditure and results.

What readers should do now

There is no confirmed next application date in the official material checked for this update. Readers should not submit through the 2026 page or treat the 14 May 2026 deadline as a future date. Instead, use the official NEOTEC 2026 page as the source for the archived call documents and monitor CDTI’s official calls listing for a newly published NEOTEC cycle.

For a future cycle, re-check every material condition: company age measured from registration, minimum time since incorporation, capital and profit-distribution rules, innovative-company definition, project budget range, aid percentage and maximum, doctoral-hire requirements, women-led reservation, special training, eligible-cost limits, project dates, electronic signature requirements, and compatibility with other public aid. A later call may retain the NEOTEC name while changing one or more of these terms.

The strongest preparation is a clear technology-development plan, a budget that can be traced to eligible costs, corporate documents that prove the company’s status, and a submission process tested well before the next official deadline. Those materials can be prepared in advance, but they should be mapped to the next published call before anyone relies on them.

Official sources

• CDTI NEOTEC 2026 call page, including status, eligibility summary, funding limits, project dates, and official processing notices.
• NEOTEC 2026 call resolution (PDF), including the formal activity, beneficiary, budget, submission, and project rules.
• NEOTEC 2026 FAQ (PDF), including company-age, capital, eligible-cost, subcontracting, and aid-intensity clarifications.
• CDTI electronic headquarters, the submission channel specified by the 2026 call.