CETPartnership Joint Call 2026: Over €84 Million From Around 35 Funding Organisations for Transnational Clean Energy Projects, With Pre-Proposals Closing 8 October 2026

CETPartnership Joint Call 2026: Over €84 Million From Around 35 Funding Organisations for Transnational Clean Energy Projects, With Pre-Proposals Closing 8 October 2026

The Clean Energy Transition Partnership is the mechanism through which national and regional energy research funders across Europe pool money into one competition instead of running thirty separate ones. Its Joint Call 2026 launched on 26 May 2026, opened for submissions on 8 June 2026, and carries a total indicative budget of over €84 million committed by around 35 national and regional funding organisations from around 30 countries. Pre-proposals are due at 14:00 CEST on 8 October 2026.

The structure is unusual enough to matter for how you plan. There is no single pot of Brussels money. Each funding organisation commits its own budget to one or more of the eleven call modules, evaluates and contracts its own beneficiaries under its own national rules, and pays them directly. What the CETPartnership provides is a shared call text, a shared submission platform, a shared evaluation, and a shared ranking per module. That means a proposal can be scientifically excellent and still fail because one partner asked the wrong agency for the wrong kind of cost. Understanding the national layer is not administrative housekeeping here — it is half the work.

Key details

Note that the call timeline table gives the Stage 1 deadline as 14:00 CEST while the call-process chapter writes 14:00 CET. The gap is an hour, and there is no good reason to be near it. Treat 14:00 CEST as the operative moment and submit a day early.

What the eleven call modules cover

Each consortium submits under exactly one module, and the module determines both which agencies have money on the table and which technical requirements apply. The 2026 modules are:

• CM2026-01 — Integrated energy system resilience in a changing environment
• CM2026-02 — Energy system flexibility in a high renewable energy sources scenario: energy generation, storage and system integration
• CM2026-03A — Advanced renewable energy technologies for power production, research-oriented approach
• CM2026-03B — Advanced renewable energy technologies for power production, innovation-oriented approach
• CM2026-04 — Industrial carbon management
• CM2026-05 — Hydrogen and renewable fuels
• CM2026-06 — Stationary battery technologies and systems for climate-neutral industry and built environment
• CM2026-07 — Heating and cooling technologies
• CM2026-08 — Integrated regional energy systems
• CM2026-09 — Integrated industrial energy systems
• CM2026-10 — Clean energy integration in the built environment

The call text divides these into technological challenges and systemic challenges. The split of module 03 into a research-oriented and an innovation-oriented variant is worth reading closely: it exists because the same technology area attracts very different maturity levels, and picking the wrong half of the pair puts your proposal in front of reviewers calibrated for a different kind of evidence. If your work sits at TRL 3 and you enter the innovation-oriented module, you will be compared against demonstration projects.

Ranking happens per module, not across the whole call. A merely good proposal in a thinly contested module can beat a very good one in a crowded module. That is not a reason to game module choice — the module requirements in Chapter 7 of the call text are specific and eligibility is checked against them — but it is a reason to read all eleven descriptions before assuming which one fits.

Who can apply, and the consortium rules that actually eliminate people

The call is open to universities, research organisations, companies of any size, SMEs, public sector actors and other legal entities, subject in every case to the rules of the funding organisation each partner applies to. Applications come from consortia; there is no individual route.

Eight transnational requirements apply to every proposal. The ones that most often decide a proposal’s fate:

• At least three beneficiary partners, including one coordinator, from at least three different countries participating in the chosen call module. The country list is per module, not per call. A partner from a country whose agency has not committed budget to your module cannot be a beneficiary in it.
• At least two of those beneficiary partners must be from EU Member States or Horizon Europe Associated Countries.
• No single partner may exceed 60 percent of total planned project effort, measured in person-months.
• Partners from one country may not exceed 75 percent of total planned effort combined. This kills the common pattern of a strong national team adding one token foreign partner.
• Project start no later than 15 December 2027, maximum duration 36 months.
• A dedicated, mandatory work package titled “Reporting and Knowledge Community” must be included. The title is prescribed. Do not paraphrase it.
• Members of the CETPartnership Governing Board and General Assembly, and researchers employed by participating funding organisations, may not participate — though a legal entity may participate if it can show in writing that its organisational structure is fully independent of the relevant funding organisation.

Alongside beneficiary partners, consortia may include self-financed partners who take part without requesting funding. These are useful for bringing in an industrial user, a grid operator or a partner from a non-participating country, and they can be added between Stage 1 and Stage 2.

The countries listed in the call text as participating — marked “TBC” at publication — include Austria, Belgium, Canada/Alberta, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, the Republic of Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Norway, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Tunisia, Türkiye and UK/Northern Ireland. Annex B of the call text carries the authoritative national details.

National rules are the real eligibility test

Because each agency funds its own partner under its own regime, the practical questions are national ones: does your agency fund your module at all, does it fund your type of organisation, does it fund your cost types, and does it accept your TRL range? Applicants are explicitly urged to verify all four before submitting.

The variation is substantial. Business Finland, for example, has allocated €5 million to the call with indicative grants of €200,000 to €800,000 per Finnish sub-consortium, requires Finnish research organisations to include at least two Finnish export-oriented companies, and caps public sector organisations at 60 percent of total Finnish sub-consortium costs. Malta’s national funding is capped at €500,000 per consortium across all its participating entities. Several agencies also require a separate national submission through their own portal, with their own deadline that may fall before the transnational one.

Two consequences follow. First, contact your national contact point early — weeks before the deadline, not days. Second, build the budget around what each agency will actually reimburse rather than around an idealised work plan you then try to squeeze into national rules.

TRL expectations and project shape

The call applies the Horizon Europe definition of Technology Readiness Levels and generally aims to support projects that increase their TRL, targeting medium to high levels in the 4–8 range. The call text is unusually concrete about ambition: an increase of one to two TRL levels is typical, three is ambitious, and four is generally not considered feasible within the project duration. Activities at lower or higher TRLs may be included where justified.

That paragraph is a scoring instruction in disguise. A proposal claiming a jump from TRL 3 to TRL 8 in 36 months is telling reviewers it has not costed its own work. A proposal moving TRL 4 to TRL 6 with credible validation milestones is telling them the opposite.

Note also that where a project starts at TRL 4–5 and targets TRL 6–8 — corresponding to Innovation Actions — specific Horizon Europe country participation provisions apply under General Annex B. Check this against your consortium composition before you commit to a maturity narrative.

How the two stages work

Stage 1 — pre-proposal. The coordinator submits on behalf of the consortium via the CETPartnership Submission Platform, under one call module, by 8 October 2026. The core document is a project description of maximum 10 pages using the mandatory template. Every invited partner, including self-financed partners, must have accepted their invitation on the platform and completed administrative and budget information before submission; anyone invited but not participating must be removed first. A short CV for each partner’s principal investigator is optional at this stage. Pre-proposals can be revised and resubmitted as often as you like before the deadline — only the last submitted version counts — but nothing can be changed afterwards.

Stage 2 — full proposal. Invited consortia submit by 11 March 2027 under the same module, replacing the 10-page description with one of maximum 30 pages, plus a short CV for each partner’s PI and a letter of commitment from each self-financed partner. Direct submission of a full proposal without a Stage 1 invitation is not permitted.

Permitted changes between stages: adding self-financed partners; replacing beneficiary partners found ineligible at Stage 1 with self-financed partners; changes requested by a funding organisation or Call Management; and consortium-proposed changes to partners, duration or budget provided the coordinator stays the same, the changes are justified, and both the affected funding organisations and all partners approve. Anything beyond the first two categories must be notified to [email protected] before individual evaluation is complete, with written confirmation from the agencies concerned.

One tactical detail: where a funding organisation is undersubscribed after Stage 1, consortia are encouraged to add partners applying to it, and that information is published on the submission platform after Stage 1. Conversely, adding a partner from an oversubscribed agency may be refused.

Evaluation criteria and scoring

Both stages are assessed against three criteria by at least three independent evaluators each:

Excellence — clarity and pertinence of objectives against the call aim and the chosen module’s stated aims; ambition beyond the state of the art; soundness of methodology, concepts, models, assumptions and interdisciplinary approach. At Stage 2 only, this also covers the diversity and gender dimension in research content and the quality of open science practices, including data sharing and engagement of citizens, civil society and end users where appropriate.

Impact — credibility of the pathways to the outcomes and impacts set out in the call and the module; scale and significance of the contribution to the clean energy transition; the added value generated specifically by transnational collaboration; and the quality of dissemination, exploitation and communication measures, including stakeholder and end-user involvement.

Quality and efficiency of the implementation — quality and effectiveness of the work plan; capacity and role of each partner and whether the consortium as a whole has the necessary expertise. At Stage 2, also risk assessment and the appropriateness of effort assigned to work packages and resources overall.

Each criterion is scored 0 to 5 as a whole integer — scores are assigned to the main criteria, not the sub-criteria. Maximum total is 15. To be fundable a proposal needs at least 3 on every criterion and at least 10 overall. Score 3 is described as “good… with a number of shortcomings”, 4 as “very good… with a small number of shortcomings”, 5 as “excellent… any shortcomings are minor”. A proposal that reads as good-but-shortcoming-laden on all three lands on exactly 9 and fails.

The “added value generated by transnational collaboration” sub-criterion deserves specific attention. It is not satisfied by asserting that partners are in different countries. It is satisfied by showing that the work genuinely cannot be done in one country — because the test infrastructure, the grid conditions, the regulatory context or the industrial supply chain exist in different places.

Preparation strategy and common mistakes

Ten pages for Stage 1 is tight for a five-partner, three-country, 36-month project. Build the pre-proposal around objectives, the state of the art you intend to move past, the methodology, the impact pathway, and a partner-by-partner statement of role and capability. Resist the urge to include a full risk register or detailed work-package tables — those sub-criteria only apply at Stage 2, and space spent on them is space taken from what is being scored now.

Mistakes that recur in partnership calls of this type:

• Choosing a module by keyword rather than by reading Chapter 7. Module requirements are binding eligibility conditions, not framing.
• Assembling the consortium before checking Annex B. If a partner’s national agency does not fund the chosen module, that partner cannot be a beneficiary and your three-country minimum may collapse days before the deadline.
• Missing a national deadline or portal. Several agencies require a parallel national submission, sometimes earlier than 8 October.
• Breaching the 60/75 percent effort caps. Both are measured in person-months, so a partner that looks modest in budget terms can still be dominant in effort.
• Omitting or renaming the mandatory “Reporting and Knowledge Community” work package.
• Leaving invited partners unconfirmed on the platform. A partner who has not accepted and completed their administrative and budget data blocks submission.
• Over-claiming TRL progression, against a call text that states plainly what counts as typical, ambitious and infeasible.

Projects are also expected to take part in the CETPartnership Knowledge Community and to make use of its Impact Support offering — an Impact Library of tools, methodologies and training, and an Impact Network of innovation ecosystems and intermediaries. Referencing these concretely in the impact section, rather than as a formality, aligns the proposal with how the partnership expects funded projects to behave. A matchmaking platform is available to help form consortia.

Frequently asked questions

Can an individual researcher apply? No. Proposals come from consortia meeting the three-partner, three-country minimum, and each partner applies to its own national or regional funding organisation.

Is there one budget I apply to? No. The €84 million is the sum of commitments from around 35 agencies, each with its own budget, module coverage, eligibility rules and funding rates. Your realistic ceiling is set by your national agency, not by the headline figure.

Can partners from non-participating countries take part? Yes, as self-financed partners covering their own costs. They do not count towards the minimum of three beneficiary partners from three participating countries.

Can we skip Stage 1 and submit a full proposal? No. Direct submission at Stage 2 without an invitation is not permitted.

Can we change the consortium after Stage 1? Within limits. Adding self-financed partners and replacing partners found ineligible at Stage 1 are permitted outright. Other changes to partners, duration or budget need justification, the same coordinator, and approval from the affected funding organisations and all partners.

What language? English, via the CETPartnership Submission Platform, using the mandatory templates.

Where do questions go? General call questions to [email protected]. Module-specific questions to the module contacts listed in Chapter 7 of the call text. National questions to the relevant funding organisation listed in Annex B. A Q&A session is scheduled for 9 September 2026.

Next steps

If you are considering this call, the sequence that works is: read the module descriptions in Chapter 7 and pick one; open Annex B and confirm which agencies fund that module and whether yours is among them; contact your national contact point to confirm your organisation type, cost types and TRL range are fundable; then build the consortium against the three-country, 60 percent and 75 percent constraints; then write. Doing it in the reverse order — writing first, checking national rules last — is how strong technical teams end up ineligible.

The 9 September Q&A is the last convenient moment to resolve an open question before the 8 October deadline. Mandatory templates, instructions, checklists and FAQs are on the submission platform and the CETPartnership website.

Official links

• Call page: https://cetpartnership.eu/calls/joint-call-2026/
• Submission platform: https://cetp-submission.mur.gov.it
• CETPartnership: https://cetpartnership.eu/
• General contact: [email protected]