EIC Accelerator - European Innovation Council - European Commission
EU blended finance program supporting high-risk, high-impact innovation by startups and SMEs. Short proposals are accepted year-round; the next full-proposal cut-off is 2 September 2026.
Quick Facts
- Program type: Blended finance (grant plus direct equity or quasi-equity) for startups, SMEs and small mid-caps.
- Funding available: Grant lump sum below EUR 2.5 million, plus an investment component of EUR 1 million to EUR 10 million. Higher investment amounts are available under STEP ScaleUP.
- Short proposals: Accepted at any time. Submissions are batched for evaluation on the first Tuesday of each month at 17:00 Brussels time.
- Next full-proposal cut-off: 2 September 2026, followed by 4 November 2026.
- Eligibility: Startups and SMEs established in the EU or a Horizon Europe associated country; small mid-caps may apply for investment only.
Program Overview
The EIC Accelerator is the European Innovation Council’s flagship instrument for companies whose technology is too risky for private investors to finance alone but too promising for Europe to leave unfunded. It sits inside Horizon Europe and is aimed at startups and SMEs with a product, service or business model capable of creating a new market or reordering an existing one, and with the ambition and internal capacity to scale.
Two tracks run in parallel. EIC Accelerator Challenges funds projects that fit a set of pre-defined thematic topics published each year, with an overall 2026 budget of EUR 220 million. EIC Accelerator Open takes proposals in any field of technology with no thematic restriction, and carries a 2026 budget of EUR 414 million. Both tracks share the same application mechanics and the same evaluation calendar, so the practical decision is whether your project maps cleanly onto a published Challenge topic or is better argued on its own terms.
What the Funding Covers
The grant is a lump sum below EUR 2.5 million, earmarked for innovation activities at technology readiness levels 6 to 8, and the work must be completed within 24 months. It can be awarded only once to a given company during the implementation period of Horizon Europe (2021-2027), so it is not a repeatable subsidy — it is a single push through the stage where a technology is demonstrated but not yet commercially proven.
The investment component exists to bridge the gap between that demonstration stage and the point where conventional investors will take over. It ranges from EUR 1 million to EUR 10 million, with larger amounts available through STEP ScaleUP, and it is delivered as direct equity or quasi-equity such as convertible loans.
Applicants choose the shape that fits their situation:
- Grant only, for startups and SMEs that have the capacity to scale without external equity at this stage.
- Blended finance, combining the grant with the investment component. Companies in this category can negotiate a raise of a maximum of EUR 2 million in additional flexibility on the investment side.
- Investment only, for companies that want to scale rapidly and do not need grant support. Small mid-caps are restricted to this option.
Eligibility Requirements
Applicants must be established in an EU Member State or a country associated to Horizon Europe. Within that boundary, the following can apply:
- A single startup or SME, including spin-outs from universities or research institutions.
- Small mid-caps of up to 499 employees that need rapid scale-up of a TRL 9 activity. Mid-caps are limited to the investment component.
- Natural persons or legal entities who intend to establish an SME or a mid-cap.
Applicants based in third countries are not shut out, but they cannot stay where they are. Relocating the company into an eligible country makes them eligible, and that relocation has to be completed before the full application is submitted at Step 2 — not afterwards, and not as a condition of the grant agreement. Applicants from the United Kingdom are a special case: they may apply only for the grant-only scheme.
One rule catches applicants out more often than it should: you may have only one live EIC Accelerator application at a time. A further application can be submitted only after you have received the results of the previous one. Plan the calendar accordingly, because a rejection in a late batch can push a resubmission well into the following year.
The EIC states that it welcomes applications from across all Member States and associated countries, and that it particularly welcomes applications from startups and SMEs with female CEOs.
Deadlines and the 2026 Calendar
The Accelerator does not run on a single annual deadline, which is why a one-line date is misleading. It runs on two clocks.
Short proposals (Step 1) have no deadline at all. They may be submitted at any time and are batched for evaluation every first Tuesday of the month at 17:00 Brussels time. If you submit on a Wednesday, you are in the following month’s batch. Feedback normally arrives within roughly four to six weeks.
Full proposals (Step 2) do have fixed cut-offs. Proposals are batched for evaluation at 17:00 Brussels time on these 2026 dates:
- 7 January 2026
- 4 March 2026
- 6 May 2026
- 8 July 2026
- 2 September 2026 — the next cut-off
- 4 November 2026
If your short proposal receives a GO, you are not tied to the next date on that list. You may submit your full proposal to any subsequent batching date, which gives you room to finish letters of intent, financial modelling or a freedom-to-operate analysis rather than rushing a weak submission into the nearest slot. For a short proposal cleared in the summer of 2026, the realistic choices are 2 September and 4 November.
Application Process
The selection process has four steps, and each one gates the next.
Step 1 — Short proposal. A 12-page form summarising the innovation, the market and the team; a pitch deck of up to ten slides in PDF; and a video pitch of up to three minutes in which up to three core team members explain the motivation behind the proposal. Four EIC expert evaluators assess it remotely. Feedback arrives in approximately four to six weeks. A GO means an invitation to prepare a full proposal for either the Open or the Challenges track.
Step 2 — Full proposal. Prepared on the EU Funding and Tenders portal, this is a 20-page form expanding the short proposal template, plus a PDF pitch deck, an implementation plan, financial information, letters of intent, a freedom-to-operate analysis and a three-minute video pitch. Assessment runs in parallel: a technology expert on one side, an evaluation panel of at least three experts on the other. Roughly three to four weeks after the batching date you have an online interview with the technology expert, who then reports to the panel. The panel reviews, proposes a final score and adopts a report. Results of the remote stage come back within eight to nine weeks. The top-ranked proposals, corresponding to 2.5 times the available grant budget, go through to a jury interview.
Step 3 — Jury interview. An interview session is organised after every second batch, so not every cut-off produces its own interview week. Invited applicants receive detailed timing and format information, and tentative session dates are published on the EIC website in advance. Interview results follow within two to three weeks of the end of the interview week.
Step 4 — Grant signature and investment due diligence. Grant-only awardees sign the Grant Agreement and receive a first pre-financing payment. Blended finance awardees additionally have their project passed to the EIC Fund, which assesses the investment need while Business Acceleration Services help find co-investors. The investment component is decided within two to six months. If due diligence concludes the company is not yet ready for investment, work starts on the grant component alone and the investment case is re-examined at defined milestones.
Fast Track and Plug-In Routes
Two schemes let qualifying applicants skip Step 1 and go straight to the full application stage, subject to a review of the underlying project.
- Fast Track applies to proposals that come out of existing Horizon Europe or Horizon 2020 projects.
- Plug-In works the same way for proposals emerging from existing national or regional programmes. Around 50 such programmes have been certified for the scheme so far.
If your company is already inside one of these pipelines, check your eligibility before writing a short proposal you may not need.
Seal of Excellence
Proposals that reach the minimum threshold of 13 out of 15 at the remote evaluation stage but are not invited to interview, along with proposals the jury does not recommend for funding, are awarded a Seal of Excellence. Companies applying under the Challenges track may also receive a STEP seal. The seal is a quality label rather than money, but it carries weight with national funding agencies, regional programmes and some private investors, and it is worth citing explicitly when approaching them.
Support While You Apply
Every EIC-supported project gets access to Business Acceleration Services: coaching, mentoring, training, partner matchmaking and introductions across the EIC’s investor and innovation network. Before you apply, the National Contact Point network is the practical first stop for guidance on Horizon Europe participation rules in your own country, and the EIC publishes an applicant guide plus annexes covering exactly what Step 2 requires — useful to read at Step 1, so you are not surprised later by the volume of financial and legal documentation the full proposal expects.