Eligibility criteria

Consortium

• At least 2 legal entities, independent of each other, from at least 2 different Eurostars countries.
• Led by an innovative, R&D-performing SME (the main partner) established in a Eurostars country.
• At least one organisation from an EU Member State or a Horizon Europe Associated Country.
• Budget balance: SMEs from Eurostars countries bear ≥ 50% of total cost (excl. subcontracting); no single participant or country > 70% of budget.

Project

• Collaborative R&D&I project with a market-oriented result.
• Duration ≤ 36 months.
• Exclusively civilian purpose (dual-use possible if the focus is civil).

Country-specific

Beyond the programme rules above, national eligibility rules apply to each participant (eligible entity types, costs, funding). These are set by each National Funding Body: contact your NPC. National rules do not change the consortium eligibility (2 entities / 2 countries).

For Call 12 the programme page states that national and regional funding information is still being confirmed and may change before the call opens on 17 December 2026; some countries announce no budget for some or all organisation types (for example Cyprus for calls 9 to 13). Check each partner's country on the Call 12 page before fixing the consortium.

Mandatory annexes (before the deadline)

• Commitment and signature form: one per partner, signed by an authorised legal representative.
• SME declaration: one per SME, per the European Commission SME definition.

Application & evaluation process

Eurostars 3 is a single-stage call (one submission, no pre-proposal). The innovative SME leading the consortium must open the application and invite the other partners to collaborate on the online form. The application is completed collaboratively online in the EPMP; every partner contributes its own sections and the main partner marks each section complete.

Key dates, Call 12

How it is assessed

• Independent expert evaluators score each application against the three award criteria (Impact, Excellence, Quality & efficiency of the implementation). Experts form opinions only on the content you provide: be clear, detailed and concise.
• An Independent Evaluation Panel scores and ranks applications; an Ethics Panel reviews ethics issues.
• In parallel, each National Funding Body performs a Legal and Financial Viability Check (LFVC) on its national participants.
• Applicants may request that specific organisations or experts be excluded from evaluating their application.

After submission

Once submitted, the application cannot be changed. Before the deadline you may withdraw and resubmit a corrected version (request removal of the first version from the Eureka Secretariat first). After a successful outcome, project revisions are only considered once the consortium agreement is signed and validated.

Award criteria

Applications are scored against three award criteria, structured exactly by the 14 application questions:

Independent experts score the application; an Independent Evaluation Panel scores and ranks it. Funding follows the ranking within available budgets.

Scoring

• Three remote experts score each eligible application. Each sub-criterion receives an integer score from 1 (lowest) to 6 (highest); the sub-criteria scores are averaged into a score per criterion.
• An application must reach at least 3.6 in every criterion, otherwise it is rejected.
• The nine expert scores of the remaining applications are combined into a total score; only the top-ranked applications progress to the Independent Evaluation Panel, which ranks them for funding. The cut-off depends on the competition in each call.

Financial rules

• Decentralised funding: there is no central EU grant pot. Each partner is funded by its National Funding Body (NFB) under national rules. Funding rates, ceilings and eligible costs differ per country: even within the same project.
• Contact your NPC before applying to learn the maximum funding percentage/amount, eligible costs and required financial documents in your country.
• SME budget share: SMEs from Eurostars countries must bear 50% or more of the total project cost (excluding subcontracting).
• Concentration limit: no single participant, and no single country, may be responsible for more than 70% of the project budget.
• Subcontracting between project partners is not allowed.
• Financial annex: each partner (except 100% publicly funded bodies) may need to submit up to two annual financial reports; start-ups may submit a business plan instead. Requirements are set by the NFB.
• Legal and Financial Viability Check (LFVC): NFBs assess each participant's financial capacity as part of the evaluation.

Finding partners & synergies

• National Project Coordinators (NPCs): the primary source of personalised advice: reachable via the Eureka contact form.
• Enterprise Europe Network (EEN): a matchmaking tool for potential partners: een.ec.europa.eu/partnering-opportunities.
• Eureka data & success stories: examples of funded consortia and awarded topics are public on the Eureka website (about-us / eureka-data and the blog listing).

Work plan & implementation structure

Eurostars does not impose a backbone (no imposed work packages, deliverables or milestones). Each consortium designs its own work plan, but the application form requires a specific structure:

Work packages (Section 5)

For each work package the applicant provides:

• a work package name and a summary (objectives, technical approach, starting point, expected results);
• start month and duration in months (the project starts on day 1 of month 1 and must finish by the end of month 36: a WP cannot start in or after month 36);
• the lead organisation;
• milestones and outcomes: state the outcome type (document, blueprint, software, system, hardware, etc.), when it is expected, whether it is critical and whether it is a go/no-go decision point;
• a list of tasks: each with a reference (e.g. WP1 / task 1), a name, the performing organisation and a description. Every partner should own its own tasks; no two organisations should have the same task.

Effort & costs (Section 3, per partner)

Each partner enters, per work package, its person-months and costs (personnel, overhead, travel, materials, other, subcontracting). Subcontracting between project partners is not allowed. A consolidated finances overview and work package cost table are generated automatically by the platform.

Intellectual property rights (Question 12)

IPR is a scored part of the application (1500 words). Describe the project''s IPR strategy:

• Background IP: existing knowledge or rights (patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets) used in the project: who owns them and who is authorised to use them.
• Foreground IP: how project results will be distributed between partners (ownership, exploitation rights); if applicable, summarise any patent, industrial design or CE-mark application.
• Exit: what happens if a partner leaves the project (ownership and access to knowledge/results).

The broad IP themes in the application (existing rights, access rights, exploitation, IP division and profit sharing) are expected to carry forward into the consortium agreement: major deviations may jeopardise funding.

Ethics & confidentiality

Ethics (Question 14)

State any ethical or legal issues linked to the objective, methodology or impact of the project. Download the Ethics Issues Table from the EPMP, complete it and upload it. If issues are entered, describe ethical/legal compliance under EU and/or national frameworks, covering: the objectives of the activities (e.g. vulnerable populations), the methodology (e.g. clinical trials, involvement of children, personal data protection) and the potential impact (e.g. environmental damage, stigmatisation, misuse). An Ethics Panel reviews these.

Confidentiality

As a rule, information entered in the application form is kept confidential; only fields marked "PUBLIC" are published. Confidential content is visible to participating organisations, NPCs and ministries, NFBs, the Eureka Secretariat, the European Commission, auditors, evaluators, Independent Evaluation Panel and Ethics Panel members: all bound by confidentiality agreements. Applicants may request exclusion of specific organisations or experts.

Open science & data

Eurostars is a business-oriented programme and does not impose the Horizon Europe open-science mandate. On the contrary, confidentiality of commercially sensitive content is protected (see Confidentiality). Applicants may still describe data management where relevant to the project, but there is no mandatory Data Management Plan.

Consortium composition expectations

Eurostars is an industry / SME-driven programme, not a multi-actor or SSH-integration programme. There is no formal multi-actor, interdisciplinarity or SSH requirement. What the evaluation rewards instead:

• a consortium built around a credible SME-led route to market (each partner with a clear, non-overlapping role and its own tasks);
• genuine added value of international collaboration (Question 11): scientific, technical and commercial;
• complementary capabilities across partners, with the SME(s) bearing the majority of the budget and driving exploitation.

The gender dimension (sex, gender and intersectional analysis in the method) is the one cross-cutting analytical expectation, assessed within the technical approach (Question 7).

Contractual documents

Submitted with the application (mandatory annexes):

• Commitment and signature form (each partner)
• SME declaration (each SME)
• Ethics Issues Table (if applicable)
• Financial annex (per NFB requirements)
• Self-funding declaration (partners not requesting funding)

Optional annexes: a technical annex (PDF, < 10 MB) and a Gantt chart (PDF or Excel, < 10 MB), both in English. Ensure all essential information is in the form itself: annexes are supporting material only.

After award: a consortium agreement signed by all partners must be submitted via the EPMP within 6 weeks of the approval letter, consistent with the evaluated application.

After the award

Funding and reporting are managed by each National Funding Body under national rules (schedules, audits and controls are national). Project changes are only allowed after the consortium agreement is signed and validated by the Eurostars team. There is no centralised Eureka lump-sum payment schedule: each partner is paid by its NFB.

FAQ

• Can I resubmit a previously unsuccessful application? Yes, but you must start a new application and copy the content across manually.
• How do I find partners? Via your NPC (Eureka contact form) or the Enterprise Europe Network matchmaking tool.
• Is there a list of funded projects? Yes: awarded consortia and topics are public on the Eureka website (eureka-data) and success stories on the blog.
• Technical help: allow up to 3 working days for a response; do not wait for the last days before the deadline.
• Guidelines & templates: eurekanetwork.org/programmes/eurostars/guidelines (commitment & signature form, SME declaration, self-funding declaration).

Application form (Part B equivalent)

The online application form has five sections: (1) Project details, (2) Application questions, (3) Your organisation, (4) Declarations, (5) Work packages. The 14 scored application questions are grouped under the three award criteria:

Impact

1. Results of the project (800 words)
2. The business case (2000)
3. Time to market and commercialisation plan (1000)
4. Conditions of the market (2000)
5. Sustainable Development Goals (800)
6. Social and environmental risks (800)

Excellence

1. Technical approach and degree of innovation: incl. gender dimension (1200)
2. Technical state of the art (800)
3. Technical risks (800)

Quality & efficiency of the implementation

1. Project management experience (450)
2. Benefits of international collaboration (800)
3. Intellectual property rights (1500)

Plus Question 13: Civilian purpose (yes/no) and Question 14: Ethics (800 words + Ethics Issues Table upload). Each text box is capped at a fixed word limit; answers must fit the box. English only.

Administrative details (Part A equivalent)

Section 1 (Project details) captures the administrative data: application team (each partner organisation: name, type, address, country, phone, year of registration, VAT number, role: main partner or partner; plus each contributing person's full name and email), application title and acronym, planned start date, duration in months, market and technology areas, and resubmission details.

Section 3 (Your organisation) is completed individually by each partner and includes per-partner finances and consortium-member questions (core business, prior R&D&I cooperation and funding, contribution, financial situation, tasks, impact on the organisation, public funding requested, project financing).

Budget (Part C equivalent)

There is no separate budget spreadsheet: budget is captured inside the application form. In Section 3 each partner enters, per work package, its person-months and costs across the categories personnel, overhead, travel, materials, other, subcontracting. The platform auto-generates the consolidated Finances overview and Work package cost table.

See the guidelines annex for the indicative person-months calculation method (≈18 working days = 1 person-month; multiply the effort fraction by the appointment duration).