• At least two organisations from different countries, not belonging to the same parent organisation; one from a Eureka Member Country, the other from a Eureka Member or Associated Country.
• The Project Leader belongs to an organisation established in a Eureka Member or Associated Country.
• Partners from non-Eureka countries may participate if all participants agree.
• Partners can be large industry, SMEs, research institutes, universities or user organisations, profit or non-profit.
• The project is industry-driven, technically innovative and business-oriented.
• Compliance with the ITEA Rules and Regulations and with the national eligibility requirements of every partner (eligibility is a prerequisite, not a scored criterion).
• Subcontractors do not appear as project partners: a partner reports the effort and costs of its subcontractors within its own figures.
• At the request of at least two Public Authorities, a proposal can exceptionally enter a fast-track procedure, with the same quality requirements.

Two-stage submission

1. Project Outline (PO): deadline 2 November 2026, 17:00 CET, on the ITEA Community website. Two documents: the PO Annex, prepared fully offline and self-contained (project overview, rationale, market and societal impact, technological impact, consortium overview), and the PO Reference document, generated from the content entered online (project key data, partner descriptions and market access, costs and effort, rationale for public funding). Content of the reference document must not be duplicated in the PO Annex.
2. Letter of Intent: one per partner, on company notepaper, signed by an authorised person, provided within two weeks after the PO deadline (16 November 2026).
3. PO evaluation: two or three ITEA Steering Group members from companies unrelated to the proposal evaluate the PO against the selection criteria and report to the full Steering Group; in parallel the Public Authorities make their own evaluation. The Board Support Group decides which POs are accepted. Results on 15 December 2026, with ITEA and Public Authority recommendations.
4. Full Project Proposal (FPP): deadline 11 February 2027, 17:00 CET, by invitation, with the Declaration of Acceptance of the ITEA 4 Rules and Regulations from each partner. Adds the work packages, which are created online only at FPP stage. The evaluation checks how the mandatory recommendations of the PO evaluation were implemented.
5. Labelling: results on 31 March 2027. The label does not imply funding: each partner applies to its national Public Authority (Q4 2026 to Q2 2027, sometimes before labelling).

Key dates

The PO and the FPP are evaluated by ITEA Steering Group reviewers and, in parallel, by the national Public Authorities. Published selection criteria (no scale or weights published):

1. Project Rationale and Objectives: clarity, relevance and coherence of the project intent (problem statement, solution concept, expected outputs, use cases validating the innovations).
2. Market, Business and Societal Impact: business and market impact (target markets and competitors, market value chain, exploitation and commercialisation strategy, economic impact, go-to-market and dissemination, business KPIs); industry impact (standardisation, open source, ecosystem adoption); societal impact (UN SDGs, measurable environmental and societal benefits).
3. Technological Innovation and Excellence: novelty, ambition and technical credibility (clear innovations, state of the art and advance beyond it, consistency with the rationale, technological KPIs with baseline and target).
4. Consortium and International Collaboration: value chain coverage, partner roles, mitigation of competency gaps, diversity; quality of the international collaboration; collaboration with other R&D initiatives.
5. Project Realisation and Management (FPP only): work package structure, milestones and deliverables, project and risk management, effort consistent with the work plan.
6. Proposal Quality: clarity, structure, conciseness and compliance with formatting and length requirements.
7. Eligibility: prerequisite, not scored.

Funding is national: each partner applies to its own Public Authority under national rules, and public funding is not a prerequisite for a partner to participate or for the project to keep its label. In France the call is relayed by Bpifrance. The ITEA Office is financed by contributions of publicly funded project partners (ITEA Contribution Rules 2025).

• PO preparation days at the call opening (15-17 September 2026) to form consortia and draft outlines.
• Project ideas and partner search on the ITEA Community website.
• The PO documents how the project relates to, builds on and differs from other collaborative projects (ITEA, H2020, national ICT clusters), with a table of related projects and the relationship (reuse, transfer or exclusion of results).

Projects typically last up to three years and involve 40 to 350 person-years. Work packages are only created at FPP stage (from ITEA 3 Call 7 onward): a PO must not contain work packages. Once labelled, projects are monitored through progress reports, reviews and change requests. Ten months after labelling, projects that have not started have the validity of their label reviewed.

The PO is treated as strictly confidential unless otherwise specified. Except for specific cases, the State-of-the-Art and Targeted innovation sections are treated by the ITEA Office as public and may be analysed with AI tools for the ITEA Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda. Technical know-how and ownership of the results remain with the project partners.

No formal interdisciplinarity or SSH requirement. The consortium covers its value chain with complementary roles (large industry, SMEs, research, user organisations), shows technical and business-level collaboration across countries, and explains how competency gaps are mitigated.

Letter of Intent per partner after the PO; Declaration of Acceptance of the ITEA 4 Frame Agreement and Rules and Regulations per partner with the FPP (the label is only valid when all required Declarations of Acceptance are signed); national funding contracts per country after labelling. Preferably before, and at the latest once the label is granted, the Project Leader launches the Project Cooperation Agreement between the partners and informs the ITEA Office when it is signed. To obtain and keep the label, the project must comply with the Eureka rules and the ITEA contracts. All partners should become active within 10 months of labelling; inactive partners must leave the project. All documents are written in English and follow the ITEA formats and templates.

Labelled projects report progress, are reviewed by ITEA and handle change requests through the ITEA Community website. The State of the Art is updated during the project into a public deliverable.

PO Annex (Word template of ITEA Call 2026), uploaded on the ITEA Community website. Limits are in words per section (paragraphs and tables only; figures encouraged): 1.1.1 Problem statement 1000; 1.1.2 Solution concept 1500; 1.1.3 Expected project outputs 1500; 1.2.1 Market State-of-the-Art analysis and market value chain 3000; 1.2.2 Target business impact 2000; 1.2.3 Business impact KPIs 1000 (table: KPI name, description, baseline, target at end of project, measurement unit or method); 1.2.4 Contribution to UN sustainability goals 500; 1.3.1 State-of-the-Art analysis 3000; 1.3.2 Technology value chain 1000; 1.3.3 Targeted innovation 3000 (traceability table problem, innovations, expected outputs; one subsection per innovation); 1.3.4 Innovation KPIs 1000 (table: KPI title, description, initial value, target value, measurement unit or method); 2.1.1 Technology level 500; 2.1.2 Business level 500; 2.2 Collaboration with other projects 1000. A PO Annex exceeding the maximum length has a negative impact on the evaluation. Predefined titles and styles must be kept, no additional annex, the green instructions must not be removed (the ITEA Office removes them), file under 10 MB.

Entered on the ITEA Community website and merged into the PO Reference document: project basics (name, title, Project Leader, dates), consortium (partners invited by email, role in the project), project executive summary, partner details and market access, rationale for public funding per country and contact with the national funding agencies, costs and effort per partner and per year. Per partner: Letter of Intent (PO) and Declaration of Acceptance (FPP).