Hop-On Facility

Only one proposal is accepted. The eligibility conditions set in the Horizon Europe -Work Programme 2026-2027 (Widening participation and strengthening the European Research Area) clearly state that: “The proposal must be submitted by the co-ordinator of a consortium funded under Pillar 2 or a EIC Pathfinder call of Horizon Europe with a valid grant agreement that does not have any participant from a country eligible to host the coordinator under the Widening component (Widening country). The proposal must include the accession of one additional partner from a widening country. Consequently, as the Coordinator of only the ongoing eligible grant, funded under Horizon Europe, is entitled to apply just for having only one additional partner from a widening country. Therefore, multiple submissions might be interpreted as a lack of focus and prioritization compromising the objectives of the call.

The proposal must be submitted by the coordinator of a consortium funded under Pillar 2 or the EIC Pathfinder of Horizon Europe with a valid grant agreement that does not have any participant from a country eligible to host the coordinator under the Widening component (Widening country). The ongoing grant should be in its first reporting period (M1-M12) from its start date to qualify as eligible. The proposal must include the accession of one additional partner from a widening country.

The selection of the most suitable partner is left to the discretion of the consortium. For the sake of a successful evaluation, we advise to base this solely on the expected R&I added value for the host projects and not on country preferences.

NO. The hop on action should be regarded as a possibility for the original consortium to add additional activities not planned from the beginning which will allow to widen the project scope, impact and excellence.

No. In cases where a potential partner from a widening country is already known it should already be integrated into the consortium from the very beginning in the first proposal. We discourage ‘stand-bye’ solutions because there is no guarantee for the success of a second proposal via hop-on.

NO. A project with start date 1 September 2025 is not eligible to apply to the Hop On Facility call 2026. In fact, the eligibility condition in the Work Program states that the ongoing grant agreement should be between 1 to 12 months from its starting date by the submission deadline. In 2026, the Hop On Facility submission deadline is 24 September. This means that for a project to be eligible, it should have started between September 25th, 2025, and September 24th ,2026.

NO. The Hop On Facility is limited to the addition of one single partner to consortia with no participants from widening countries.

The objective of the call is to give the opportunity to the hop-on partner from a widening country to actively participate to an ongoing research and innovation project, thereby contributing to the project, like any other partner, exchanging his/her experience, knowledge and excellence with the rest of the team.

YES. Only the hosting coordinator and the widening partner are relevant for this part.

YES. It is possible for France to add into the consortium one partner from its departments based in Outermost Regions, provided this partner has a legal address in one of the Outermost Regions[1] which are eligible to the widening funding programme.

[1] Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Mayotte, Réunion, and Saint-Martin (France), and the Azores and Madeira (Portugal), and the Canary Islands (Spain) are part of the eligible widening countries

In the context of Hop on, “Work Package” should be understood as all the activities/tasks to which the new partner will contribute. The new partner can contribute to a new work package or to one or several existing ones. Applicants are expected to provide details in the proposal on the new work packages and/or the changes to existing work packages as a result of the addition of the new widening partner.

The Hop On proposals will not be bound by any page limit of the original calls under Pillar 2. Nevertheless, applicants should provide a concise and accurate description of the widening partner and of the proposed new activities assigned to it by filling in the template part B available in the call submission page. The page limit for the Hop On Facility part B application is 8 pages maximum.

Proposals must be submitted to the Hop On facility call from the coordinator of a consortium funded under Pillar 2 or EIC Pathfinder of Horizon Europe with a valid grant agreement that does not have any participant from a country eligible to host the coordinator under the Widening component (Widening country) and the ongoing project should be in between M1 and 12 from its start date.

To benefit from the Hop On Facility, the new hop-on partner must be a Member state, Associated Country or Outermost Region legal with a entity established in a “Widening country”. The member states which are Widening countries are: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. The Associated Countries which are Widening countries are: Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, Morocco, North Macedonia, Serbia, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine. The Outermost Regions are: Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Réunion, Mayotte Saint-Martin, The Azores, Madeira, Canary Islands.

Applicants should always include all relevant partners when submitting proposals. Leaving a partner at the sideline can impair the quality of the consortium and result in lower evaluation scores. Proposals might also lack adequate geographical scope or diversity. Furthermore, even if a proposal without a Widening partner is funded, there are no guarantees at all that an extra partner will be funded through the Hop On facility, as this is a competitive call based on the excellence principle.

NO. Only ongoing Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Action (RIA) projects are eligible to apply to the Hop On Facility call. The Commission has published on the Hop On Facility call page a link to the list of eligible running projects already funded under Pillar 2 and the EIC Pathfinder which is designed in a filtered way, so showing only those projects that are suitable matches for the Hop On Facility call.

In accordance with the proposal template for the Hop On Facility, proposals should include a detailed description of the profile of the new partner and its role in the existing project. This presentation should detail all activities which will be impacted due to the addition of the new Widening partner (e.g. new/updated work packages, deliverables, milestones). Applications must demonstrate the R&I added value of the new partner and describe the concrete tasks to be carried out, either as a separate new work package or contributions to existing work packages.

Only partner organisations from Associated Countries eligible for the Widening part of the Horizon Europe Work Programme can benefit from the Hop On Facility. The costs of such partner organisations will be considered as eligible in the same way as for an EU partner organisation. However, partner organisations from Third Countries are not eligible for the Hop On Facility action.

The range 0.2 to 0.5 million EUR for the requested EU contribution in Hop On proposals is indicative and not an eligibility condition. Therefore, proposals requesting lower or higher amounts are possible but, in all instances, requests need to be justified and will be assessed during the evaluation of proposals.

Yes, applicants, using the lump sum funding scheme can submit a proposal in the Hop-on Facility call to join an on-going project. Such proposals must complete in their application the specific “Detailed budget table” to request the additional funding for the widening entity that wishes to join the ongoing action and the coordination fee for the coordinator of up to 10% of the additional budget. This dedicated Excel workbook for the lump sum budget has to be submitted by the Coordinator as an additional annex to the proposal ONLY when applying to join LUMP SUM projects.

The Excel “Detailed budget table” template for lump sum scheme is available in the submission page for download and, once filled in, must be uploaded as an annex to the proposal.

The Coordinator must submit an additional mandatory annex titled “Project Grant Agreement”. This mandatory annex should be the PDF document (max. 50 MB) of the running GA, Part A & Part B and the Budget table. For Lump Sum grants a Detailed budget table is available under the Template download link in the F&T Portal and needs to be filled in and added as additional annex to the application.

The co-ordination fee should cover any additional administrative and managerial efforts to be taken on board by the co-coordinator as a consequence of the extension of the consortium by one extra partner, e.g. increased reporting and monitoring workload, increased number of meetings, visits.

The matchmaking is essentially left to the initiative of applicants both co-ordinators interested in extending their consortia and hop-on candidates seeking for suitable host projects. For the latter case candidates are encouraged to screen the list of eligible projects published on the call web site on the funding and tenders portal. This list is based on the information published under CORDIS is regularly updated. Co-ordinators may use the partner search tool as well as contacting their respective NCP organisations directly or through the NCP WIDERA NET project[1].

[1] https://www.ncpwideranet.eu/

The success rate depends upon the ratio between the requested cumulative budget of the submitted proposals and the available call budget. Accurate predictions are therefore difficult. However, for 2026 we expect sufficient budget for most proposals if we extrapolate from the experience of previous calls.

Participants are entitled to claim direct eligible costs in full (reimbursement rate of 100%) and this amount is topped up by an additional flat rate of 25% of direct costs to cover for the indirect costs (overheads).

The duration of the “new” Hop On activities will depend on the duration of the ongoing Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Action (RIA) projects which the new partner will join. The time elapsed between the start date of the project and the signature of the amendment allowing the new partner to participate in the consortium will also impact the duration of the proposed “new” activities that cannot be extended after the end of the original grant agreement.

Indeed, the Executive Agencies (EAs) in charge of the evaluation aim at using the same evaluators who evaluated the host project in order to ensure consistency and to best recognise the added value of the new partner and its tasks. Standard evaluation criteria for RIA will apply.

As indicated in the WP, the main selection criteria will be the excellence and added value of the new partner and of the work package or task(s) assigned to this institution in the context of the ongoing project. The ongoing project as such is not subject to evaluation.