EIC Transition

EIC Transition is the European Innovation Council grant for turning a proven lab result into something a company and its investors can build on. It is aimed at teams whose technology came out of an earlier EU-funded project, such as EIC Pathfinder, an ERC Proof of Concept grant, a former FET Flagship, or Horizon Europe Pillar II research, and who now need to mature and validate it rather than discover something new. The money funds prototyping, validation in a relevant environment, IP strategy, and an early business case, pushing the work from roughly TRL 3 or 4 toward TRL 5 or 6. The headline terms are simple: a grant of up to €2.5 million at 100% of eligible costs, no equity taken, no co-financing required, plus an optional booster of up to €50,000 for commercialisation work. Companies like GLIOBREAK, building a glioblastoma treatment with a companion diagnostic, MoSS, developing intelligent DNA data storage, and CombTools, integrating chip-scale optical frequency combs, all took this route. With a 2026 budget of €100 million and a single annual deadline of 16 September 2026, it is the bridge between a research breakthrough and a fundable company.

• Bridges the 'valley of death' between research and market
• Up to €2.5M per project
• Duration: up to 3 years
• Covers technology validation, prototyping, IP, and business development
• Direct pathway to EIC Accelerator for successful projects

EIC Transition is perfect if you came out of an EIC Pathfinder, ERC, FET, or Pillar II project with a result that works in the lab but is nowhere near a product. You have a validated proof of concept around TRL 3 or 4, you can name a market, and you need non-dilutive money to build a prototype, test it in a relevant environment, lock down IP, and assemble a real business case. If that is you, the full 100% funding and zero equity make this the cleanest grant in the EIC toolkit. Skip it if your work has no traceable EU-funded parent project, because that link is a hard gate. Skip it if you are still doing open-ended discovery science, since that is Pathfinder territory. And skip it if you already have a market-ready product and customers, because you belong in the EIC Accelerator, which can write much bigger cheques and add equity.