€50,000 fixed lump sum for EIC Pathfinder and Transition grantees to test whether their research can become a business — invitation-only, no open call.
EIC Pathfinder Booster
Fixed lump sum grant
What is Pathfinder Booster?
The European Innovation Council (EIC) Pathfinder Booster is a small, fast bridge grant for teams the EU has already backed through EIC Pathfinder or EIC Transition. It pays a fixed €50,000 lump sum to explore whether research results have genuine commercial potential — market analysis, intellectual-property strategy, customer discovery, business-case work — and can be awarded up to three times per project. Think of it as Brussels saying: we funded your breakthrough research, now here is money to figure out whether it could become a product, a startup or a licence deal. It sits in the gap between Pathfinder (pure research, technology readiness levels 1–4) and Transition (validation, levels 4–6). The grants are administered by BOOST, a coordination and support action led by FundingBox with partners Splorotech, the Barcelona Mobile World Capital Foundation and 3URA, with a pot of roughly €6M targeting at least 100 grantees between 2025 and 2027. The crucial caveat: you cannot apply proactively. You must be recommended by your EIC Programme Manager following a project review — this is invitation-only.
- €50,000 fixed lump sum — no expense tracking, timesheets or budget breakdown
- Up to 3 Booster grants per project (€150K total) where justified
- Invitation-only: requires EIC Programme Manager recommendation after a project review
- Lightweight proposal evaluated by 3 independent experts — 2 of 3 GO votes needed
- Funds commercialisation exploration: market analysis, IP strategy, business case, customer discovery
- Rolling basis through 2027 until the ~€6M BOOST pot runs out
Is this for you?
Current or past EIC Pathfinder and EIC Transition grantees — plus beneficiaries of legacy FET-Open and FET-Proactive projects and their technology transfer offices — whose research has produced results with plausible commercial value. Not for you if you have no existing EIC or FET grant (there is no open call), if you want to fund core research (the Booster pays only for commercialisation exploration), or if you need more than €50K — in which case EIC Transition, at up to €2.5M, is the right instrument.
Who wins — funded examples
The honest picture
The Booster is the rare EU grant where the hard part is not the application. You cannot apply at all — your EIC Programme Manager has to recommend you after reviewing your Pathfinder or Transition project, so the real competition happened when you won the underlying grant. Once invited, the odds are unusually friendly: a lightweight proposal, three independent reviewers, and you only need two GO votes. The catches are different ones. First, the pot is small — roughly €6M for at least 100 grantees through 2027, allocated as invitations come, so move quickly when invited rather than letting the offer sit. Second, €50K buys consultancy-scale work, not engineering: market sizing, a freedom-to-operate check, a business case — it will not fund a prototype or a hire. Third, if you are never recommended, the most useful lever is making your results legible to your Programme Manager: flag exploitable outputs in periodic reviews and ask directly about Booster eligibility. The grant's true value is as a signal and a stepping stone — a funded excuse to do the commercial homework that makes a later EIC Transition or Accelerator application credible.
Booster by the numbers — what's actually published
| Metric | Figure | Where it's stated |
|---|---|---|
| Total BOOST budget (2025–2027) | €5,999,932.50 | CORDIS fact sheet, project 101192038 |
| Share cascaded to grantees | ≥83% (≈€5M) | CORDIS fact sheet |
| Target grantees by end-2027 | 100+ | CORDIS project objective |
| Maximum per grant | €50,000 | EIC Booster Grant Scheme rules |
| Cap per Pathfinder project | 3 grants / €150,000 | EIC Booster Grant Scheme rules |
| Cap per Transition project | 1 grant | EIC Booster Grant Scheme rules |
| Votes needed to win | 2 of 3 GO | EIC Booster Grant Scheme rules |
⚠ No applicants-vs-funded statistics exist — selection is invitation-based and first-come, first-served, so a 'success rate' in the Accelerator sense isn't published. The real filter is whether your Programme Manager recommends you at all.