Verified against official EU sources · last checked 22 days ago (11 Jun 2026)
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Overview
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.
Is this for you?
Success rates — the honest picture
Roughly 1 in 15 applications gets funded. A sharp, evidence-backed proposal is what separates the funded from the rejected.
Eligibility
- 1Your technology must trace back to results from an earlier EU-funded project: EIC Pathfinder, an ERC Proof of Concept grant, a Horizon Europe Pillar II (Cluster) project, a former FET Flagship, a European Defence Fund project (civil applications only), or as of 2026 the Horizon Research Infrastructures programme.
- 2You either include a participant from that original project in your application, or you prove you legally hold the IP rights to develop the result further. No traceable parent project, no eligibility.
- 3You can apply as a single legal entity (SME, start-up, spin-off, university, or RTO) or as a consortium of no more than 5 partners. Single applicants are fully competitive and win regularly.
- 4Your entry technology should sit around TRL 3 to 4 (proof of concept validated in the lab), and the project must credibly carry it to TRL 5 or 6 by the end.
- 5You must be established in an EU member state or a Horizon Europe associated country. UK applicants can participate but, with association still partial, check your specific call eligibility before committing.
- 6This is for maturing a validated result toward a real product and business case. Pure basic research belongs in Pathfinder; a TRL 8 product ready to scale belongs in the Accelerator.
How to Apply
- 1
Pin down your parent project first. Evaluators check the link to the earlier EIC Pathfinder, ERC, FET, or Pillar II result, and confirm you either include a partner from it or own the IP. A weak or missing lineage gets you rejected before the science is even read.
- 2
Write to the three criteria that actually score: Excellence (is the maturation step genuinely novel and ambitious), Impact (is there a real market and a credible commercialisation path), and Implementation (can this team deliver both the tech and the business work). Impact is where most proposals are thin.
- 3
Build the proposal around a concrete maturation plan with work packages, milestones, and TRL targets, not a research wishlist. The evaluators reward de-risking toward TRL 5 or 6, not more open-ended exploration.
- 4
Show the business case and IP strategy early. Vague science with no route to a fundable product is the single most common rejection reason. Name your target market, your freedom-to-operate position, and who pays at the end.
- 5
Submit the full proposal through the EU Funding and Tenders Portal by the single annual cut-off, 16 September 2026. There is one shot per year, so a missed deadline costs you roughly twelve months.
- 6
Plan cash flow for the wait. Expect about 3 months to evaluation results, then 2 to 3 months of grant preparation, so a September submission typically starts paying out the following spring.
Typical Budget Breakdown
2026 Deadlines
Open Calls
Live opportunities from the EU Funding & Tenders Portal.
EIC Transition Open
16 Sept 2026HORIZON-EIC-2026-TRANSITIONOPEN · HORIZON EIC Grants · €100.0M budget · Open
Advanced Materials for Miniaturised Energy Harvesting Systems
28 Oct 2026HORIZON-EIC-2026-PATHFINDERCHALLENGES-01-01 · HORIZON-EIC-LUMP-SUM · Forthcoming
Biotechnology for Healthy Ageing
28 Oct 2026HORIZON-EIC-2026-PATHFINDERCHALLENGES-01-02 · HORIZON-EIC-LUMP-SUM · Forthcoming
DeepRAP: Deep Reasoning, Abstraction & Planning towards trustworthy Cognitive AI Systems
28 Oct 2026HORIZON-EIC-2026-PATHFINDERCHALLENGES-01-03 · HORIZON-EIC-LUMP-SUM · Forthcoming
Funded Projects
128 projects funded · €297.3M in EU contribution · sourced from CORDIS.
TAONas-LUAD
€2.9MTherapeutic antisense oligonucleotides targeting alternative splicing of NUMB in lung adenocarcinoma
🇪🇸 FUNDACIO CENTRE DE REGULACIO GENOMICA · EIC Grants
MoSS
€2.6MMolecular Storage System (MoSS): Intelligent DNA Data Storage
🇮🇪 HELIXWORKS TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED · EIC Grants
GLIOBREAK
€2.6MDeveloping a new treatment and companion diagnostic to improve outcomes for glioblastoma patients
🇸🇪 BEACTICA THERAPEUTICS AB · EIC Grants
CombTools
€2.5MChip-Scale Optical Frequency Combs for Communications and Sensing: A Toolkit for System Integration
🇩🇪 KARLSRUHER INSTITUT FUER TECHNOLOGIE · EIC Grants
PI-MOLL
€2.5MPhotonic Integrated Mode-Locked Laser
🇨🇭 ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE FEDERALE DE LAUSANNE · EIC Grants
MAG.NET
€2.5MMagnetic neural Network for predictive maintenance
🇫🇷 GOLANA COMPUTING · EIC Grants
Groove
€2.5MGermanium quantum processors: more, robust, available
🇳🇱 TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT DELFT · EIC Grants
ETIA
€2.5METIA: Causal AI for Data-Driven Insights and Optimal Decision Making
🇪🇱 PANEPISTIMIO KRITIS · EIC Grants
WH2E
€2.5MWaste Heat to Energy
🇫🇷 SWEETCH ENERGY · EIC Grants
iSENS
€2.5MIntegrated needle-free injection and sensing using opto-microfluidics
🇳🇱 FLOWBEAMS BV · EIC Grants
SPIN-ION
€2.5MHybrid Spintronic Synapses for Neuromorphic Computing
🇫🇷 SPIN-ION TECHNOLOGIES · EIC Grants
SCALLOP
€2.5MScalable Hardware for Large-Scale Quantum Computing
🇫🇮 SEMIQON TECHNOLOGIES OY · EIC Grants
Key Features
Frequently Asked Questions
You can apply as a single organisation (an SME, start-up, spin-off, university, or research institute) or as a consortium of up to 5 partners. The key requirement is that your work must build on results from an earlier EU-funded project: EIC Pathfinder, an ERC Proof of Concept grant, a FET Flagship, or Horizon Europe Pillar II projects. You either include a participant from that earlier project or prove you hold the IP rights to develop the technology further.
EIC Transition gives a pure grant of up to €2.5 million, covering 100% of your eligible costs plus a 25% flat rate for indirect costs. Unlike the EIC Accelerator, there is no equity component and no co-financing requirement, so you keep full ownership of your company. A separate fixed booster grant of up to €50,000 is also available for complementary commercialisation activities.
You do not need a consortium. Single applicants are fully eligible and many funded projects are individual SMEs, spin-offs, or research organisations. If you do partner up, the consortium can have a maximum of 5 legal entities. Choose the structure that fits the technology rather than adding partners just to look bigger.
There is a single cut-off date in 2026: 16 September 2026. EIC Transition runs as one annual call rather than multiple rounds, so missing this date means waiting roughly a year for the next one. The total budget for the 2026 call is €100 million.
It is highly competitive. In the 2025 call, 40 projects were selected from 611 submissions, a success rate of about 6.5%. A further 228 strong proposals received a Seal of Excellence but no funding because the budget ran out, so a good proposal alone does not guarantee money.
Evaluation takes roughly 3 months after the deadline. If you are selected, grant preparation adds another 2 to 3 months, so the grant agreement is typically signed around month 6 and the project starts around month 7. Plan your cash flow on the basis that funding from a September submission begins the following spring.
You need a credible technology maturation plan that moves a validated lab result (TRL 3 to 4 at entry) toward TRL 5 or 6 by the end of the project. Evaluators want to see a clear link to the earlier EU-funded research, a realistic path to market with early business case and IP strategy, and a team able to deliver both the technical and commercialisation work. Vague science with no route to a fundable product is the most common reason for rejection.
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