European Innovation Council – 2025 Work Programme

On October 29, 2024, the EIC published its Work Programme 2025: see here.

The EIC work programme 2025 details the funding in four main schemes:

• EIC Pathfinder (€262 million) for multi-disciplinary research teams to undertake visionary research with the potential to lead to technology breakthroughs (grants up to €4 million).
• EIC Transition (€98 million) to turn research results into innovation opportunities, following up on results generated by EIC Pathfinder projects, European Research Council Proof of Concept projects and open to project results from Horizon collaborative projects from Pillar 2/ societal challenges (grants up to €2.5 million).
• EIC Accelerator (€634 million) for start-ups and SMEs to develop and scale up innovations with the potential to create new markets or disrupt existing ones (grants below €2.5 million, investments from €0.5 to €10 million). 
• The EIC Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) Scale Up (€300 million), which will provide additional equity funding to promising companies (SMEs, start-ups, spin-offs and small mid-caps) driving innovation in critical areas to help them secure larger private co-investment for further scaling their businesses (investments from €10 to €30 million). 

In each case, the direct financial support to innovators is complemented with access to a wide range of Business Acceleration Services providing access to leading expertise, corporates, investors and ecosystem actors.