Earlier this week, the European Commission held a dedicated information day on the changes made to the implementation strategy of Horizon Europe under the recently published 2026-27 Work Programme. Below is a summary of the main messages from the event.
It is strongly recommended that applicants to the upcoming calls for proposals become familiar with these changes before applying for Horizon Europe funding.
The video recording (incl. useful Q&A) and presentation slides used by Commission speakers can be found on the event page.
Changes to evaluation criteria and proposal templates
- Updated ‘Impact’ criterion for calls in the main Work Programme parts (excl. ERC/EIC and MSCA):
- The “likely scale and significance of the contributions from the project” is no longer part of the ‘Impact’ criterion.
- Section 2.1 – Applicants no longer need to explain the general scientific, economic and societal expected impacts separately as they are already taken into account in the topic expected impact.
- The “Project’s pathways towards impact” subsection has been simplified. Consequently, the impact summary tables are now optional and, if not used by applicants, they can be removed.
- The ‘Excellence’ and ‘Implementation’ criteria remain the same, but there is now less information requested under the latter:
- Table 3.1h “Purchase costs” has been simplified for topics using actual costs; it now only requires information about relevant major equipment costs only.
- Tables 3.1i “Other costs categories”, and table 3.1j “In-kind contributions” have been removed as they are irrelevant during evaluation:
- For actual costs grants, these tables will be required during the Grant Agreement Preparation phase as part of the Description of Action of retained proposals.
- For lump sum grants, this information still needs to be submitted in the Excel budget table.
- New standard page limits for Horizon Europe applications:
- 40 pages for actual costs RIA and IA
- 45 pages for lump sum RIA and IA
- 25 pages for actual costs CSA
- 28 pages for lump sum CSA
- 65 pages for HORIZON-COFUND Actions (not MSCA COFUND!)
- 40 pages for PCP/PPI
- Specific calls might use different page limits when explicitly mentioned in the relevant Work Programme part/call documents.
- Known issues/mistakes in the application forms that are currently being worked on:
- All tags used in previous versions of the application form have been removed from the technical annex (part B), but references to not removing them can still feature in the forms by mistake.
- References to IKOP/IKAA (in-kind contributions) used by some Joint Undertakings feature in the budget table (Part A) of the generic proposal template by mistake. These columns should be ignored by applicants.
Shorter time to grant for certain two-stage calls
Where possible, the Commission plans to reduce the time to grant (TTG) in two-stage calls to accelerate the granting process, but without placing additional pressure on applicants. The Commission did not specify in what circumstances TTG would be reduced, but this is now a possibility in some calls.
Further information can be found in the Commission’s presentation slides available on the event page.
New Associated Countries
- New countries associated to Horizon Europe as of 2025:
- Republic of Korea (associated to Pillar II ‘Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness’)
- Switzerland (associated to the entire programme)
- Countries in the process of finalising their association (currently under a transitional arrangement):
- Egypt (associated to the entire programme as of 2025)
- Japan (associated to Pillar II ‘Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness’, including for the institutionalised European partnerships as of 2026)
- Organisations from these countries should be included as beneficiaries in future proposals, but may need to be changed to Associated Partners if association is not formalised by the time they need to sign the Grant Agreement.
New restrictions on participation of Chinese legal entities/entities based in EU/Associated Countries, but controlled by China
- For Research and Innovation Action, legal entities established in China are only eligible for a subset of destinations in Cluster 2, Cluster 5, Cluster 6, Missions, Widening and the New European Bauhaus Facility, or where explicitly mentioned in the call documents.
- Participation of entities controlled by China is also restricted under Article 22(5) for Innovation Actions in critical technology areas, where specifically mentioned in the call documents.
- Previous restrictions related to Chinese participants in Innovation Actions remain unchanged.
Other relevant updates
- The Commission will trial the use of online budget tables in a small number of lump sum calls. This change will be clearly communicated during proposal submission and applicants will no longer need to use the Excel table. In the longer term, the Commission plans to replace the Excel file with an online tool for all lump sum calls/topics.