UKRO Services Update: Supporting participation in Horizon Europe in 2025-26

This communication updates UKRO Subscribers on the support UKRO will provide to facilitate UK participation in Horizon Europe in 2025/26.

In view of the importance of boosting UK participation in Horizon Europe, and ensuring UKRI provides a more holistic service to research organisations and businesses, we are changing the offer for UKRO resources and services. This will mean no charge for what we provide but will mean less bespoke support for each organisation. The main changes are:

  • We are moving away from having a dedicated European Advisor for each organisation. Instead, the team will be able to respond to enquiries via the UKRO mailbox ukro@ukro.ac.uk.
  • We will continue in-person engagement through regional visits to groups of stakeholders, rather than personalised annual site visits.
  • Our team will be based in the UK with regular engagement with stakeholders in Brussels.

These changes have informed our refreshed mission and objectives, which can be seen in detail in the UKRO Services Update document – please ensure you read this fully, including the FAQ section.

Please note, effective from 1 April 2025 we will no longer charge a subscription fee to access UKRO resources and services*.

We will hold a webinar at 2p.m UK time, Monday 12 May to update UKRO subscribers and provide a forum for discussion and feedback. Please register for the Teams meeting via this link.

UKRO Mission

Our overarching mission is to maximise UK engagement in EU-funded research and innovation funding programmes to the UK academic community and key partners, in order.  We do this by:

  1. Boosting UK participation in Horizon Europe through National Contact Point services on behalf of UK Government; namely European Research Council (ERC), Marie Sklowdoska Curie Actions (MSCA), COST, Widening Participation and New European Bauhaus (NEB).
  2. Providing our users with news, policy insights and expert advice enabling them to navigate and make informed decisions about participating in EU programmes.
  3. Monitoring policy developments in European research and innovation programmes, and liaising with key stakeholders, to support UK-EU collaboration and UK engagement in Horizon Europe.

UKRO Objectives

  1. Provide National Contact Point services – we will deliver ERC and MSCA, Widening, COST and NEB National Contact Point (NCP) services for the UK research community, on behalf of the UK Government.
  2. Provide high quality resources and advice on European research programmes– through the UKRO online portal and via a central enquiry service, we will provide UKRO users with information and advice on EU’s research and innovation policy to inform their engagement.
  3. Provide effective support for European Liaison Officers (ELOs) and Research Managers – to enable them to champion EU funding within their organisations, drive efficiency and achieve positive outcomes.
  4. Monitor European research and innovation policy and provide policy insights – keep up to date with relevant EU policies, translating policy changes and priorities into accessible information to support R&I communities participating in Horizon Europe.
  5. Be an advocate and informal interlocutor supporting diverse stakeholder interactions in Brussels and the UK, from a UK base – to work across related organisations, ensuring gathering and sharing of intel to support the UK’s engagement in Horizon Europe as an Associated Country.

UKRO Service Provision – how we will support you from 25/26 onwards

  1. National Contact Points services – we will provide NCP support for ERC, MSCA, Widening, COST and New European Bauhaus via the dedicated inboxes, ensuring rapid responses to enquiries received. We will provide detailed factsheets on schemes and timely online webinars, ensuring UK communities are well informed available on opportunities including calls, eligibility requirements, networks and other information that supports the application and implementation of EU funding through these schemes.
  2. UKRO Portal – all NCP resources, UKRO Factsheets, funding opportunities, events and news articles will be accessible without a login. Users will also be able to sign up for regular newsletters.  In addition, we will maintain a dedicated area with additional in-depth resources for ELOs, for which a login will still be required.
  3. Enquiry function – moving away from a named point of contact for each individual institution, we will manage enquiries via the ukro@ukro.ac.uk European Advisors will be able to respond to enquiries on any area of Horizon Europe or related research, innovation and policy enquiries in the pre- and post-award space.
  4. In-person events – we will no longer visit individual organisations on a yearly basis to hold a bespoke UKRO visit, and instead hold regional visits once a year. We will take into consideration the numbers of institutions using UKRO services and participating in Horizon Europe and endeavour to hold events in a suitable location to cater for the region. Prior to visits taking place ELOs at institutions within a region will be able to share their priority topics to feed into the planning, and we will cover as many requested topics as is feasible.  We intend to have at least two UKRO staff at each visit in order to hold a limited number of 1-1 surgeries, and the events will facilitate cross-institution networking and sharing best practice.
  5. Online events – in order to provide regular support to as many UKRO users as possible, we will hold regular webinars and quarterly ELO catch ups. The ELO catch up quarterly schedule will commence from May 2025 and start with a session on the changes to UKRO and how we will support ELOs and research managers from now on.   We will liaise with the ELO community prior to catch ups to ensure we are aware of the most pertinent or timely issues.
  6. Policy monitoring – through regular Brussels engagement with key networks and through events, we will continue to monitor policy developments in European R&I.
Tags: UKRO