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NCP Flanders has extended the duration of its short satisfaction survey to gather valuable feedback and suggestions on the NCP services. The survey is fully anonymous and is open until 9 October 2026. It is organised into three sections: NCP Flanders assistance, info sessions, and NCP Flanders website & LinkedIn. If you are not familiar with one of these sections, the survey will automatically guide you to the next section. The NCP Flanders team would greatly appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to fill in the survey and provide your opinion via this link. If you would like to get in touch with NCP Flanders, please email info@ncpflanders.be
As it was reported to the Programme Committee at the meeting on 17/09/2026, following the STEP ScaleUp 2026 third batch, due to the first-come, first-served nature of the EIC STEP call, and considering the remaining available budget for the third batch, it is very likely that the 2026 budget will be exhausted with the first three batches. Therefore, as foreseen by the 2026 Work Programme, in the event of budget exhaustion, the EC will cancel the fourth EIC STEP batch of 2026. Accordingly, the call’s closure date will be brought forward to the 8 October 2026 at 17:00 (Brussels time). In light of this, potential EIC STEP applicants are encouraged to submit their proposals under the new 2027 EIC STEP call, which will be opened for submissions in November 2026. For those applicants who have already submitted their proposal for the 4th Batch, EISMEA will send a message requesting to resubmit to the 2027 call and withdraw the 2026 proposal to avoid being in a situation of concurrent submission. For technical and legal reasons it is not possible for the EC to automatically transfer proposals from the 2026 call to the 2027 call as these are two separate calls with different legal bases, application forms, criteria and budgets.
As part of the amended Horizon Europe Work Programme 2026 - 2027, the Commission has published a series of new call topics under the Horizontal Activities Work Programme 2027, including topic HORIZON-NATURE-2027-03-01, which may be of interest to stakeholders active in health research.This topic, titled 'Advancing interdisciplinary, data-driven research at the biodiversity-health interface under a One Health approach', aims to strengthen interdisciplinary research linking biodiversity, ecosystem health, animal health and human health. The topic supports the operationalisation of One Health and Planetary Health approaches through improved data sharing, interoperability and evidence-based policymaking. The planned opening date for the topic is 3 June 2027, with the deadline on 16 September 2027.The €20 million Research and Innovation Action invites the development of multiple use cases addressing biodiversity loss and its impact on health, including infectious diseases, non-communicable diseases and mental health. Proposals are expected to bring together expertise from life sciences, environmental sciences, data science and public health. This topic may therefore be particularly relevant for universities, research institutes, public health organisations, hospitals and other stakeholders working at the interface between environment and health.
2027 Health calls have been brought forward As previously communicated, the main impact for Health applicants concerns the earlier opening dates and deadlines for the 2027 health calls. These changes are now officially confirmed and published in the updated health work programme on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal. Strategic reframing of topic HORIZON-HLTH-2027-03-TOOL-08 This topic has been renamed "Towards the next generation of frontier Artificial Intelligence models for healthcare". References to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) have been removed throughout the text. The topic now focuses on frontier AI models, multimodal health data and European AI infrastructures, while maintaining its original level of ambition. Read the changed topic text here.The topic now explicitly requires the contribution of Social Sciences and Humanities, highlighting the importance of addressing ethical, societal, governance and human-centred aspects of advanced AI development in healthcare. In addition, stricter participation conditions have been introduced. Entities controlled by China can no longer rely on the guarantee mechanism that was available in the original version. Applicants are therefore advised to review ownership structures and consortium composition carefully when preparing proposals for this strategically sensitive topic. Updated policy reference References to the future EU Cardiovascular Health Plan have been updated following the adoption of the Plan in December 2025. These changes do not affect the scope or budget of the cardiovascular health topics. What should you do? The amended Health Work Programme is now available on the Funding & Tenders Portal and should be used as the reference version for proposal preparation. Applicants targeting a 2027 topic are encouraged to check the final topic text and revised call timetable carefully.
Quantum moves out of Cluster 4 The most visible change is the departure of quantum technologies. Following the extension of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking's mandate to quantum, three 2026 quantum topics have been cancelled and the planned quantum grant agreements have been removed. Stricter rules on China In all 2027 topics where participation is restricted for strategic reasons, entities controlled from China can no longer obtain an exception through guarantees. This replaces the earlier rule targeting high-risk telecom suppliers. One manufacturing Innovation Action now excludes China-controlled entities altogether. Check your consortium composition early. Testing a lottery The Commission introduces a "partial randomisation" pilot in two topics: Proof of market and an AI topic on human/AI collaboration. Where proposals score almost equally, part of the selection will be made by random draw. Industry: calls open later All 2027 Industry calls now open on 13 October 2026 instead of 22 September. The submission deadlines stay the same: 2 February 2027, and 2 September 2027 for the second stage. Budgets shift slightly. The "Proof of market" topic gets a little less, and a new support action is added on venture builders in universities and research organisations (€1 million). One two-stage topic on energy in the process industries changes from a Research and Innovation Action to an Innovation Action, which means a lower funding rate for companies. Digital: mostly fine-tuning The 2027 Digital calls keep their dates (opening 17 November 2026, deadline 18 March 2027) and budgets. The topic on energy-efficient AI data centres has been reworked. It now aims to fund four projects of €9-10 million each, all intended to set up open pilot sites. Space: more money for some topics, one call postponed The ISOS4I in-orbit servicing topic grows from about €1 million to almost €4 million. The two topics on critical space components and equipment move to a new call with a deadline of 20 January 2028. They come with much larger project sizes, but no budget has been confirmed yet. The EUSPA call on Galileo and Copernicus for preparedness is also postponed by one year. What should you do? If you are applying for a 2027 topic, re-read the final text of your topic in version 1.1. Pay particular attention to budgets, eligibility conditions and evaluation rules. A detailed overview of all changes (automated analysis with AI) is attached to this article.
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Funded under Horizon Europe (HORIZON-CL5-2023-D6-01-09), running from 2024 to 2028, CLARION (Building Climate-Resilient Ports for the Future) aims to contribute to shaping a sustainable future for the maritime sector by developing and implementing innovative climate adaptation solutions. Port of Antwerp-Bruges is one of the leading European ports involved in the project. Together with two other Flemish project partners, Brabo Group and the Antwerp Maritime Academy, Port of Antwerp-Bruges is developing demo cases that tackle real-life operational and training challenges posed by climate risks. Read more about the project in this testimonial.
