The 2026-2027 "Horizontal activities" Work Programme in Horizon Europe is created to break down the traditional walls between different scientific departments and funding silos. Rather than keeping research fragmented across separate categories, this new program pools resources to tackle the EU’s most urgent, evolving policy priorities in a unified, cross-sector way. This way, the European Commission tries to achieve a massive, coordinated push that delivers market-ready solutions for Europe's biggest strategic targets and build a bridge towards the next Research and Innovation framework program. This new Horizon program (2028-2034) will notably focus more on competitiveness on the world stage, be more cross-sectoral and be more flexible in terms of funding. 

It includes 4 different parts

• The Clean Industrial Deal (€540M) to boost clean tech
• AI in Science (€90M) for trusted AI (including RAISE doctoral networks)
• Transformative change towards a nature-postive economy and society (€230M) or in short the biodiversity call, with call topic deadlines in 2027 
• Bridging actions focusing on bringing innovations to the market (€193M), with call topic deadlines in 2027

Currently, only the first two parts have been officially adopted by the European Commission which you can find here. The final two parts are still in the final drafting phase and can be subject to minor changes. You can find the draft on this webpage. ScienceBusiness wrote an article on these calls which provides interesting reading but please note that this was written in March so some elements might be a bit outdated.

You can always consult the latest draft work programmes on our newly created website page "Horizontal activities", where also all latest news and related events will be published. You can adapt your profile on the website ticking this domain of interest ("horizontal activities") to receive updates through the mailings. 

Finally there is our comitology webpage where you can find the reports of all programme committees, including the latest draft work programmes. For example, you can find the above-mentioned documents under the domain 'Horizontal activities & missions'. 

Background: more information on how Horizon Europe call topics are developed and followed by Flanders here. More general information about Comitology here and the comitology register here. For a general understanding of Horizon Europe work programmes see the General Introduction of the Horizon Europe work programme 2026-2027.