European Partnership on Innovative SMEs

The European Partnership on Innovative SMEs is co-funded by the European Union through Horizon Europe and 37 Eureka countries. It supports two funding programmes, Eurostars and Innowwide, and accompanying measures.

The partnership is for innovative SMEs: companies that don’t necessarily have a previous R&D track record but prove they can achieve excellent results.

37 Eureka countries and the European Commission have committed close to one billion euro.

These countries are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye and the United Kingdom.

Eurostars

Eurostars is a funding programme for helping innovative SMEs grow. We support SME-led international R&D projects whose results can be introduced into the market. Eurostars is one of only a few close-to-market collaborative R&D programmes that spotlight SMEs, but large companies, universities and research organisations can also participate and benefit from funding if there is national or regional support available.

Our Eurostars funding programme has a unique and extensive geographic scope for supporting innovators as they carry out R&D projects. The 37 countries participating in the partnership dedicate funding over several calls for projects between 2021 and 2027, leading to some important international R&D collaborations receiving funding.

Innowwide

Innowwide funds innovative SMEs to assess the viability of commercial or research ambitions for internationalisation in a target country. SMEs conduct feasibility studies for innovative solutions over a six-month period, working with local organisations. Innowwide supports one SME per project, but companies in target countries the SMEs choose to collaborate with can benefit indirectly as subcontractors.

Over several calls for projects between 2021 and 2027, 24 million euro is being dedicated to funding approximately 400 market feasibility projects (with 60,000 euro given per project) led by innovative SMEs from European Union Member States or Iceland, Israel, Norway, Türkiye or the United Kingdom wanting to explore international markets in Africa, the Americas, Asia or Oceania.

Accompanying measures for innovative SMEs

Eurostars-3 and Innowwide alumni startups and SMEs can benefit from free attendance to major international events as part of our investment readiness programme.

As a result of a partnership with the European Innovation Council (EIC), Eurostars-3 alumni startups, SMEs and mid-caps can also apply to our Fast Track to the EIC Accelerator, where they skip step one (of three) in the EIC Accelerator application process and benefit from receiving expert feedback on their project idea and a live pitch practice.

Are you interested in benefiting from our Eurostars, Innowwide or Investment readiness programmes?

Learn about Eurostars Learn about Innowwide Learn about Investment readiness Learn about the Fast Track