Commission approves EIC's 2026 work programme with €1.4bn budget.

The European Commission has adopted the 2026 work programme for the European Innovation Council (EIC) with funding of over €1.4 billion for strategic technologies and scaling up companies.

The EIC is Europe’s flagship innovation programme to identify, develop and scale up breakthrough technologies and game-changing innovations.

The programme, which was published on 06/11/2025, divides the funding into five main areas:

• EIC Pathfinder (€262 million) for multi-disciplinary research teams to undertake visionary research with the potential to lead to technology breakthroughs (grants up to €4 million);
• EIC Transition (€100 million) to turn research results into innovation opportunities, following up on results generated by EIC Pathfinder, European Research Council Proof of Concept, Horizon Europe Pillar 2 (societal challenges) collaborative projects and Research Infrastructures projects (grants up to €2.5 million);
• Advanced Innovation Challenges (€6 million) to support high-risk, demand-driven deep tech innovation with transformative potential, especially in areas where there is…