15-minute City : Evidence for the urban mobility transition
Coordinators Driving Urban Transition
- All sectors
EIC Accelerator 2025
- All sectors
- EU Open Calls
- Coordinators: Horizon Europe
- Opening of application: 16 May 2025
- Allocated budget: Combination of grant (up to 2,5M€) and equity (up to 10M€)
- End of applications: 1 October 2025
- Project duration: 24 months
- Project submitted on: Open calls
Objective
To support companies (SMEs, start-ups, spin-offs and in some cases small mid-caps) to bring their disruptive innovations to market and scale them up
Priorities
To scale up high impact innovations with the potential to create new markets or disrupt existing ones ;
To on scientific discovery or technological breakthroughs (‘deep tech’) and where significant
funding is needed over a long timeframe before returns can be generated (‘patient
capital’) ;
To support the later stages of technology development as well as scale up (at least TRL 5).
Eligibility
Eligible activities :
Typical expenditure costs :
- Direct personnel costs (scientists, techinal and administrative personnel)
- Direct subcontracting costs
- Direct purchase costs
- 25% of indirect costs
Non-exhaustive list :
- Development of protoypes;
- Pilot testing, demonstration in an operational environment;
- Development of minimum viable products;
- Preparation for industrialization, commercialization strategy;
- Business model, market studies, user testing, IP protection.
Eligibility :
This programme is mono-beneficiary :
1. Be established in one of the fllowing countires :
- Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions,
- the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States,
- Countries associated to Horizon Europe – Pillar III & low-and-middle-income countries
2. Single start-up or SME (including spin-outs)
3. Small mid-caps (up to 499 employees) in two scenarios :
- can apply for “investment only”
- can for “blended finance” in exceptional cases for rapid scale up of TRL 9.
4. Natural persons or legal entities willing to set up an SMEs or a mid-cap.
5. Applicants may submit only one application to the EIC Accelerator. Additional applications can be submitted after receiving the results of the original submission.
The application can be rejected maximum 3 times up until the end of the programme under Horizon Europe i.e. the end of 2027. (If you are successful at the short proposal stage, this does not count within the limit of three applications. If you are successful at the remote evaluation stage of a full proposal but then unsuccessful at the interview phase, this counts as one unsuccessful application.)
Different types of funding
Grant only: – for start-ups and SMEs with capacity to scale-up. To be provided only once during the implementation period of the Horizon Europe programme (2021-2027)(your application must demonstrate that you have access to the resources needed to commercialise and scale up your innovation)
Blended finance: a grant component & direct equity or quasi-equity such as convertible loans.
Investment only: for mid caps companies and companies that have received a «grant only».
You may adjust the EIC funding request when submitting your full proposal
Application Process :
1. Write your short proposal
Short proposals may be submitted at any time and which will be evaluated remotely by EIC expert evaluators on a first come, first served basis :
- A short form where you must summarise your proposal and respond to a set of questions on your innovation, your potential market and your team;
- A pitch-deck of up to ten slides in PDF format;
- A video pitch of up to three minutes where the core members of your team (up to three people) should provide the motivation for your proposal.
If your application meets the basic criteria, you will be invited to prepare a full proposal to submit to one of the periodic cut-off dates for funding.
Please note that short proposals are collected for evaluation on the first Tuesday of every month, and the results transmitted to applicants within 4 to 6 weeks of the date at which the evaluation is started.
It is therefore recommended to submit a short proposal at least 10 weeks ahead of the deadline of a full application
2. Prepare your full proposal
If your short proposal receives a GO, you can submit your full proposal to any of the 2025 – 2026 cut-offs.
Prepare your full proposal on Funding and Tenders portal. The full proposal consists of a full business plan, pitch deck in PDF & a 3 minutes video pitch.
You will get the result in a 8-9 weeks.
3. Pitch your innovation
If you receive a GO, you will be invited to an interview with an EIC jury. The interview will take place within 4–5 weeks after the announcement of the previous step’s results. The format will be determined later.
You will receive the interview results within 2–3 weeks.
October 1 cut off: interviews January 19-23, 2026
4. Due diligence
Negotiate the grant component, start due diligence for investment component
