Open calls · Research grant · Business, Management and Accounting
Open Call for New Ventures in Creative Tech (Spark)
BP26-28 EITCC · Horizon Europe cascade funding · EITCC BP26-28 · HORIZON-EIT-2025-KIC-IBA-CC
Deadlines
- 16 Nov 2026 Deadline in 5 days
Who can apply
- Countries
- EU member states and countries associated with Horizon Europe
Money
- Total budget
- €1
About the call
The Open Call for New Ventures in Creative Tech (Spark) supports early-stage founders and multidisciplinary teams in transforming validated business concepts into new, scalable and legally established ventures.
The 2027 cohort focuses on tech-centric solutions in Materials & Built Environment, particularly Fashion and Architecture. Applicants should already be testing, building or validating their business concept and must not have an existing registered company implementing the concept submitted under the call.
Selected applicants will receive up to EUR 30,000 in financial support under an actual-cost model and participate in a structured venture creation pathway consisting of an in-person Startup Sprint followed by a 9-month Spark Incubation Programme. The programme provides coaching, mentorship, business model development, company formation support, market validation and access to the EIT Culture & Creativity ecosystem.
Up to 35 venture concepts may be selected for the 2027 cohort.
Text from the funder (European Commission, CC BY 4.0).
Conditions in full
Applications must be submitted through the EIT Culture & Creativity online submission platform by 16 November 2026 at 17:00 CET.
Following the deadline, applications will undergo an admissibility and eligibility check conducted by EIT Culture & Creativity. Eligible applications will then be assessed by three independent external experts against the published evaluation criteria. Following the individual assessments, a consensus meeting will establish the final external evaluation scores and consolidated comments.
The 35 highest-ranked proposals from the external evaluation will be invited to an online portfolio selection interview with the EIT Culture & Creativity Selection Committee. The next 15 proposals will form a reserve pool for this stage.
Following portfolio selection, proposals meeting the applicable thresholds will be ranked according to their combined external evaluation and portfolio selection scores. Up to 35 applicants may be selected for the 2027 Spark cohort, subject to the conditions and available budget set out in the Call Guidelines.
We sort calls into fields, career stages and countries automatically. Always check the conditions on the funder’s page before you apply.
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