How to Apply for EU Funding: 7 Steps to Portal Submission

By Aoba Works · Published October 30, 2026 · 15 min read

How this guide was made: drafted with AI assistance from the official sources linked below, then passed an automated editorial check before publishing. Our process

• Eu Funding
• Horizon Europe
• Funding And Tenders Portal

How you apply for EU funding depends first on who manages the money. Centrally managed programmes such as Horizon Europe, the EIC, Digital Europe and the Innovation Fund take applications on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal. For ESF+ and most agricultural (CAP) money, you apply to an authority in your own country, using national forms and rules. This guide covers the Portal route in seven steps, then the national routes for ESF+ and CAP, and what changes after Horizon Europe ends in 2027.

Which option is right for you?

Choose your route based on who manages the money. Use the table below to find the first page to open.

On a small budget, start with the free help: your National Contact Point (NCP) and the Enterprise Europe Network. Both are covered under "Next steps".

How to Apply for EU Grants: The 7-Step Overview

Applying for EU grants takes seven stages: find a call, check eligibility, register (EU Login and PIC), prepare the proposal with templates, assemble partners, submit on the Portal, and track the evaluation. The Commission tells applicants to read the How to participate section and its Online Manual before starting. The Portal Online Manual covers the whole grant lifecycle.

The table below gives each stage, the official page to use and the deadline that applies to it.

Stage 7 has fixed legal limits in Horizon Europe. Article 31 of Regulation (EU) 2021/695 gives the Commission a maximum of 5 months to inform applicants and 8 months to sign grant agreements, both counted from the submission deadline. For two-stage calls, first-stage results come about 3 months after the first deadline (HRB summary). Plan your cash flow with this in mind. If you submit in spring, money will not arrive before the following year.

Where to Find Open EU Funding Calls

You find open EU funding calls with the Funding & Tenders Portal search. You can filter it by programme, submission status and keyword. Calls for ESF+ and CAP do not appear there in full, because national authorities publish them.

The Portal search works like this (Online Manual: Find a call; ISED walkthrough):

1. Open the Portal. In the Funding drop-down menu, click Calls for proposals.
2. Under Programming period, choose 2021–2027.
3. Under Programme, choose for example "Horizon Europe", "Digital Europe Programme" or "Innovation Fund".
4. Under Submission status, tick Open for submission and Forthcoming. Forthcoming calls give you the most preparation time.
5. Type a keyword into Quick search, for example "hydrogen", "soil" or "social inclusion". Use All filters to narrow by type of action.
6. Open a topic. Its page lists the deadline, the budget, the type of action, eligibility conditions and the link into the submission system.

If you are logged in, the Portal can save your searches and send you its own email alerts. For calls where funded projects pass money on to third parties (cascade funding), see Cascade Funding Open Calls: Portal Filters and 2026 Dates.

Example: suppose you are an agri-tech startup. You could filter Programme = Horizon Europe, Submission status = Forthcoming and search "soil". That surfaces Cluster 6 topics from the 2026–2027 work programme before they open.

Common mistakes:

• Reading a third-party summary of a call instead of the official topic page. Summaries leave out conditions. Always check the official topic text.
• Treating "Closed" topics as useless. A closed topic often comes back in the next work programme in a similar form, so read it to prepare.
• Looking for national ESF+ or CAP calls on the Portal. They are mostly not there (see the sections below).

Eligibility Checklist: Who Can Apply for EU Funding

Your eligibility depends on three things: your type of entity, the country you are established in, and whether the call requires a consortium. Every topic page lists its own conditions, and the work programme can override the default rules.

Pitfalls and fixes:

• Affiliated partners do not count as independent. Two subsidiaries of the same group, or three organisations in the same country, do not meet the three-country minimum (FFG). Fix: count your independent entities and their countries before you invite anyone else.
• The topic text overrides the default. Some topics add extra conditions, such as a required type of partner or a limited set of countries. Fix: read the "Conditions" part of the topic page next to the General Annexes.
• Non-EU organisations sometimes assume they get funded automatically. Being allowed to participate does not always mean being funded. Fix: check the participating countries list before you budget your role.

How to Apply for the European Social Fund (ESF+)

You apply for ESF+ through a managing authority in your own country or region, not through the central Portal. The only exception is the small EU-level EaSI strand. Calls, eligibility and co-financing are set nationally.

The numbers explain why. ESF+ has a budget of €142.7 billion for 2021–2027. About €142 billion of that runs under shared management by member states (€95.1 billion of it from the EU budget). The Commission-run EaSI strand has close to €762 million (fi-compass). Public bodies, private companies (especially small businesses), universities, associations and NGOs can all receive the national funding, but eligibility is decided "at the national and regional level in each country" (ESF+: how to access funding).

Steps for the national strand:

1. Open The ESF+ in your country and choose your country.
2. Read the national or regional ESF+ programme to see which priorities your project fits, such as youth employment, skills or social inclusion.
3. Find the managing authority's contact details on that page, then go to its national ESF+ portal for open calls.
4. Apply in the national system using the national forms and the national co-financing rules.

Steps for EaSI (EU-level):

1. Check the annual work programme. The Commission says it is published in Q4 (ESF+).
2. Search the Funding & Tenders Portal for EaSI calls and submit there, with a PIC, like any other centrally managed grant.

Example: in France, the official service-public.gouv.fr page describes the national ESF+ application procedure. Other countries have their own equivalents, linked from the ESF+ country pages.

The most common mistake is writing a Horizon-style proposal for an ESF+ call. National ESF+ calls use their own templates and scoring. Use the documents the managing authority provides.

EU Funding for Agriculture: Key Programmes to Know

EU funding for agriculture flows mainly through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), via national CAP Strategic Plans. For research-driven projects, there is also Horizon Europe's Cluster 6 (food, bioeconomy, natural resources, agriculture and environment).

There are 28 plans because Belgium has two (Flanders and Wallonia) (approved plans list). So the first step is the same for every farmer: find your country's or region's plan and the measure that matches your investment. CAP payments do not run through Portal topics.

Choose by what you want to do. To fund farm investment or income support, go to CAP. To test a new method with research partners in several countries, go to Cluster 6. If you are an SME with a farming technology product, also read EIC Grants 2026: 7 Open EU Calls for SMEs.

One timing note: the CAP after 2027 is being negotiated as part of the next budget. The Council agreed its negotiating position on the future CAP on 26 October 2026. That is not final law, so do not plan around draft figures.

Post-Horizon Europe Climate Funding: What's Next

Horizon Europe runs until 2027. The Commission proposed a €175 billion successor (FP10) for 2028–2034, but as of October 2026 the next EU budget is not agreed. Climate funding continues meanwhile through the remaining Horizon Europe calls and the Innovation Fund.

What is confirmed (as of October 2026):

• FP10 proposal. On 16 July 2025 the Commission proposed the 2028–2034 Framework Programme with a €175 billion budget (European Commission; House of Commons Library). It is linked to a proposed €409 billion European Competitiveness Fund, which would manage €68 billion of collaborative research (Science|Business).
• Council position. Member states agreed a partial position on FP10 on 26 June 2026. Budget and horizontal issues were left out because they are tied to the wider budget negotiations.
• No budget deal yet. EU leaders did not agree the 2028–2034 budget at their 15–16 October 2026 summit (Agence Europe). The Council timeline tracks progress.
• The Innovation Fund is active now. The IF25 Net-Zero Technologies call closed on 23 April 2026 with 358 applications. On 19 October 2026 the Commission selected 77 projects for €3.4 billion in grants across 23 EEA countries (Climate Action). The call asked for €17.5 billion in total, about six times its €2.9 billion budget (ieu-monitoring).

Pitfalls:

• Waiting for FP10. The 2026–2027 Horizon Europe work programmes still have deadlines. Ready projects should apply now instead of waiting for a programme whose budget and rules are still open.
• Quoting draft structures as fact. Instrument names and budget shares in FP10 may change during negotiations. In a proposal, cite only adopted texts.
• Underestimating competition. At six times oversubscribed, the Innovation Fund rewards mature, bankable projects. Early-stage ideas fit Horizon Europe or the EIC better.

Assembling a Consortium and Partners for Your Application

Many EU calls need a minimum number of independent partners from different eligible countries. For Horizon Europe RIA/IA, that is three from three countries. Use the Portal Partner Search, NCPs and the Enterprise Europe Network to find partners well before the deadline.

Steps:

1. Set your gap list. From the topic's expected outcomes, write down the roles you cannot cover, for example "end-user pilot site in southern Europe" or "life-cycle assessment".
2. Search the Portal. Use the Portal's Partner Search. You can search by keyword, geographic area or funding type. The results show organisation profiles, their past funded projects and contacts.
3. Search the EEN database. The Enterprise Europe Network's Partnering Opportunities database is free and has profiles from more than 60 countries, including research cooperation requests (EEN Poland).
4. Ask your NCP. The Horizon Europe NCP Portal lists NCP networks, and several of them run partner-search services.
5. Collect PICs early. Every partner must be registered in the Participant Register with its own PIC (Online Manual). Send new partners the PIC registration guide.
6. Agree the basics in writing. Before drafting, agree roles, budget shares and who coordinates.

Pitfalls and fixes:

• A partner without a PIC in the last week. Validating a PIC takes time. Fix: make "PIC exists" a condition for joining.
• Too many partners. Evaluators assess the capacity and role of each participant against the topic, not the number of partners, so a large consortium is not scored higher in itself (Online Manual). Fix: give every partner a role that clearly matches the topic's expected outcomes.
• Spending budget on a partnership agreement too early. Under Horizon Europe, the costs of preparing the proposal and the consortium agreement are generally not eligible for funding (Annotated Grant Agreement). Fix: keep pre-award costs low.

Submitting Your Application on the Funding & Tenders Portal

To submit, you need EU Login access, a coordinator PIC, completed administrative forms (Part A) and the technical annex (Part B) uploaded as a PDF. The system closes automatically at 17:00 Brussels time on the deadline day. Late submissions are not accepted.

The sequence below follows the Proposal Submission Service user manual:

1. Log in with EU Login. Two-factor authentication is required; see EU Funding and Tenders Portal Two Factor Authentication 2026.
2. Open the topic page and click Start submission.
3. Create the draft. Enter the coordinator's PIC (Step 3 of the wizard) plus the proposal acronym and short summary.
4. Under Step 4, manage participants by adding each partner's PIC and contact persons.
5. Edit the online Part A forms. Download the Part B template from inside the system. Do not use an old copy from a previous call.
6. Upload Part B and any other annexes as PDFs. Multiple documents such as CVs must be merged into one PDF of up to 10 MB (Proposal Submission Service user manual).
7. Click Validate. This checks the whole draft and shows errors and warnings, including missing fields and page or file problems.
8. Click Submit. The system combines everything into one document and creates an e-receipt with the date and time. All coordinator contact persons get a confirmation email.
9. Until the deadline, you can still update, download or withdraw the proposal. Each new submission replaces the previous one.

For guidance on writing Part B against the evaluation criteria, see Horizon Europe Proposal Template Part B: 2026 Scoring Map.

Pitfalls and fixes:

• Submitting at 16:55. Upload problems at the last minute cannot be fixed. Fix: submit a complete version at least 48 hours early, then resubmit improvements. Re-uploading before the deadline has no limit.
• Going over the page limit. Excess pages may not be evaluated (Online Manual). Fix: check the limit on the topic page and run Validate after every upload.
• "Validate" passing and no submission made. Validating does not submit. Fix: check that the status in My Proposals shows Submitted. See My Proposals: Status Table.

Next steps

You can do the next steps yourself today. Free public help is available if you get stuck, and paid consultants are an option if you would rather hand the work over.

Do this today:

1. Open the Portal Calls for proposals page. Set Submission status to Forthcoming and Open for submission, filter by your programme, and save two or three topics that match your project.
2. Check whether your organisation already has a PIC. If not, start registering now using the PIC guide.
3. If your project is about jobs, skills or farming, open your country's ESF+ page or CAP Strategic Plan instead, and write down the managing authority's contact.

If you would rather not do it yourself:

• National Contact Points (free as of October 2026; check the official page). Each country's NCPs give free advice on Horizon Europe calls and eligibility, and sometimes partner search (NCP Portal). This suits first-time applicants who need someone to check their topic choice. It does not suit people who want someone to write the proposal: NCPs advise, they do not draft.
• Enterprise Europe Network (free as of October 2026; check the official page). It is a good fit for SMEs looking for partners through the partnering database. It is less useful for academic consortia that already have research networks.
• Private grant consultants (paid). There is no official EU price list. Each firm sets its own fees, often a fixed fee, a success fee or both, so get a written quote that says who owns the text. Consultants suit companies with no time to write but a strong project. They do not suit very early ideas. One limitation: under Horizon Europe, proposal-preparation costs are generally not eligible for reimbursement (Annotated Grant Agreement), so you pay these fees from your own budget even if you win.

Related guides on this site: PIC registration in 6 steps · Two-factor authentication 2026 · Part B scoring map · EU funding for SMEs: open 2026 calls · My Proposals status table

FAQ

How to apply for EU grants as a first-time applicant?

Start as a partner in someone else's consortium rather than as coordinator. You still need EU Login and a PIC, but the coordinator handles the submission. Ask your National Contact Point to check that your chosen topic fits before you commit time to it. Read the topic's conditions and the General Annexes before you write anything.

Can non-EU countries apply for EU funding agriculture programmes?

CAP support is paid through the member states' CAP Strategic Plans, so it is for beneficiaries in the EU. Horizon Europe Cluster 6 is different: entities from Associated Countries can be funded, and some third-country entities can take part depending on the participating countries list and the topic text. Always check whether participation actually comes with funding.

What happens to Horizon Europe projects after the programme ends in 2027?

Grants signed under Horizon Europe run for their full contracted duration, including after 2027, under their grant agreements. New calls from 2028 are expected under FP10, which the Commission proposed with €175 billion. Its final budget and rules depend on the 2028–2034 budget negotiations, which were still open in October 2026.

Do NGOs need a PIC number to apply through the European Social Fund?

For national ESF+ calls, the managing authority decides what registration you need, and that is usually a national system rather than the PIC. For EU-level EaSI calls submitted on the Funding & Tenders Portal, you need a PIC like any other Portal applicant. Check the call documents for which strand you are applying under.

Sources

• EU Funding & Tenders Portal – Calls for proposals
• Online Manual – Find a call
• EU Funding & Tenders Online Manual (PDF)
• Proposal Submission Service User Manual
• Portal – Find partners
• Digital Europe – How to get funding
• REA – Horizon Europe: How to apply
• HRB – Horizon Europe guide, step 6
• ISED – Finding Horizon Europe calls
• FFG – Minimum conditions for participation
• KoWi – Rules of participation
• ESF+ – How to access funding
• ESF+ – In your country
• fi-compass – ESF+
• service-public.gouv.fr – Applying for ESF+
• CAP Strategic Plans 2023–2027 factsheet
• Approved 28 CAP Strategic Plans
• FFG – Horizon Europe Cluster 6
• Horizon Europe Work Programme 2026–2027, Cluster 6
• Innovation Fund – IF25 NZT call
• Innovation Fund – Calls for proposals
• ieu-monitoring – IF call draws €17.5bn
• European Commission – Horizon Europe
• House of Commons Library – Horizon Europe 2028–2034
• Science|Business – €68B in Competitiveness Fund
• Council – Position on FP10 (26 June 2026)
• Council – CAP negotiating position (26 October 2026)
• Council – MFF 2028–2034 timeline
• Agence Europe – MFF summit October 2026
• Annotated Grant Agreement v2.0
• Horizon Europe NCP Portal – Partner search
• Enterprise Europe Network – Partnering opportunities
• EEN Poland – Offer of cooperation

Spotted something out of date or wrong? Tell us at shigoto.ai.note@gmail.com. Guides are re-checked against official sources on a rolling schedule.