Open Horizons Project Final Call 2026: up to 55,000 EUR for women-led early-stage deep-tech and digital startups

Open Horizons Project Final Call 2026: up to 55,000 EUR for women-led early-stage deep-tech and digital startups

This page is a historical reference for Open Horizons Open Call 3, the project’s final open call for women-led digital and deep-tech startups. The call is closed. The official European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA) listing records a single-stage deadline of 19 May 2026 at 17:00 CEST, and the Open Horizons project website now states that all of its open calls are closed. There is no later deadline or newly announced replacement cycle on the official sources checked for this update.

The programme was funded under Horizon Europe and connected selected startups with corporate partners for a short, structured open-innovation process. It was not an open-ended grant or a general-purpose accelerator application. The final call was built around specific corporate challenges, an inception stage, and a possible pilot stage. Readers can use the information below to understand the closed opportunity, compare it with similar cascade-funding programmes, or follow published results and project updates. They should not treat this page as an invitation to submit a new application.

At-a-glance details

What the final call offered

Open Horizons Open Call 3 was intended to identify promising women-led startups in Europe that were still early enough to benefit from structured support and corporate validation. The official call described the target group as digital and deep-tech startups at an early stage. Applicants had to address one of twelve corporate challenges, with examples including AI for engineering simulations, secure model exchange, intelligent tax solutions, biodegradable materials, AI-powered logistics, food-loss upcycling, energy efficiency, sustainable formulation, enterprise AI assistants, forecasting, and industrial process optimisation.

The challenge requirement was central to the programme design. A startup was not expected to submit a broad company profile and wait for a generic grant award. It needed to explain how its product or technical approach responded to a defined business problem and how collaboration with a corporate partner could produce a meaningful pilot. That made the opportunity relevant to teams with a specific use case, a credible implementation plan, and the ability to work with a large organisation during a limited programme period.

The support was equity-free, but it was tied to milestones rather than paid in one unrestricted instalment. The official EISMEA listing described the following maximum structure:

• 10,000 EUR after completion of the 1-month Inception Stage.
• 20,000 EUR after the mid-term review of the pilot.
• 20,000 EUR after successful completion of the pilot.
• 5,000 EUR after participation in the final Demo Day.

The maximum total was therefore 55,000 EUR per selected startup. Up to 16 startups could enter the Inception Stage, while up to 7 could advance to the 5-month Piloting Stage with a corporate partner. Those numbers describe a selective progression path, not a promise that every eligible applicant would receive the full amount or enter the pilot phase.

Eligibility for the closed cycle

The final call’s published eligibility rules were cumulative. An applicant needed to satisfy each applicable condition before its proposal could be considered for the substantive evaluation stages. The startup had to be established in an EU Member State or a Horizon Europe Associated Country and qualify as an autonomous small or medium-sized enterprise. The EISMEA page specified that the business had to be registered between 6 months and 6 years old at the relevant point in the call.

The financial threshold was also explicit: the startup could have raised no more than 1,000,000 EUR in equity. This condition was not the same as a general limit on revenue, grants, or every form of non-dilutive support. Applicants needed to read the full guidelines for the precise interpretation of the financing test and provide a consistent financing history in their application materials.

The women-led requirement combined leadership and ownership. The company had to be founded or co-founded by a woman who held a top management position and owned at least 25% of the company’s shares. A team could not rely on a passive founder role or on an informal advisory position to satisfy that requirement. The ownership and management facts needed to be clear from the company’s records and application answers.

Finally, the business had to operate in a digital or deep-tech sector and align with one of the published corporate challenges. The official descriptions referenced areas such as artificial intelligence, advanced computing, cybersecurity, next-generation internet, blockchain, the Internet of Things, energy, green technology, agritech, and fintech. The challenge list on the final-call page supplied the more specific route into the programme. A proposal that did not establish a clear connection to one challenge would have been a poor fit even if the company met the general demographic, geographic, age, and financing conditions.

How applications were submitted and evaluated

Applications for this cycle had to be submitted exclusively through the Sploro platform. The EISMEA notice did not describe email submission as an alternative, and the official project materials directed applicants to the online application route. Because the call used a single deadline, applicants needed to complete the platform form, attach the requested supporting information, select a relevant corporate challenge, and submit before the stated cutoff. The practical application instructions and challenge details were contained in the programme’s Guidelines for applicants linked from the official listing.

The published evaluation path had several stages. First came an eligibility check against the formal requirements. The process then included red-flag checks, independent expert evaluation, interviews, and final selection. This sequence matters when interpreting the maximum funding: passing the administrative check was not equivalent to being selected for Inception, and entering Inception was not equivalent to advancing to a corporate pilot.

A strong submission for the closed cycle would have needed to make five things easy to verify:

1. The legal entity, country, SME status, age, ownership, and management information.
2. The amount of equity previously raised and how that figure was calculated.
3. The single corporate challenge being addressed.
4. The proposed pilot, including what the startup would build, test, measure, and deliver.
5. The team’s ability to work with a corporate partner and respond to milestone reviews.

The official process also included interviews for shortlisted applicants. That meant a concise written application was only part of the selection work. Founders needed to be prepared to explain the technical proposition, the customer or operational problem, the pilot setting, and the evidence that the team could execute within the programme’s short stages.

What the programme stages meant

The Inception Stage was designed as a one-month preparation and validation period. The programme website describes this phase as including business-model work, pilot planning, meetings with corporate partners, a Business Model Canvas, a Pilot Plan, and a pitch of the proposed pilot to the matched corporate. The 10,000 EUR tranche was associated with completion of this stage.

The Piloting Stage was planned for five months and was available only to startups approved to continue. It involved a real-world pilot with a corporate partner, advanced training and coaching, KPI monitoring, and a final Demo Day. The three pilot-related payments were linked to a mid-term KPI review, a final review, and Demo Day participation. In practical terms, a selected startup needed to treat the grant as support for a defined collaboration with measurable outputs, not as unrestricted working capital.

The corporate connection was a defining feature. Open Horizons positioned the programme around real industry challenges and partner collaboration, so a proposal needed more than a technically interesting product description. It needed to show why the selected challenge mattered, what a corporate partner could test, what evidence would be available by the end of the pilot, and how the result could support later commercial or investment conversations.

What applicants should retain for future comparisons

Although Open Call 3 is closed and the official project site does not announce a new cycle, its rules remain useful as a comparison point for other European startup programmes. The most important lessons are the strict combination of criteria and the staged funding design.

First, geographic eligibility was tied to the applicant entity, not simply to the founder’s nationality or to a market served by the product. Second, the women-led test required both a current top management role and at least 25% ownership. Third, the age and equity thresholds made this a programme for relatively early-stage ventures rather than mature scale-ups. Fourth, the challenge alignment requirement made corporate relevance a screening issue, not a decorative paragraph.

The funding structure also shows why applicants should read milestone language carefully. The headline amount was up to 55,000 EUR, but only 10,000 EUR related to the Inception Stage. The remaining 45,000 EUR was tied to advancing into and completing the pilot path. A company planning its cash flow would therefore need to distinguish the maximum programme value from the amount available at each stage and from any conditions attached to each payment.

Current archive status and official follow-up

The official EISMEA page marks the final call as closed and identifies it as the third and final Open Horizons call. The official Open Horizons website also says that all open calls are closed. For that reason, this entry keeps the closed cycle’s real deadline in the deadline field and sets historicalReference = true. It does not use a fabricated future date, a rolling label, or an empty deadline.

The EISMEA listing said that results would be announced in August 2026. That statement described the expected result timing for this closed call; it was not a new application window. Anyone researching the programme should consult the official EISMEA listing and the Open Horizons project website for result announcements, cohort news, and any future project notices. A future opportunity should only be added to this page after the programme publishes a new official call with its own rules and deadline.

The verified official listing is:

https://eismea.ec.europa.eu/funding-opportunities/calls-proposals/open-horizons-project-final-call_en

The project website is:

https://www.openhorizonsproject.eu/

These sources establish the final call’s status, deadline, budget, eligibility outline, submission channel, selection sequence, and staged support. They also provide the appropriate place to check whether the consortium publishes any later announcement. Until then, Open Horizons Final Call 2026 should be treated as a completed programme round and an archive reference for women-led European digital and deep-tech startup funding.