Summary

• A Horizon Europe call will provide €40 million for two networks of startup and scaleup hubs.
• Each network is expected to include around 10 to 18 hubs centred on strong research and venture building ecosystems.
• Shared facilities, staff mobility and a selective European accelerator form part of the programme.

The European Commission has opened a €40 million Horizon Europe call for two networks of startup and scaleup hubs, targeting the fragmented infrastructure surrounding European deep tech companies as they move from university research towards commercial growth.

Each proposed network is expected to connect around 10 to 18 established hubs built around higher education institutions, research organisations, entrepreneurs, corporates and investors. Applications close on 5 January 2027, with the successful groups expected to share facilities, specialist expertise and venture building support across national borders.

The programme is not designed as another pot of small grants paid directly to startups. It will fund the organisations around them, creating routes for companies to reach laboratories, research departments, investors and experienced operators that may not exist within their home city or region.

That structure addresses a practical weakness in Europe’s innovation geography. Strong research institutions can produce valuable intellectual property without being surrounded by the same depth of venture capital, commercial expertise or specialist facilities found in the continent’s better connected technology centres.

Capability has to move across regions

The call requires networks to combine leading and emerging hubs rather than assemble groups consisting only of the strongest existing ecosystems. Better established centres are expected to provide mentoring, shared services and capacity building for regions with fewer local resources.

Researchers, founders and hub staff should also be able to spend short periods working elsewhere in the network. That mobility gives the programme a physical component: access to another institution’s laboratory or specialist team should involve more than adding its name to a directory.

The Commission also wants the networks to connect companies with services that already exist through the Enterprise Europe Network, European Digital Innovation Hubs, industry clusters and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. The aim is to make the support landscape easier to navigate rather than duplicate every service within a new programme.

Whether that works will depend on execution. Europe already has a dense collection of regional, national and EU support schemes, and another layer of coordination can create more administration if startups still have to understand independently which organisation controls a useful facility or source of expertise.

The stronger version of the model would give a company one route into a broader network. A founder unable to access a particular laboratory, industrial partner or investor locally could be referred into another hub without having to rebuild the relationship from the beginning.

A European accelerator inside the network

Each network must also establish a selective acceleration programme for high performing startups. The Commission describes the concept as a European combinator, offering several months of structured development, mentoring, networking and investor exposure before demonstration events.

The accelerator can admit companies from outside the EU even though the wider programme is intended to strengthen European ecosystems. That reflects the difference between building European infrastructure and attempting to close it completely to international companies or talent.

The €40 million budget supports two networks rather than one, broadening the pilot while preserving a limit on how many hubs each group should contain. The structure suggests the Commission wants enough geographic coverage to bridge regional gaps without creating a network so large that access to specialist resources becomes nominal.

Deep tech makes that balance particularly important. Companies emerging from engineering, quantum, biotechnology or other research intensive fields can depend on expensive facilities and specialist staff for much longer than a conventional software startup. Replicating those resources in every region would be unrealistic.

Shared access can therefore reduce one barrier to commercialisation, although it cannot resolve every reason European companies struggle to scale. Later stage capital remains unevenly distributed, public procurement can be slow and intellectual property arrangements around universities vary substantially.

Cross-border laboratory access also creates practical issues around contracts, insurance, intellectual property and the movement of people or research material. A programme can encourage sharing, but participating hubs still have to design terms that make those resources genuinely usable by companies from elsewhere in the network.

The call sits within the EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy and the wider competitiveness agenda, both of which place more emphasis on turning Europe’s research strength into larger commercial companies. The Commission’s diagnosis is familiar: the continent produces high quality science but loses too many opportunities during the journey towards international scale.

This pilot concentrates on the infrastructure between those stages rather than assuming another financing instrument can solve the problem alone. Capital remains part of the network, but so do facilities, researchers, corporate customers and experienced company builders.

Consortia now have until January to show that their hubs can operate as a connected European system rather than a collection of local programmes. The €40 million budget is large enough to test that model seriously, but its success will depend on whether a founder in one region can actually use expertise and infrastructure located in another when the business needs it.