What is "Financial Support to Third Parties"?
Some of the calls for proposals in Horizon Europe specify that consortia are expected to reserve a certain amount of their budget for so-called Financial Support to Third Parties (FSTP). This portion of the budget must be distributed to third-party organisations via grants, the idea being that these third parties should contribute to the project's expected outcomes through their grants while not actually being part of the consortium. This is a good way of including for example start-ups and SMEs in the EU projects ecosystem without them having to be full project beneficiaries with all the associated paper work.
The EC has published a guidance document on FSTP which we recommend to read for orientation, no matter whether you are a project beneficiary handling FSTP or interested in applying for FSTP grants yourself.
Currently open FSTP Calls from EU Projects
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Name and Link |
Objective |
Funding |
Opening |
Deadline |
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The CYSSDE Open Call 3 aims to strengthen the capacity of cybersecurity providers to deliver high-quality penetration testing and vulnerability assessment services, improving cyber resilience across EU critical sectors and supporting the implementation of NIS2 and the Cyber Resilience Act. |
Up to 200,000€ |
27 February 2026 |
28 April 2026 |
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The 1st Open Call of COP-PILOT project seeks to select innovators to integrate and test their digital solutions within the COP-PILOT framework, providing financial support and mentoring to accelerate technology adoption. |
Up to 200,000€ |
3 March 2026 |
4 May 2026 |
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The Open Call intends to integrate innovative technology solutions from startups and SMEs to solve specific technical challenges, ensuring the final inspection tools are market-ready. |
Up to 150,000€ |
2 March 2026 |
5 May 2026 |
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The EFCSN Innovation Grants Call aims to support fact-checking organisations in developing and scaling innovative tools, technologies, and interventions to counter disinformation and improve access to trustworthy information. |
Up to 30,000€ (50% funding rate) |
9 April 2026 |
8 May 2026 |
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The Call intends to integrate mature digital ocean applications, models and datasets into the EDITO platform to enhance data flows and modelling capacity for biodiversity and climate scenarios. |
Up to 600,000€ |
6 March 2026 |
11 May 2026 |
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The Open Horizons Open Call #3 aims to support early stage, women-led digital and deep-tech startups in Europe by funding the development and piloting of innovative solutions that address real corporate challenges, while enabling collaboration with major European companies to accelerate market validation and scaling of their technologies. |
Up to 55,000€ equity-free funding |
2 March 2026 |
19 May 2026 |
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The JARVIS Open Call 2 aims to support SMEs and startups in developing, integrating, and validating innovative AI and human-robot collaboration solutions within JARVIS pilots, enhancing productivity, safety, and flexibility in real industrial environments. Two different actions: Track 1 CO-DEVELOPERS (for technology providers developing new components and functionalities for JARVIS) and Track 2 EXTERNAL PILOTS (for real-world pilot projects applying JARVIS technologies in industrial or public environments) |
Track 1 Up to 100,000€ |
1 April 2026 |
1 June 2026 |
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Track 2 Up to 130,000€ |
1 April 2026 |
10 July 2026 |
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The NGI Fediversity Open Call aims to fund free and open source R&D projects that contribute to building a secure, scalable, and user-controlled next-generation internet infrastructure, enabling easy deployment of reliable and interoperable online services. |
Up to 50,000€ |
1 April 2026 |
1 June 2026 |
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The NGI Zero Commons Fund Open Call aims to fund free and open source R&D projects that contribute to building the digital commons, supporting technologies that are openly accessible, reusable, and strengthen a more trustworthy, resilient, and user-controlled internet, with recurring calls launched approximately every two months. |
Up to 50,000€ |
1 April 2026 |
1 June 2026 |
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The NGI TALER Open Call aims to fund free and open source R&D projects that contribute to developing and expanding privacy-preserving digital payment systems based on GNU Taler, supporting a more secure, transparent, and user-controlled digital economy. |
Up to 50,000€ |
1 April 2026 |
1 June 2026 |
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The InDiCo Global Third Open Call aims to provide training for staff of non-EU/EFTA digital/ICT standards bodies and landscaping studies. |
Up to |
1 June 2025 |
1 June 2026 |
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The AIoD funding programme aims to support projects that advance research and innovation in AI aligned with EU strategic priorities, funding collaborative consortia that develop, validate, and implement trustworthy, ethical, transparent, and human-centred AI solutions with tangible impact across sectors. |
Pitch & Select: 5,000€ |
9 April 2026 |
8 June 2026 |
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Integration: 35,000 € |
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Deployment: 20,000 € AI Provider & 15,000 € AI Adopter |
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The ODEON Open Call aims to support SMEs in developing and validating innovative, data-driven and AI-powered energy services by leveraging the project’s federated data platform and technologies, contributing to a more resilient and digitalised energy ecosystem. |
Up to 60,000€ |
8 April 2026 |
9 July 2026 |
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Forthcoming FSTP Calls
- The Second Call for Pilots Work Strand 3 - New Advanced AI-Based Tools to the LDTs Toolbox (LDT4SSC Project) last open call aims to fund pilot projects across Europe that develop, connect and scale Local Digital Twins for Smart Sustainable Communities
(More information coming soon, launch 13 May 2026)
Have you spotted an FSTP opportunity that we have missed? Or are you planning to run an FSTP call related to digital technologies in your EU project and would like to advertise it here? Then please send an e-mail with the relevant information to Diego Coglitore ([email protected]) and Jessica Bonanno ([email protected]).
Where to find further FSTP opportunities
Finding FSTP opportunities is not always easy. Some EU projects publish their FSTP calls on the Funding & Tenders Portal, while others have beneficiaries like who are specialised on running FSTP calls and publish these on their own portals. Some others publish FSTP calls only on their project website. Portals you can check regularly yourself include:
- The Funding & Tenders Portal
- The Cascade Funding Hub
- The OnePass portal
- The F6S portal
Ongoing initiatives regularly offering financial support for third parties
- Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU)
- Next Generation Internet (NGI)
- EU Cloud Edge IoT (CEI)
- European Institute of Innovation & Technologu (EIT) Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC)
- AI on-demand platform (AI4EU)
- Quantum Flagship (QT)
Past initiatives
Do you want to learn about previous initiatives and results of cascading grants?
- Innovation for Manufacturing SMEs (I4MS)
- Smart Anything Everywhere (SAE)
- Open Data Incubator Europe (ODINE)
- European Data Incubator (EDI)
- European Coordination Hub for Open Robotics Development (ECHORD++),
- Access Center for Photonics Innovation Solutions and Technology Support (ACTPHAST),
- Supercomputing Exercise for SMEs (SESAME NET)