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 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 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 GUARDIANS Open Call #2 – Test Before Invest aims to support small and medium-sized farms in testing and validating innovative digital and agroecological technologies in real farming environments before investing in their large-scale adoption, helping improve sustainability, resilience, and productivity in agriculture. |
Up to 10,000€ | 1 May 2026 | 1 July 2026 | |
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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.
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Up to 60,000€ |
8 April 2026 |
9 July 2026 |
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The CIRCAT Open Call 1 aims to strengthen the cybersecurity preparedness and resilience of large industrial operations and critical infrastructures by supporting collaborative projects that develop and deploy advanced cyber-security solutions, mutual assistance mechanisms, and incident response capabilities across Europe. |
Up to 40,000€; Co-financing: Minimum 50% of total project costs |
8 May 2026 |
9 July 2026 |
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| LDT4SSC 3rd Call | The LDT4SSC last open call aims to fund pilot projects across Europe that develop, connect and scale Local Digital Twins for Smart Sustainable Communities |
Up to 1M€ Co-financing: Minimum 50% of total project costs |
13 May 2026 | 13 July 2026 |
| COSMIC Open Call | The COSMIC Open Calls aim to support SMEs and startups developing AI- and data-driven solutions for energy optimisation, enabling them to integrate and validate their technologies within large-scale pilots that contribute to the European Green Deal and a more sustainable energy ecosystem. | Up to 150,000€ plus a 10-month support programme | 20 May 2026 | 20 July 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)