What is a brokerage event?
Brokerage events are one of the most favored forms of partner search and consortium building in Horizon Europe. A matchmaking event is a quick and easy way to meet potential cooperation partners. Ahead of the meeting, participants upload profiles, expertise offers and cooperation ideas to the event platform. Based on these, participants book meetings with each other. At the event, participants meet at high speed, in brief 15-20 minute meetings.
When and where are brokerage events?
The largest brokerage events used to take place at the European Commission's major events. At each of these events, Ideal-ist, as a network of national contact points, used to collaborate with the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) to organise a brokerage with Face2Face meetings for participants.
As these large events are no longer offered by the European Commission, Ideal-ist and EEN are branching out into other opportunities to organise matchmaking:
- Online matchmaking: Since the start of Horizon Europe in the middle of a pandemic, the EC has been organising Info Days for Cluster 4 purely online. Ideal-ist and EEN regularly support these with a matchmaking platform that allows registered participants to meet each other online.
- Presidency events: Each year, there is budget set aside in Cluster 4 for the respective council presidency country to organise an onsite digital-related presidency event. In 2024 (Brussels, BE) and 2025 (Aalborg, DK), Ideal-ist and local EEN partners organised onsite matchmaking in the venue.
- Partnership events: The assocations behind the co-programmed partnerships in Cluster 4 have various events throughout the year, some of which have a suitable timeline and sufficient physical space available to organise matchmaking for the Cluster 4 calls.
- Partnership / EC onsite info days: Due to the aforementioned lack of large EC events, some units within DG CONNECT have taken to organising their own smaller onsite Info Days with pitching sessions for the specific call topics that they manage, often in collaboration with a partnership.
Where can I find information about these brokerage events?
In 2026, Ideal-ist started using an online community platform license to be able to cover multiple online and onsite brokerage sessions with the same platform. Take a look to see how this works:
https://www.b2match.com/e/cl4-digital2026-matchmaking
The "Events" tab in the platform lists the onsite matchmaking opportunities covered by the platform. Online matchmaking is available throughout the year now.
How can I support my community?
Tell your participants to be visible! At brokerage events, they can publicize their expertise and project ideas, and meet with others to set up future Horizon Europe cooperations. You can advise them on Horizon Europe call requirements and help them build attractive profiles. You can also be invited to join the platform as a co-organiser to be more visible as an NCP and to check the needs of participants from your country.
Read our Brokerage Event Guideline. If you have any questions, contact the events task leader or the proposer services work package leader. You can find both of them in the Who is Who Guide.