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.
Did you know? You can find a collection of Horizon Europe Cluster 4 Digital call topics involving FSTP in the Ideal-ist Topic Tree's "ecosystem bubble for Financial Support to Third Parties (FSTP)".
Currently open FSTP Calls from EU Projects
|
Name and Link |
Objective |
Funding |
Opening |
Deadline |
| AI-BOOST AI Challenge Competition | The AI-BOOST AI Challenge Competition aims to support the development of innovative Generative AI solutions addressing real-world industrial challenges in robotics, engineering, healthcare, and mobility through a two-phase open innovation competition. | For each challenge, five teams receive a €28,500 prize to develop their solution in the Spark Phase, while the best team after a five-month validation programme wins a final €100,000 prize | - Challenge 1–2: opening 19 June 2026 - Challenge 3–4: opening 3 July 2026 |
- Challenge 1–2: deadline 25 August 2026; - Challenge 3–4: deadline 8 September 2026 |
| StandICT.eu 2029 Open Call 3 | The StandICT.eu 2029 Open Call 3 aims to support European ICT standardisation experts in contributing to international and European Standards Development Organisations (SDOs), with a particular focus on cybersecurity and the Cyber Resilience Act, while also covering key digital technologies such as AI, 5G/6G, IoT and quantum technologies. | Experts can receive up to €10,000 for long-term contributions or €5,000 for short-term contributions | 13 July 2026 | 2 October 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)