SMART ERA — Followers Micro-Pilots
Free to start. We confirm your fit and quote a fixed price before you commit to anything.
SMART ERA
Free SMART ERA fit checkSMART ERA helps rural regions become "smart villages" by deploying digital solutions to real community challenges — agriculture, tourism, energy, mobility and healthcare. The 2nd call replicates proven Smart Innovation Packages in additional follower regions.
- Funding
- Community activator up to €30,000 and SME / technology orchestrator up to €60,000; a single applicant may cover both roles. Up to €90,000 per pilot.
- Who can apply
- SMEs, startups and research-based technology providers with solutions deployable in rural settings. The second call is thematically open: the official FAQ names social services, health, energy, mobility, climate adaptation, biodiversity, education and access to culture as examples — there is no restriction to a particular technology.
- Programme
- Run by a 25-partner Horizon Europe consortium (coordinator: Fondazione Bruno Kessler, IT), built around the four EU macro-regional strategies (EUSALP, EUSBSR, EUSAIR, EUSDR).
- Dutch applicants
- Dutch entities can take part only as Pilot Orchestrator, alongside a community activator established in one of the eligible follower regions.
- Deadline note
- 15 September 2026, 13:00 Brussels time (CEST) — a hard deadline, published in the Guide for Applicants.
- Deadline
- 15 Sept 2026(closes 13:00 Brussels time (CEST))— 1 days remaining
- Max grant
- €60,000
- Official source
- https://smartera-project.eu/ ↗
Is this the right call for you? 5 conditions decide it
- 01Your technology is below TRL 4 at application. The guide requires TRL 4 (validated in lab) at submission and a credible path to TRL 6 by the end of deployment — a lower bar than most cascade calls, but a bar.
- 02Your rural region is not in EUSALP, EUSBSR, EUSAIR or EUSDR. The call targets rural regions inside those four macro-regional strategies only, and the project may not run in one of the existing SMART ERA pilot regions.
- 03You have a technology but no community partner. A consortium needs a Community Activator with real local ties; a single entity may apply only if it can genuinely perform both roles, and then the ceiling drops to €60,000.
- 04Your proposal is a technology deployment rather than a co-designed package. The Smart Innovation Package has to combine a technological solution with non-technological, policy and business ingredients.
- 05You submitted more than once. Only the proposal filed closest to the deadline is considered; the earlier ones are discarded.
Not a match on one of these? Then this call is not the one, which says nothing about the next. Calls open continuously: the free Match Report tells you which call does fit, or tells you plainly that none of them do, and our weekly digest tells you when a call you can enter opens.
How many projects actually get funded?
Four. The call selects up to four proposals to establish four Follower Micro-Pilots, and the intention is one per macro-region. That is the smallest cohort of any open cascade call we track, and it should be the first number you weigh: clearing every eligibility condition still leaves you competing for one of four places. The counterweight is that the pre-selection is regional, so you are effectively ranked against applicants in your own macro-region rather than against all of Europe.
What TRL do you need, and is it really lower than other calls?
Yes, materially lower. You need TRL 4 at the moment you apply — technology validated in a laboratory — and you must be expected to reach TRL 6, demonstrated in a relevant environment, by the end of the deployment stage. Most cascade calls we work on require TRL 6 at submission, so SMART ERA is open to companies that IH-MIE, GRAPPA and ECDI would reject outright. If a call was ruled out for you on maturity grounds, this is the one to look at again.
How does the first filter actually work, and what is it scoring?
Before any expert reads your proposal there is an automated pre-scoring stage worth up to 120 points, based on options you select yourself in the application form. The weights are worth knowing: Characteristics of the Rural Region up to 40, Implementation up to 40, Excellence up to 20 and Impact up to 20. Two thirds of that first filter is therefore about the region and how the project is organised — the innovation itself carries 20 of 120. Up to 60 applications, at most 15 per macro-region, pass to expert evaluation.
What score do you need from the expert evaluation?
Three criteria are each scored from 0 to 5, with a minimum of 3 on every one and an overall threshold of 10 out of a maximum 15. After that the three best-ranked proposals per macro-region are invited to pitch to the Selection Committee in online sessions, indicatively in October 2026. So a proposal can pass every threshold and still not reach the pitch if two others in the same macro-region rank above it.
Once you win, is the money guaranteed?
No, and this is the condition most easily missed. Payment is split across milestone reviews and each one is scored. For the mentoring plan the weights are deliverable quality 90% and deadline compliance 10%; for technical deliverables they are technical performance indicators 60%, deliverable quality 30% and deadline compliance 10%. Each criterion is marked from 0 to 10 and you need 7 points to continue in the programme and to receive that tranche. Winning the call gets you the first tranche, not the total.
How is the money split between the two roles?
A consortium receives up to €90,000 as a lump sum: up to €30,000 for the Community Activator and up to €60,000 for the Pilot Orchestrator. A single entity covering both roles receives up to €60,000. The instalments follow the stages: up to €25,000 at the community-engagement milestone in month five, of which €20,000 goes to the activator and €5,000 to the orchestrator, and up to €45,000 on the technical solution report in month twelve. A single applicant receives up to €12,500 and €40,000 respectively.
Verified against SMART_ERA_2nd_OC_Guide_for_Applicants_FINAL.pdf, retrieved 20 August 2026 from the official open-calls page. Submission opened 12 June 2026, 09:00 Brussels time.. Official source: https://smartera-project.eu/ ↗
We match your technology to a follower region's challenge and help structure the activator + orchestrator roles. Start with a free Match Report.
- Why applications fail before the technology is read
Two administrative things decide a cascade application before its technical merit is weighed. Both are inside your control.
Ready for SMART ERA? Starting is free.
One structured intake, specific to this call. We confirm your fit, quote a fixed price, and only then decide together whether we write your SMART ERA application. No obligation, no sales call.
Prefer your own language? Start the intake in Dutch, French, German, Spanish or Portuguese — we assess in your language and write the application in English.
The calls worth knowing about, once a week.
Cascade calls are not published in one place. Each consortium announces on its own project website, and aggregators run weeks behind. We monitor the sources directly and send what we find, with our own reading of who it actually fits. No pitch, and one reply takes you off the list, the same day.