NOSTRADAMUS · Open Call 1

Your free NOSTRADAMUS intake

Up to €50,000 at 100% of project costs, for a company that builds an open-source farm decision-support application on the NOSTRADAMUS data platform. Five grants, deadline 2 December 2026, 17:00 CET. This intake follows the real application: the F6S online form and the Annex 2 Technical Proposal. We check your answers against the call's own eligibility criteria and come back in writing within 2 working days, including an honest "not this call" where that is the answer.

This form is in English only, because the whole application must be in English. Under each question you can see where it sits in the official application, so nothing you write here is wasted. We work entirely in writing: no calls. Start with the eligibility questions — if the call does not fit, we tell you there and you can stop.

1. Eligibility: can you apply at all?

The guide lists fifteen eligibility criteria (Guidelines for Applicants, Table 2). Failing any one of them ends the application at the first check, before an evaluator reads a word. These questions cover every criterion that depends on you rather than on how the proposal is written. About three minutes.

What type of organisation would lead the application? *

F6S form, Section 2, field 5 "Type of organisation" · Guidelines Table 2, criteria 13.1–13.2

Start-up or SME: fewer than 250 employees and turnover up to €50 million or balance sheet up to €43 million. Small mid-cap: fewer than 499 employees and turnover up to €100 million or balance sheet up to €86 million.

How many people does your company employ (headcount in annual work units)? *

Guidelines 3.1.1.1 and Table 2 criterion 8 · checked against your SME Declaration (Annex 4) at contracting

Count employees, owner-managers and partners working regularly in the company. If your company is part of a group, the group's figures may count — see the next questions.

Annual turnover or balance sheet total *

Guidelines 3.1.1.1 · SME Declaration (Annex 4), box "Data used to determine the category of enterprise"

Use the last approved accounts. A start-up without accounts yet qualifies on headcount and a reliable estimate.

Is your company part of a group?

SME Declaration (Annex 4), "Type of enterprise": autonomous, partner or linked

"Partner" means another company holds 25–50% of yours, or you hold 25–50% of another. "Linked" means more than 50%, or consolidated accounts. In both cases part or all of the other company's headcount and money count towards your size.

Is your company a registered legal entity with a VAT number? *

F6S form, field 7 "VAT number" · Guidelines 3.1.1.1 and Table 2 criterion 7

Country where your company is legally established *

F6S form, field 6 "Country" (same country list) · Table 2 criterion 7

The F6S form offers exactly this list. EU Member States and countries associated to Horizon Europe are eligible.

Does your company have a PIC number?

F6S form, field 8 "PIC number" (N/A is accepted) · FAQ p.5

The Participant Identification Code from the EU Funding & Tenders Portal. Not a knock-out: the form accepts N/A, and registering takes a few days.

Will you apply alone or with a second partner? *

F6S form, fields 14–23 "Applicant 2" · Annex 2, table "Applying Beneficiaries"

The €50,000 ceiling is per project, not per partner.

Technology Readiness Level of your solution today *

Annex 2, section "Solution Readiness Levels", Table 1 · Table 2 criterion 14

TRL 4 means the technology has been validated in a lab. By month 12 the solution must reach TRL 7: a system prototype demonstrated in an operational environment at a NOSTRADAMUS pilot site.

Is your organisation, or your partner, involved in any other proposal to this call? *

Table 2 criterion 9 · Declaration of Honour (Annex 3.1), point 2

This includes any linked company, and any individual member of your proposal team. With a partner, answer for both: each partner signs the same declarations (Annex 3.2).

Is your organisation, or your partner, a partner in the NOSTRADAMUS consortium, or formally linked to one? *

Table 2 criterion 10 · Declaration of Honour (Annex 3.1), point 3a

The guide asks you to check the list of consortium partners on nostradamus-project.eu. It includes the coordinator ERATOSTHENES Centre of Excellence, the topic mentors (BioSense Institute, ITC, DLR) and the Open Call manager F6S, but also the demonstration-site partners. Check the full list before you answer.

Is your organisation, or your partner, subject to EU restrictive measures (sanctions)? *

Table 2 criterion 11

Is your organisation, or your partner, in any of the exclusion situations below? *

F6S form, field 27 "Declaration of Honour" · Annex 3.1, points 1a–f

Bankrupt or being wound up; under administration or an arrangement with creditors; in arrears with tax or social security; an enterprise in difficulty; or the company or its directors convicted of fraud, corruption or grave professional misconduct; penalised for misrepresenting information or in serious breach of an EU grant or contract; or excluded from EU funding by a national or EU authority.

Has your organisation, or your partner, received EU or national funding for the same product or activities? *

Guidelines 3.1.4 and 3.2.1 · Declaration of Honour (Annex 3.1), point 5

Previous grants from the sister projects OpenAgri or AGRARIAN are allowed, but must be declared, and the new work must be distinct.

Can the project be done for €50,000 or less, covering 100% of its costs? *

Annex 2, "Total Requested Funding" and Table 6 · Table 2 criterion 12

Personnel, travel to the mandatory demo events, equipment depreciation, software, data and other direct costs, plus 25% indirect costs. Subcontracting is not eligible.

2. Topic and demonstration site

Which topic would you apply under? (choose one) *

F6S form, Section 3, field 24 · Annex 2, "Basic information" · Table 2 criterion 6

3. What winning commits you to

Can you commit to the fixed 12-month programme, including two months of mandatory training? *

Table 2 criterion 15 · Guidelines 6.1

Sprint 1 training (months 1–2, at least 10 hours of guided sessions), Sprint 2 design with local stakeholders (months 3–4), Sprint 3 development and validation (months 5–10), Sprint 4 demonstration and training on site (months 11–12). A report is due a week after each sprint.

If you are among the top three in your topic, can the project lead attend a 30-minute online interview? *

Guidelines 4.3 "Interviews"

Expected by 26 February 2027, under the guide's indicative timeline. You pitch and answer questions from the evaluators and the consortium's technical leads; you cannot add new information there.

Can you finance the work ahead of the payments? *

Annex 2, section "Financial Capacity" · Annex 3.1, point 4b

There is no advance. You receive 10% after month 2, 25% after month 4, 40% after month 10 and 25% after month 12, each after your sprint report is approved. The proposal must show you can carry the work in between.

Can you publish the source code developed in the project under an OSI-approved open-source licence? *

Annex 2, section "Exploitation Strategy & Open Source Code Release" · Annex 1.1, REQ-POS-01 to 06

The code developed with the grant goes into a public repository under an OSI-approved licence such as MIT or Apache 2.0, with documentation. Pre-existing IP, personal data and confidential information can stay closed if you justify it. The results remain yours. This is a programme requirement you confirm in the proposal, not an eligibility check, but it decides whether the grant is worth it for you.

4. Contact

Your name *

F6S form, field 10 "Name of main contact person"

Email *

F6S form, field 12 "E-mail address"

Company (official legal name) *

F6S form, field 4 "Organisation/Entity Name"

Your role in the company

F6S form, field 11 "Contact person's role/position"

Company website *

F6S form, field 9 "Organisation website"

5. Your proposal in short

Working title or acronym (if you have one)

F6S form, fields 1–2 "Proposal title" and "Proposal acronym"

Your proposed application in brief *

F6S form, field 3 "Proposal abstract", maximum 1,500 characters including spaces

What the application does, for whom, and what changes for the farmer. This field may be published by the project, so write it as you would want it public.

0 / 1500

The farm problem you solve, and for whom *

Annex 2, section "Strategic Fit & Problem Statement" · scored under Alignment

The agronomic, operational or business problem of your target users in cereal-based production. Numbers help: yield gaps, input overuse, drought losses, pest outbreaks.

Which NOSTRADAMUS components would your application build on?

Annex 2, section "Proposed Solution & Novelty" · checked again in the interview

Tick everything that applies. In the interview the consortium's technical leads check whether your application really uses these components; a farm app that would run just as well without the platform is passed over.

Open Data Cubes (Pillar I) — Copernicus/EO dataIoT Observatory (Pillar II) — field sensor streamsApplication Generation Engine / low-code platform (Pillar III)Core module M1 — Drought monitoringCore module M2 — Yield / crop suitabilityCore module M3 — Soil and nutritionCore module M4 — Pest managementNot sure yet

How your application uses them, and what is new about it

Annex 2, sections "Proposed Solution & Novelty" and "Innovation, Novelty & Advancement Beyond State-of-the-Art"

Two or three sentences on the data flow, and on what your application does that tools deployed today in the target region do not.

Evidence for today's TRL, and the route to TRL 7

Annex 2, Table 1 "Solution Readiness Levels" (current and target TRL)

What exists today (prototype, lab tests, pilot users, background IP), and the steps to a demonstration in operational conditions within 12 months.

Who would do the work

Annex 2, Table 3 "Consortium Personnel & Expertise" (incl. gender) · Implementation criterion

Names or roles, in-house people only (subcontracting is not eligible). The proposal lists each person with role and gender, and gender balance of the team is both scored and used as a tie-break.

Who validates the solution at the demonstration site?

Annex 2, section "Envisioned Solution & Practical Deployment Plan"

If you apply alone, your company must both provide and validate the solution, usually with local stakeholders of the Multi-Actor Platform. If you have a partner, it is the partner's role.

Anything else

Anything else we should know

We reply in writing within 2 working days. Your answers are used only to assess this application and are never shared with third parties.

Applications are submitted by your company on the F6S platform: the online form plus the Technical Proposal (Annex 2, at most 20 pages, PDF). We write the proposal and prepare the form answers, and hand both over for you to place and submit. The deadline is 2 December 2026 at 17:00 CET and is hard.

If the call fits and you decide to proceed, writing the application for one company is €2,450 excluding VAT, including preparation for the 30-minute interview if you are invited. For a business customer elsewhere in the EU the reverse-charge mechanism applies once you supply a valid VAT number; for a Dutch customer 21% VAT is added. It starts with an Application Plan at €450 excluding VAT, deducted in full from the application price if the Service Agreement is signed within 30 days of delivery of the Plan. An application with a second partner is quoted before we start. No success fee. This intake itself is free and carries no obligation.

Every condition on this page is taken from the official call documents v1.0: Guidelines for Applicants (Annex 1), Technical Specification (Annex 1.1), Technical Proposal template (Annex 2), F6S application form model (Annex 2.1), Declarations of Honour (Annexes 3.1 and 3.2), SME Declaration (Annex 4) and the FAQ of 29 September 2026, as published on nostradamus-project.eu/open-call-1.