Joint R&D Track
One project, two countries, one application.
Too big for an open call, too early for a €5-30M round, and not yours alone. A different kind of European money, with its own rules.
Written verdict in 5 working days. No calls, no obligation.
One story, several budgets.
Joint transnational programmes fund one R&D project carried out by partners in different countries. You submit a single application, but the money arrives separately: each partner is paid by their own national agency, under their own national rules, at their own national percentage.
Eurostars is the main programme. It runs two cut-offs a year, funds projects with an average total budget of around €1.5 million, and recommends roughly one in five submitted proposals for funding. For comparison: the EIC Accelerator funds about one in fifteen.
Primary
Eurostars
SME-led collaborative R&D. Any technology, any market, civil purpose only.
Adjacent
EIC Transition & Pre-Accelerator
Two narrower routes in the same size class, each with a hard entry condition.
It starts with a free written report.
A Joint Report checks two things: whether the programme fits your project, and whether your consortium holds up against its seven eligibility criteria. Failing any one of them ends an application regardless of how good the science is, so it is worth knowing before you start.
You have it within five working days of a complete written intake. A Joint Report is allowed to conclude “not yet”, and when it does it says exactly what would need to change.
Award decisions rest solely with the funding bodies. We never guarantee outcomes, and neither should anyone else.
The seven criteria we check
- An SME from a Eurostars country leads the consortium
- At least two entities, independent of one another
- Two Eurostars countries, one of them EU or Horizon-associated
- SMEs carry at least 50% of the project cost
- No participant or country above 70% of the budget
- Duration of 36 months or less
- Exclusively civilian purpose
Plus two that are not on the official list but are just as fatal: at least one participant must actually receive public funding, and every partner needs a PIC number before anything can be submitted.
The document is the product.
We write the application. Your technology, your market case, your consortium’s logic, set out as one project and mapped to the programme’s own evaluation criteria. That includes the part most applications get wrong: a budget that is internally consistent across partners while satisfying each country’s separate funding rules.
It is a substantial document. The Eurostars form asks fourteen assessed questions, three summary questions and nine further questions about every consortium member, plus work packages and a cost table. Written out in full that is well over ten thousand words, in English, all of it consistent with itself.
We also tell you when not to apply. If your partner is not committed, or your project is a bilateral supply arrangement rather than joint R&D, the honest answer is that this route will not reward the effort.
One requirement, stated up front
For Eurostars, you bring the partner. It needs at least two independent organisations from two Eurostars countries, and we do not broker consortia or introduce you to companies we have not worked with. It is the one thing we cannot write for you.
That is not true of the whole route. EIC Transition and the Pre-Accelerator accept single applicants, so a company without a foreign partner is not automatically out — it just means Eurostars is not the instrument. Working out which of the three fits is exactly what the free Joint Report does.
Two details that catch people out. The leading SME does not need a track record in R&D, so a first-time applicant is not disadvantaged. But a consortium in which everyone self-finances cannot be approved.
One fixed price, agreed before we start.
Free
Joint Report — your eligibility against the seven criteria and a verdict on the route, in writing, in 5 working days.
from €9,950
Joint Application — the complete application written, the multi-partner budget built, and the submission prepared for your consortium to file. €9,950 covers a two-partner consortium; every partner above two adds €2,500, because each one means an extra budget, an extra work package and an extra alignment round.
No success fee and no percentage of your grant. Eurostars runs two cut-offs a year: the current one closes 10 September 2026 at 14:00 CEST, the next has a March 2027 deadline. A joint application is realistically eight weeks of work, so if your partner is not already in place, March is your call.
Applications are submitted on the Eureka Project Management Platform by the consortium itself and cannot be modified afterwards. We prepare everything and hand it over, with a final check before you press send.
Sources: Eurostars application form v2.3 (June 2026) and Eurostars eligibility guidelines v5.3 (June 2026), both published by the Eureka Network; EIC Work Programme 2026. Eurostars is part of the European Partnership on Innovative SMEs, co-funded by the European Union through Horizon Europe. Eucade is not affiliated with Eureka or the European Commission.