Eurostars – for small and medium-sized enterprises

Norway will participate with funding in the Eurostars call in March 2024. The call will be launched 12 January, with deadline 14 March 2024.

Eurostars is a part of EUs Partnership for Innovative SME's (small and medium sized enterprises) in EU's Horizon Europe. The partnership is co-funded by EU.

Norwegian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that carry out research and development may seek funding for R&D projects from the Eurostars Programme. To be eligible for funding, projects must seek to develop new products, services or processes to be introduced to the market soon after project completion. The projectsd must have international collaboration. Funding is available in all branches of industry and may address any technological area.

Eurostars is a support scheme for SMEs planning an R&D project with international cooperation. Eurostars projects are collaborative projects, where all partners shall have a clear role in the project and interest in the result.

Information about the application and application deadlines

There are two application deadlines in Eurostars each year, one in the spring and one in the autumn.

The next call for proposals will be launched in January 2024 and will have an application deadline of 14 March 2023. The calls for proposals are published six weeks before the application deadline. The call will be launched on the European website in January.

Read more about the call here.

The EUREKA Secretariat organizes a webinar for new applicants who may be useful to attend. This will be arranged in connection with the call for proposals. Information about the webinar will be published in January.

Applications must be created via Eurostar's international pages.

The main partner in the project submits the application on behalf of all project partners in the consortium. To access the application form, one must register on the Eurostars website.

You can also find information about Eurostars and announcements on the Eureka website.

Who can apply for funding?

Eurostars is mainly for SMEs. All Norwegian Eurostars applications must include a Norwegian SME. Research institutes, universities and university colleges and large enterprises may be partners, but the project must be led by a SME.

Norwegian SMEs and other Norwegian partners can only submit one grant application per call and at any given time participate in a maximum of two ongoing Eurostars projects.

If you have two ongoing projects, at least one of these projects must be completed before you can submit a new grant application.

To qualify for funding, the project must meet a number of criteria

  1. The applicant company must fall under the definition small or medium-sized enterprise
    (SME definition | Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (europa.eu))
  2. All partners must be able to finance their own part of the project.
  3. SMEs must have at least NOK 500 000 in equity at the time of the (Documentation requirements: Publicly approved annual accounts. Alternatively, in the event of a capital increase, there must be a declaration from the auditor, lawyer, financial institution/bank or accountant).
  4. The main partner/project manager submits the application on behalf of all project partners in the consortium.
  5. At least 50 percent of the total project costs must be covered by the partners in the project. Subcontractors cannot therefore exceed the total project costs by 49 per cent.
  6. In the project, there must be cooperation between several companies, or between companies and R&D institutions.
  7. Cooperation between at least two independent partners from at least two Eurostars countries. The project must have a clear goal of new product, process or service.
  8. Introduction to the market/commercialisation must be planned soon after the end of the project.
  9. The activities that can be supported must fall under the definition of industrial research or experimental development.

See more detailed information on the criteria for support in Eurostars here.

Blått flagg med gule stjerner med teksten "European partnership, Co-founded by the European Union"

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