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Home / Horizon Europe / HORIZON-CL4-2026-SPACE-03-31

Digital enablers and building-blocks for Earth Observation and Satellite telecommunication for Space solutions (Space Partnership)

Open now · HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions · HORIZON-CL4-2026-SPACE-03-31

Next cut-off
16 Sept '26
in 10 days
Per grant
€4.0M
the call's own average
Grants expected
3
projects that will be funded
Funding rate
100%
the full cost of the action

In context of Horizon Europe

This grant€4.0M
The track runs to the largest grant in Horizon Europe (€171M). The median across the 482 calls we publish is €5.3M, this one is below it.

What this call funds

Expected Outcome:

The topic encompasses actions within the scope of the co-programmed European Partnership on Globally Competitive Space Systems (‘Space Partnership’) in the areas of satellite communication (SatCom), Earth Observation (EO) and New Commercial Space Transportation Solutions and is part of cohesive activities in the domain of digital developments under the grand heading of “digitalisation for commercial space solutions”.

Digitalisation is a major enabler for enhancing the value of an End-to-End EO and SatCom system. Under the area of Using Space on Earth related to SatCom and EO, below this topic focus on the fast increment of the Low to Mid TRL level building blocks for key technologies[1] required to strengthen competitiveness in these domains.

Projects are expected to contribute to one or several of the following outcomes:

  • New commercial services and applications enabled by increased digitalisation of space solutions;
  • Favouring a competitive and sustainable European Space Sector;
  • Enable the European Space Industry to maintain a significant share of the global connectivity market;
  • Next generation Earth observation and SatCom payloads, technologies and processing means (on ground and in space);
  • Security of SatCom and EO services, supporting next-generation technologies for both ground and space commercial applications;
  • Improved access to satellite data through interoperable systems.

This will contribute to developing, deploying global, more flexible and reactive space-based services applications, to contribute to fostering the EU's space sector competitiveness, as stated in the expected impact of this destination.

Scope:

The areas of R&I, which needs to be addressed to tackle the above-mentioned expected outcomes are:

Trimmed here, the full scope, expected outcomes and award criteria are on the official topic page ↗.

What applying costs you

ItemEstimateNote
Drafting effort6–8 weekssingle submission
Partner search4–8 weeksruns in parallel, and it is the part that slips
Time to first payment6–9 monthscut-off → evaluation → grant agreement

These are Bemzu's estimates from the call's structure (the number of stages and whether a consortium is required) not figures published by the Commission. Only the co-financing share is read from the call itself.

Where these conditions come from

Two kinds of row. Most are the sentence we read the condition from, quoted out of the call itself. Some say plainly that they are not a quotation but the programme's own rule for this type of action, the EU portal publishes a table of contents where the conditions should be, so for a Research and Innovation Action the rate comes from the rulebook rather than from the fiche.

ConditionQuoted from the call, or the rule behind it
Consortium sizeNot quoted from this call — Research and Innovation Actions under the Horizon Europe rules are at least three independent legal entities from three different Member States or Associated Countries, at least one established in a Member State.
Funding rateNot quoted from this call — Research and Innovation Actions under the Horizon Europe rules are funded at 100% of eligible costs for every participant.
MaturityTechnology Readiness Level - Technology readiness level expected from completed projects Activities are expected to achieve TRL 4-5 by the end of the project.

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