Eureka Eurostars: How SME-Led Cross-Border Consortia Get Funded

Eureka Eurostars is an international funding programme for collaborative research and development projects led by innovative small and medium-sized enterprises. Each partner is paid at home by its own national funding body, not by Eureka.

What is Eureka Eurostars and who does it fund?

Eureka Eurostars funds collaborative research and development projects led by innovative small and medium-sized enterprises. The Eureka Network calls it the world’s largest SME R&D funding programme Eurostars is part of the European Partnership on Innovative SMEs and co-funded by the European Union through Horizon Europe.

Eurostars is bottom-up. There are no themes, no priority sectors and no topic list. Any civil application in any field qualifies, which is rare in European funding and the main reason it suits companies whose project does not fit a Horizon Europe call.

The programme runs two cut-offs a year. A cut-off is simply Eurostars’ word for a call deadline.

Brit Helle, Director General of the Eureka Network, described the programme in July 2026 as “a great opportunity to bring organisations together from across the world”.

Scale is modest by EU standards and that is the point. The Eureka Network reported in July 2026 that the most recent call supported 110 innovation projects involving 328 organisations across 28 countries.

Who is eligible for Eurostars funding?

The Eureka Network sets seven international criteria. Your consortium must be led by an innovative SME from a Eurostars country. It needs at least two independent entities from at least two Eurostars countries, one of them an EU or Horizon Europe Associated Country. Miss one criterion and the application is rejected before evaluation.

Source: Eureka Network, Eurostars programme page, checked 18 August 2026.

Criterion 3 catches people out. Canada, Singapore, South Africa and South Korea are Eurostars countries. None is an EU Member State or a Horizon Europe Associated Country, so a German and Canadian pair fails criterion 3 on its own.

Criterion 6 is a hard limit, not a guideline. Thirty-seven months is ineligible.

Who actually pays for a Eurostars project?

Your own National Funding Body pays, not Eureka. The Eureka Network operates a decentralised model in which organisations receive no money from Eureka itself. Each national body decides independently which organisations it funds, which activities are eligible, and at what rate. One consortium therefore runs on several separate funding decisions at once.

Rates vary widely. Across the country sections of the Eureka Call 11 page, checked in August 2026, they run from roughly 25% to 100% depending on the country and the type of organisation.

Your partner’s rate is not your rate, and your partner’s cap is not your cap.

The headline figure you see quoted is therefore rarely the figure you receive. One biotech client had an assay it could not build alone and a partner abroad with the lab automation capability it lacked. The consortium filed one joint application, and each side was funded at home under its own rules. The German partner’s share came to roughly €460,000, with the partner abroad funded in parallel by its own agency, as our Eurostars biotech transnational case study sets out.

How much can a German partner receive?

A German SME receives up to 50% of eligible project costs. The maximum grant is €500,000 for all German partners per project, per the Eureka Call 11 country section for Germany, checked in August 2026. That ceiling is per project, not per partner, so two German participants share one grant.

The German funding body for Eurostars is the Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR). The national contact point is hosted by the DLR Project Management Agency.

German rates and limits, per the Eureka Call 11 country section (checked 18 August 2026):

• SMEs: up to 50% of eligible project costs.
• Research organisations and universities: up to 100%, but only if a German SME in the consortium takes on a considerable amount of the R&D work.
• Large companies: no funding at all in Germany. They may participate, but must file a self-funding declaration.
• Maximum grant: €500,000 for all German partners per project.

You will see that ceiling quoted as €500,000 per partner. It is not.

Here is an illustrative calculation, using the 50% rate and the €500,000 ceiling published for Germany. Two German SMEs each hold €400,000 of eligible costs. At 50% they request €200,000 each, or €400,000 combined, which sits inside the ceiling. Now double their budgets: each requests €400,000, the combined ask is €800,000, and €300,000 of it cannot be funded.

The international application can still score well. The German money simply is not there.

Three further German rules disqualify projects quietly:

• Clinical trials are not funded.
• Only R&D activities up to Technology Readiness Level 6 are eligible, so a proposal running to TRL 8 is internationally valid and nationally unfundable.
• Costs must be calculated in the DLR’s easy-Online tool and submitted with the Eurostars application.

Changes under the General Block Exemption Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2023/1315, substantially affect eligible overhead costs. For that reason the Eureka Call 11 page, checked in August 2026, states that all German SMEs should contact the German Eurostars team before applying. Treat that as an instruction, not a suggestion.

Choosing partners: the 50/70 test and the country-budget trap

Run two arithmetic checks before you agree a consortium. First, do the SMEs from Eurostars countries hold at least 50% of total project cost, excluding subcontracting? Second, does any single participant or country exceed 70%? A two-partner project where one side does most of the work usually fails the second test.

Next, check whether your partner’s country has money at all. Several do not.

Source: Eureka Network, Eurostars Call 11 country information, checked 18 August 2026.

Cyprus is a further case. The Eureka Call 11 page, checked in August 2026, states that its entire national programme budget is already committed across calls 9 to 13.

Budgets also move between calls. Greece funded Eurostars partners in Call 11 but has no allocated budget for Call 12, according to the Eureka Call 12 page checked in August 2026. Singapore is the reverse. Check the country section of the call you are actually applying to, not the one you read last year.

How are Eurostars applications evaluated and ranked?

Three independent experts score each project against three criteria: Quality and efficiency of the implementation, Impact, and Excellence. Funding then depends on rank rather than on a threshold. Only the best 200 projects scored by the remote experts progress to the Independent Evaluation Panel, per the Eureka Call 11 page, checked in August 2026.

Each criterion has its own sub-criteria, and Impact carries the ones SMEs most often underwrite: market size, market access and risk, competitive advantage, and commercialisation plans.

Three conditions decide funding: a rank inside the best 200, a positive legal and financial viability outcome for every partner, and a panel rating of excellent or good.

Ranking changes the writing task. You are not clearing a bar. You are competing for a place in a ranked 200.

The Eureka Network publishes no official success rate. Figures circulating online are consultancy estimates, so treat the top-200 cut as the only hard number you have.

How long does Eurostars take, from deadline to money?

Call 11 closes on 10 September 2026 and the funding decision is communicated by mid-December 2026, around three months later. Eureka’s objective is that agreements with your national funding body are signed five to seven months after the submission deadline, per the Eureka Call 11 page, checked in August 2026.

Call 11 opened on 9 July 2026 and closes on 10 September 2026 at 14:00 Brussels time. Call 12 opens on 17 December 2026 and closes on 4 March 2027.

The Eureka Call 11 page, checked in August 2026, sets out what happens next:

1. Eligibility check, within one week of 10 September 2026.
2. Legal and financial viability check, mid-October 2026.
3. Expert evaluation by three independent experts, mid-October 2026.
4. Independent Evaluation Panel and ranking, end of November 2026.
5. Ethics review, end of November 2026.
6. Funding decision communicated, mid-December 2026.

A funding decision in December does not put cash in the bank in December.

German applicants have one more clock. National applications must be submitted within two weeks of being requested by the DLR, and that request only arrives after a positive evaluation and once funding is secured.

Eurostars against the alternatives, and what the ZIM stop changes

Since 7 July 2026 at 12:00 the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE) has accepted no new ZIM applications, for all project forms and project outlines. Reopening is targeted for early 2027 and depends on the 2027 federal budget, per the BMWE notice of 7 July 2026.

Eurostars is unaffected, and the reason is structural rather than lucky. ZIM sits with the BMWE. Eurostars in Germany sits with the BMFTR, a different ministry on a different budget line. Separately, and this is a distinct point, the ZIM notice exempts applications with international partners under open bilateral and multilateral calls from the stop.

Our explanation of what the ZIM application stop means in practice covers the domestic route in detail.

One honest caveat on timing. If you need money this quarter, Eurostars is the wrong instrument. Five to seven months to a signed agreement is a long time to carry a development budget. For a wider comparison, see how Eurostars compares with the other EU programmes.

Why do Eurostars applications fail?

Six failure modes account for most of the damage. The most expensive are a consortium assembled three weeks before the deadline, a budget that breaks the 50/70 split, and two German partners planned against a single €500,000 ceiling. Every one of them is visible in the proposal, and every one is avoidable with earlier planning.

• A consortium assembled three weeks before the deadline. Evaluators score quality of the consortium and added value through cooperation. Fix it by starting partner conversations for Call 12 now.
• A budget that breaks the 50/70 split. Fix it by modelling the split before agreeing work packages, not after.
• Two German partners planned against one €500,000 ceiling. Fix it by deciding early which German entity carries the grant.
• A proposal written above TRL 6. Fix it by scoping the German work packages to development, not demonstration at scale.
• No commercialisation case. Impact is a full third of the score. Fix it with market size, route to market and named prospective customers.
• Missing annexes. The commitment and signature form and the SME declaration are mandatory. Fix it by collecting signatures a fortnight early.

A Eurostars application is really two applications on different clocks: one joint international proposal on myeurekaproject.org, and a national filing with DLR Projektträger due within two weeks of being requested. To have both run properly, our Eurostars consulting is success-based, so it costs nothing unless the grant lands.

This article is general information, not legal or financial advice. National rules change between calls, so confirm your figures with your national funding body before you commit budget.