TL;DR: On 7-9 July 2026, the European Commission convened the EOSC Federation’s build-up group and its Horizon Europe-funded project community in Brussels. The meetings brought together 28 EOSC Nodes and representatives of 34 ongoing and forthcoming Horizon Europe-funded EOSC projects, marked the arrival of 14 second-wave EOSC Nodes selected in April 2026, and reaffirmed the Commission’s roughly €500 million Horizon Europe investment in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) to date.
What happened in Brussels
The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation hosted two connected meetings in Brussels: the fifth in-person gathering of the EOSC Federation build-up group on 7-8 July 2026, followed by the fifth annual coordination meeting for Horizon Europe-funded EOSC projects on 8-9 July 2026. The Commission described the overlapping schedule as a deliberate way to bring node operators and project teams into the same room, aligning day-to-day federation operations with the research being funded to build on top of it.
The numbers
- 28 EOSC Nodes took part in the Federation build-up group meeting — the operational building blocks of the EOSC Federation, each run by a national, thematic, or pan-European e-infrastructure partner.
- 34 Horizon Europe-funded EOSC projects, ongoing and forthcoming, sent representatives to the project coordination meeting, including 13 projects newly funded under the Horizon Europe 2025 Work Programme attending for the first time.
- 14 second-wave EOSC Nodes, selected by the EOSC Tripartite Governance in April 2026, formally joined the Federation, expanding both its geographic reach and its thematic coverage.
- Around €500 million in cumulative Horizon Europe investment in EOSC, covering support for the EOSC EU Node and roughly 50 projects, with further funding planned under the 2026 and 2027 Work Programmes.
Who the second-wave Nodes are
The 14 new Nodes span three categories, reflecting how the EOSC Federation is deliberately building out both national coverage and cross-cutting infrastructure rather than growing along a single axis:
- Eight national nodes: Czech Republic, Croatia, Latvia, North Macedonia, Sweden, Slovenia, Switzerland, and Türkiye.
- Three pan-European e-infrastructure nodes: GÉANT, EGI, and Scholarly Commons.
- Three thematic nodes: METROFOOD-RI, EBRAINS RI, and ENVRI.
Their addition means the build-up group now spans a mix of general-purpose national infrastructures and domain-specific research infrastructures, all federating through the same EOSC interoperability layer rather than operating as isolated repositories.
Why this matters for research data management
For research administrators and data stewards, the Brussels meeting is less a single announcement than a checkpoint on an infrastructure build-out that increasingly shapes what a compliant machine-actionable data management plan looks like for European-funded research. As more national and thematic nodes join the EOSC Federation, more institutions gain a route to make research outputs discoverable and reusable through the EOSC Marketplace in line with the FAIR Data Principles — without each institution having to build that interoperability itself. The scale of the Horizon Europe investment (~€500M to date, with more programmed for 2026-2027) also signals that EOSC funding and reporting obligations are not a transitional arrangement but a multi-year commitment institutions applying for Horizon Europe funding should plan around.
This build-out sits alongside, rather than replaces, the governance changes CASRAI covered earlier in 2026 — see EOSC Federation governance: what changed in 2026 for the node-membership criteria and sustainability funding model the Tripartite Governance put in place, which is the framework the April 2026 second-wave Node selection operated under.
What to watch next
The Commission has signalled further EOSC-related funding under the Horizon Europe 2026 and 2027 Work Programmes, meaning additional project cohorts and, plausibly, further Node selection rounds beyond this second wave. Institutions preparing Horizon Europe proposals with a data management component should confirm current EOSC Node coverage in their country or domain before finalising a Horizon Europe FAIR data management plan, since node availability affects what infrastructure a plan can credibly commit to using.
