Widening Participation is Horizon Europe’s dedicated equity mechanism, channelling funding through instruments such as Teaming, Twinning and ERA Chairs to 15 lower-performing “Widening countries” plus qualifying Associated Countries. Every project funded under these instruments — like every other Horizon Europe grant — is bound by the same immediate open access and FAIR data obligations, which means institutions with the least administrative capacity face the same compliance bar as long-established research offices.
Widening Participation and Strengthening the European Research Area (WIDERA) is Horizon Europe’s fourth “transversal” element, sitting alongside the programme’s three main pillars. Its purpose is definitional: WIDERA exists to close the research and innovation performance gap between EU member states, not to relax the rules that apply once funding is awarded.
- What is Widening Participation in Horizon Europe?
- Which countries and instruments does it cover?
- How do open access and open data requirements apply?
- Building compliance capacity from scratch
- Widening Participation: frequently asked questions
- What this means for the 2026-2027 work programme
What is Widening Participation in Horizon Europe?
Widening Participation and Spreading Excellence is the set of Horizon Europe actions that build research and innovation capacity in countries whose institutions have historically won a disproportionately small share of competitive EU funding. According to the European Commission’s Research and Innovation portal, Widening countries accounted for just 5.1% of the total Horizon 2020 budget as of February 2021 — up from 4.2% under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) and 4.8% in 2018, a slow but measurable trend the current work programme is designed to accelerate.
WIDERA is not a side grant scheme. It is a structural correction mechanism embedded in the same legal and reporting framework as every other Horizon Europe action, including its Open Science obligations.
Which countries and instruments does Widening Participation cover?
Under the Horizon Europe Regulation, the 15 Widening countries are Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Associated Countries with equivalent research and innovation performance characteristics, plus the EU’s Outermost Regions, are also eligible. The UK is not a Widening country — but as a Horizon Europe Associated Country since 1 January 2024, UK-based institutions remain eligible as project partners in most Widening actions, even where only Widening-country institutions can act as coordinators.
Three instruments do most of the equity-building work:
| Instrument | Purpose | Coordinator eligibility |
|---|---|---|
| Teaming for Excellence | Creates or modernises centres of excellence in Widening countries via strategic partnership with a leading institution abroad | Widening-country institution, conditional on securing complementary structural-fund investment |
| Twinning | Links a Widening-country institution with at least two top-class counterparts in different EU or Associated Countries for networking and knowledge transfer | Widening-country institution acts as coordinator |
| ERA Chairs | Attracts a high-level researcher to a Widening university or research centre and integrates a new research team into that institution | Widening-country institution hosts the chair |
The 2026-2027 work programme adds further routes, including the European Excellence Initiative, Pathways to Synergies, the Dissemination and Exploitation Support Facility, the Hop-on Facility, Excellence Hubs and ERA Talents — each aimed at a different stage of institutional capacity-building.
How do open access and open data requirements apply to Widening countries?
Horizon Europe’s Open Science policy applies uniformly: there is no reduced-compliance track for Widening-country grantees. Every beneficiary must provide immediate open access to peer-reviewed publications, with no embargo period, deposited as a machine-readable copy in a trusted repository and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) or an equivalent open licence.
Research data falls under the same expectation of being findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR), consistent with the standards this site tracks elsewhere in its research-data vocabulary. The practical consequence for a widening-country institution is that open access compliance capacity — repository infrastructure, licensing know-how, data management planning — has to exist from day one of a grant, not be built up over a project’s lifetime.
- No embargo is permitted on peer-reviewed outputs, regardless of an institution’s prior publishing infrastructure.
- CC BY (or equivalent) licensing must be agreed before submission, not retrofitted after acceptance.
- Data management plans are a deliverable, assessed on the same timetable as for established research-intensive universities.
Building compliance capacity from scratch
Institutions applying for Teaming, Twinning or ERA Chairs funding for the first time typically lack a dedicated open access office, an institutional repository, or staff experienced in Horizon Europe’s grant agreement terms. The European Commission has built dedicated support around exactly this gap rather than leaving it to individual institutions.
Three support channels are worth prioritising early in a widening-country institution’s planning:
- NCP_WIDERA.NET — the network of National Contact Points that provides free guidance on eligibility, proposal writing and reporting requirements specific to Widening actions.
- The Dissemination and Exploitation Support Facility — free-of-charge expert support to help Widening-country beneficiaries meet dissemination obligations, including open access planning.
- The Hop-on Facility — allows a Widening-country institution to join an already-running Horizon Europe Pillar 2 or EIC Pathfinder consortium, gaining compliance experience without having to coordinate a new proposal.
For research administrators building this capability, mapping open science obligations against institutional workflow — who owns the repository deposit step, who signs off the data management plan, who tracks embargo-free publication dates — is the highest-leverage early task. Framing this against the broader discipline of research administration practice, rather than treating it as a one-off grant condition, is what allows the capacity to outlast any single Teaming or Twinning project.
Widening Participation: frequently asked questions
What are the widening countries in Horizon Europe?
The 15 Widening countries defined in the Horizon Europe Regulation are Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Associated Countries with comparable research performance, and the EU’s Outermost Regions, are also eligible for Widening actions.
Is the EUI Widening Europe Programme the same as Horizon Europe’s WIDERA?
No. The European University Institute’s Widening Europe Programme is a separate, institution-level initiative supporting scholars from Widening countries. Horizon Europe’s WIDERA is the EU-wide funding mechanism behind Teaming, Twinning and ERA Chairs; the two are complementary but administratively distinct.
What this means for the 2026-2027 work programme
The European Commission published the WIDERA Work Programme 2026-2027 on 11 December 2025, confirming that Teaming, Twinning and ERA Chairs continue as core instruments alongside the newer capacity-building routes. For institutions in widening countries, the equity mandate and the open science mandate are not competing priorities — they are the same compliance obligation, assessed on the same grant agreement. Building repository infrastructure, licensing literacy and data management capability now, rather than reactively per project, is what determines whether a widening-country institution can convert a single Teaming or ERA Chairs award into a durable research administration function.
