CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: horizon europe funded projects

  • Horizon Europe Funded Projects: A CORDIS Guide

    Horizon Europe funded projects can be found and verified using CORDIS (the European Commission’s project and results database), the EU Funding & Tenders Portal, and the EU Open Data Portal. Together these three sources let research offices and journalists confirm a grantee’s funding claim, check participant lists, and pull bulk data for institutional funding intelligence — without relying on a press release alone.

    CORDIS is the European Commission’s public repository of information on all EU-supported research and innovation activities, covering Horizon Europe, Horizon 2020, and earlier framework programmes. Horizon Europe itself is the EU’s research and innovation programme running from 2021 to 2027 with a total budget of €95.5 billion — equivalent to more than £82 billion, per UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). For research administrators fielding a grantee’s funding claim, or journalists fact-checking a university press release, CORDIS and its companion open-data channels are the primary — and only authoritative — verification path.

    Table of Contents

    What Is CORDIS and How Does It Differ from the Funding & Tenders Portal?

    CORDIS (the Community Research and Development Information Service) is the European Commission’s archive of completed and ongoing EU-funded research, published once a project’s grant agreement is signed. It holds project factsheets, participant lists, publications, and results summaries. It is a record-of-outcome database, not a live application system.

    The EU Funding & Tenders Portal is the operational counterpart: it hosts open calls, submission tools, and — via its “Projects & Results” screen — a live, filterable list of funded projects that CORDIS later mirrors in fuller narrative form. Research offices verifying a fresh award should check the Portal first, since CORDIS records can lag a signed grant agreement by several weeks.

    • CORDIS — narrative factsheets, deliverables, publications, historical coverage back to earlier framework programmes.
    • Funding & Tenders Portal — live calls, submission status, the most current funded-project listings.
    • Horizon Dashboard — an analytical tool for exploring proposal and project statistics, success rates, and thematic breakdowns.

    Start at the CORDIS “Projects & results” search screen and filter by programme (“Horizon Europe”), then narrow by Call ID or Topic ID if you have one (for example, a Cluster 2 topic under the HORIZON-CL2 series). Country, funding scheme (RIA, IA, CSA, MSCA), and date-range filters further isolate a specific award.

    CORDIS also publishes curated “Results Packs” — thematic collections of projects grouped by policy area — which are useful for institutional landscaping rather than single-grant verification. For MSCA-specific searches, note that the 2026 MSCA Doctoral Networks call (reference HORIZON-MSCA-2026-DN-01-01) opened on 28 May 2026, per the UK Research Office (UKRO); calls of this kind appear on the Portal before a full CORDIS factsheet exists.

    Source Best for Data format Update cadence
    CORDIS Narrative verification, deliverables, publications Web factsheet, CSV/XML export Post-grant-signature, periodic refresh
    Funding & Tenders Portal Live calls, current award lists Web listing Continuous
    EU Open Data Portal Bulk download, cross-referencing, custom tools CSV, XML, RDF (Linked Open Data) Scheduled batch releases

    How to Verify a Horizon Europe Funding Claim

    To confirm a grantee’s claim, cross-check the project’s CORDIS factsheet against the institution named in the claim, the grant agreement number, and the coordinating organisation. A genuine Horizon Europe award will show a matching participant entry, a signed grant-agreement number, and a funding scheme code (RIA, IA, CSA, ERC, MSCA, or EIC) consistent with the claim.

    Research offices should treat three signals as minimum verification thresholds:

    • Grant agreement number matches the one cited in the press release or CV.
    • Participant organisation appears in the CORDIS or Portal participant list under the exact legal name, not an informal variant.
    • Funding scheme and call reference align with the programme claimed (for instance, an MSCA claim should carry an MSCA call ID, not a generic Horizon Europe label).

    Where a claim predates a public CORDIS factsheet, verification should fall back to the Funding & Tenders Portal’s live award listing, which the Commission updates continuously as grant agreements are signed.

    Open Data, APIs, and Bulk Downloads for Institutional Funding Intelligence

    For research offices building institutional funding intelligence rather than checking a single claim, the EU Open Data Portal offers bulk downloads of the entire CORDIS Horizon Europe dataset in CSV and XML. This supports local analysis, cross-referencing against institutional grant registers, and building custom compliance-tracking tools.

    CORDIS data is also published as Linked Open Data, allowing structured queries that connect project records to organisations, topics, and results. Registered users can access a CORDIS API for programmatic, automated retrieval — useful for offices that need to refresh a funding dashboard on a schedule rather than search manually. This combination of bulk export, Linked Open Data, and API access is the layer most institutional guides to horizon europe open calls and project tracking omit, yet it is the layer that turns one-off verification into a repeatable compliance workflow.

    Common Questions About Finding and Verifying Horizon Europe Projects

    What is CORDIS and is it the official source for Horizon Europe projects?

    CORDIS is the European Commission’s public database of EU-funded research and innovation activities, including Horizon Europe. It is the Commission’s own archive, making it the primary reference for confirming a project’s existence, participants, and funding scheme — more authoritative than a university press release or third-party aggregator.

    How do I search CORDIS for projects by topic, country, or call?

    Use the CORDIS “Projects & results” search page and apply filters for programme, country, funding scheme, and Call or Topic ID. Combining a Topic ID (such as a HORIZON-CL2 reference) with a date range narrows results to a specific call round quickly.

    How can I verify that a project claiming Horizon Europe funding is genuine?

    Cross-check the grant agreement number, coordinating organisation, and funding scheme code against the CORDIS factsheet or the Funding & Tenders Portal’s live listing. A mismatch on any of these three elements is grounds for further inquiry before repeating the claim institutionally.

    Can I download Horizon Europe project data in bulk?

    Yes. The EU Open Data Portal publishes the full CORDIS Horizon Europe dataset as CSV, XML, and Linked Open Data, and offers API access for registered users. This supports institutional dashboards, compliance sweeps, and cross-referencing against internal grant registers at scale.

    For research offices and journalists alike, the practical takeaway is the same: treat CORDIS and Portal listings as the verification baseline before any funding claim is repeated in an institutional profile, REF-style return, or news report, and use the Open Data Portal’s bulk exports when the task shifts from checking one grant to monitoring a whole portfolio. See CASRAI’s broader coverage of research administration practice for related compliance workflows.

  • Horizon Europe Calls 2026: Deadlines & OA Rules

    Horizon Europe calls 2026 run across the EU’s €14 billion 2026-2027 Work Programme, published by the European Commission on 11 December 2025 and searchable on the Funding & Tenders Portal. Pre-award teams should track submission status and cluster deadlines on the Portal, then verify each call’s specific open access and data-sharing conditions before drafting a proposal.

    The Horizon Europe Funding & Tenders Portal is the European Commission’s single official system for publishing, filtering and submitting proposals to every Horizon Europe call for proposals.

    What Is the Horizon Europe 2026-2027 Work Programme?

    The European Commission adopted the Horizon Europe 2026-2027 Work Programme on 11 December 2025, releasing over €14 billion in funding opportunities across the programme’s final two-year cycle, according to UK Research Office (UKRO) and Innovate UK Business Connect reporting on the publication. This is the last work programme under the current 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework.

    The European Research Council (ERC) and European Innovation Council (EIC) published their 2026 work programmes separately and earlier in the cycle. Pre-award offices tracking “all open calls” therefore need to check the main Work Programme package and these two standalone documents together, not the main package alone.

    • Horizontal activities, including a new €540 million call supporting the Clean Industrial Deal and AI in Science
    • Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) postdoctoral, doctoral network and staff exchange strands
    • Six thematic Clusters: Health; Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society; Civil Security for Society; Digital, Industry and Space; Climate, Energy and Mobility; and Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment
    • Five EU Missions: Adaptation to Climate Change, Cancer, Restore our Ocean and Waters, Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities, and Soils

    How Do You Track Open Horizon Europe Calls in 2026?

    The EU Funding & Tenders Portal is the single official source for every Horizon Europe call; institutions should treat it, not third-party digests or mailing lists, as the system of record for deadlines and eligibility rules. Portal searches can be filtered and saved so that new topics matching an institution’s research areas trigger an automatic alert.

    An effective pre-award tracking routine has four steps:

    1. Filter the Portal’s “Search Funding & Tenders” screen by programme (Horizon Europe), submission status (“Forthcoming” or “Open for submission”), and programme part or cluster.
    2. Save the search and register for email notifications so new topics appear automatically rather than being missed between manual checks.
    3. Cross-check each topic’s call identifier (for example HORIZON-MSCA-2026-PF-01) against the relevant cluster or actions Work Programme PDF for full scope and evaluation criteria.
    4. Log the topic’s submission deadline, type of action (RIA, IA, CSA or COFUND), and open science conditions in the institution’s internal pipeline before allocating proposal-writing resources.

    National Contact Points add a second layer of verification: UK applicants, for example, can confirm topic scope and competitiveness with UKRI’s National Contact Point team before committing resources to a full proposal.

    What Are the Key Horizon Europe 2026 Call Deadlines?

    Most single-stage calls that opened in early 2026 close in September or October 2026, though Clusters 1, 4, 5 and 6 include topics with earlier or later cut-offs, according to Innovate UK Business Connect’s analysis of the published Work Programme. Pre-award teams should check each cluster individually rather than assume a single portfolio-wide deadline.

    Call Reference Deadline
    MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2026 HORIZON-MSCA-2026-PF-01 9 September 2026
    MSCA Doctoral Networks 2026 HORIZON-MSCA-2026-DN-01 24 November 2026
    ERC Proof of Concept 2026 ERC-2026-POC 17 September 2026
    Restore our Ocean and Waters Mission calls Mission-specific topics 23 September 2026
    EU Space Research (Cluster 4, HaDEA-managed) Cluster 4 topics 2026 call, €90.97 million budget

    These dates illustrate the spread across strands rather than an exhaustive list. Every topic carries its own deadline on the Portal, and multi-stage calls add an earlier outline-proposal cut-off before the full submission date.

    What Open Access and Data-Sharing Obligations Apply Before You Submit?

    Every Horizon Europe grant agreement carries mandatory open science obligations that sit alongside the topic-specific scientific requirements, and reviewers assess a proposal’s data management approach as part of the excellence criterion. Confirming these terms before submission avoids a compliance gap that would otherwise surface only at the grant agreement stage.

    Three obligations apply to essentially every Horizon Europe-funded output:

    • Immediate open access to peer-reviewed publications, with no embargo period, deposited in a trusted repository and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) or an equivalent licence.
    • A Data Management Plan (DMP) as a mandatory deliverable, with a first version due within six months of the project start and updated as data-generation plans evolve.
    • FAIR data handling — Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable — applied under the principle of “as open as possible, as closed as necessary,” with closure permitted only for justified reasons such as intellectual property, personal data or security.

    Individual calls layer additional conditions on top of these baseline rules. A Cluster 1 (Health) topic handling clinical data, for example, carries stricter personal-data provisions than a Cluster 4 digital-infrastructure topic. Call-specific conditions are published in the topic’s own annex, not just the general Work Programme introduction, so pre-award teams must read both documents before finalising the proposal’s data management section.

    For terminology used across these obligations — contributor roles, persistent identifiers, licensing terms — the CASRAI Dictionary provides standards-aligned definitions that research administration teams can cite directly in DMPs and internal guidance.

    Common Questions About Horizon Europe Calls 2026

    Where can I find the official list of open Horizon Europe calls for 2026?

    The EU Funding & Tenders Portal is the European Commission’s official system listing every open, forthcoming and closed Horizon Europe call. Filter by programme, submission status and cluster, then save the search to receive automatic email alerts when new matching topics are published.

    How much funding is available in the Horizon Europe 2026-2027 work programme?

    The Commission made over €14 billion available across the 2026-2027 Work Programme, published 11 December 2025, covering MSCA, Research Infrastructures, the six thematic Clusters, the five Missions, and horizontal strands such as the Clean Industrial Deal call.

    Do Horizon Europe grants require open access to publications?

    Yes. Horizon Europe requires immediate open access with no embargo for all peer-reviewed publications, deposited in a trusted repository under a CC BY licence or equivalent, with open metadata describing the funding and licensing terms.

    What is a Data Management Plan and when is it due?

    A Data Management Plan (DMP) sets out how a project will generate, document, share and preserve research data under FAIR principles. It is a mandatory Horizon Europe deliverable, with a first version due within six months of the project start date.

    Implications for Pre-Award Teams

    Treating call-tracking and open science compliance as two separate workflows creates risk: a proposal can clear the Portal’s deadline filter yet still fail a topic’s data-sharing conditions during grant preparation. Pre-award offices get better outcomes by building a single checklist that logs the deadline, the type of action, and the open access and DMP conditions from the same read-through of the topic text.

    The 2026-2027 Work Programme is the final cycle before the next Multiannual Financial Framework, so institutions should expect the Commission to keep tightening open science verification at the reporting stage rather than relax it. Early, consistent DMP practice now reduces rework at grant signature. Research administration teams building this capability can align proposal, compliance and reporting language using the CASRAI research administration resources.