Research Support Framework for Situational Awareness on information integrity
Grant for creating a research framework and infrastructure to advance information integrity research in the EU.
This call funds projects to build infrastructure and tools for researching information integrity. It supports third-party grants to foster research and tool development. The goal is to improve understanding and analysis of information manipulation in the EU.
Likely relevant for
- Research organisations in digital information integrity
- Civil society groups focused on media and information analysis
- Technology developers of research tools for information environment
Project signals
What it funds
- Set up hardware and software infrastructure for advanced research on information integrity accessible EU-wide
- Develop and support tools for research and analysis of information manipulation
- Provide transparent access to tools and computational resources for researchers and civil society
- Collect and document research community feedback on data access APIs of large online platforms
- Implement a grant scheme to fund third-party tools and research projects aligned with call objectives
Expected outcomes
- Technical solutions addressing information integrity research objectives
- Insights from supported research and monitoring projects
- Proof of concept and lessons learned for shared research infrastructure
- Methodology and dissemination plan for resource access
- Sub-granting methodology for third-party funding
- Final report with lessons learned and future action paths
Who can apply / participate
- Research organisations
- Consortia including civil society and technology developers
- Consortia must detail how they will achieve objectives and deliverables
- Proposals must include a clear needs analysis and feasible plan
- Eligible countries as per section 6 of call document
- At least 60% of budget must be allocated to financial support to third parties
- Proposals must comply with admissibility and eligibility conditions in call document
- Specific eligible countries not listed here
- Exact consortium composition requirements must be checked in call document
Must check before shortlisting
- Eligibility criteria in section 6 of call document
- Requirement to allocate at least 60% budget to third-party grants
- Consortium composition and capacity requirements
Money
Total budget of approximately EUR 6 million for 2026, co-funded at 100%. At least 60% must be allocated to third-party financial support.
- Total budget — 6000000EURFor the year 2026
- Co-funding rate — 100%Full co-funding of consortium activities
- Third-party financial support — At least 60% of total budgetEURAllocated to grants for third parties
Application notes
- Single-stage submission model.
- Proposal page limits and layout as per section 5 and Part B of Application Form
- Eligibility and admissibility conditions detailed in section 6 of call document
- Financial and operational capacity requirements in section 7
- Evaluation and award criteria in sections 8 and 9
- Legal and financial setup described in section 10
- Prepare proposal following call document and application form templates
- Ensure compliance with eligibility and admissibility criteria
- Submit proposal before deadline 1 October 2026
- Attend information session on 28 April 2026 if interested
- Proposals must allocate at least 60% of budget to third-party grants
- Focus on quality and feasibility over quantity of activities
- Long-term sustainability and transferability of outputs are important evaluation criteria
Derived from official EU Funding portal source · updated 22 Jun 2026, 14:12 UTC. Use this as a shortlisting aid; the official call text remains authoritative.
Official source text
Fine print from the EU source record. Expand when you need the original wording.
Topic description
Expected Outcome: At a general level, the project should achieve a strong, visible and recognised impact in scaling, facilitating and accelerating research and analytical efforts focussing on the information environment and information integrity. The main outcomes of the awarded project will be: The technical solutions created or supported The insights generated from supported research and monitoring projects The proof of concept and lessons learnt for the support of shared infrastructures to support research on the information environment Project applications will formulate their own deliverables in accordance with their needs analyses and proposed means to address them. At the minimum, deliverables should include: A suite or network of solutions capable of addressing Specific Objectives 1 and 2 (c.f. section 2 ‘Scope – Specific Objectives 1 and 2’) A methodology and dissemination plan for creating access to the created resources (c.f. section 2 ‘Scope – Specific Objective 3) A sub-granting methodology in line with the scope set forth in the section above (c.f. section 2 ‘Scope – Specific Objective 5’) A final report detailing lessons learnt and identifying clear paths for future actions Objective: The overarching objective of this action is as follows: Creating a common research framework with the necessary infrastructure to enable advanced research and analysis on information integrity in the EU. In order to achieve this overall objective, the action rests on the following specific objectives: Securing or setting up necessary infrastructure, comprising both hardware and software capacities, needed for advanced research on information integrity, that can be accessed by third parties across the EU Supporting, acquiring or creating a set of dedicated tools to facilitate research on information integrity and the analysis of information manipulation Making the dedicated tools and computational capacity accessible to researchers and civil society, where needed through a transparent and effective access mechanism, and promoting its solutions in the relevant communities Contributing to the DSA’s data access regime by collecting views from the research community on the data access API’s of very large online platforms required by the DSA, documenting best practices and shortcomings, and representing the research community in efforts to improve the capability of API’s Set up and implement a grant structure to distribute funds to third parties from the research and civil society communities, funding as the eligible activities: Third party tools or capabilities that support the delivery of Specific Objectives 1 and 2 Research projects that utilise the outputs established under Specific Objectives 1 and 2 Scope: Applying consortia must convincingly detail how they will achieve the objectives and deliverables set forth in this call for proposals. Proposals must be clearly and well-defined, researched and fully developed taking all time-schedule and budget considerations into account. This action is a grant for financial support, which foresees both the delivery of a set of actions by the awarded consortium co-funded at 100% as well as the distribution of a majority of the funds to third parties based on fair and transparent selection criteria (c.f. section 6 ‘Eligibility – Eligible Activities’). Proposals must allocate at least 60% of their proposed budget to the financial support to third parties. The below details the scope for the activities of the consortium, as well as for the provision of grants to third parties. Two important, cross-cutting considerations apply to these descriptions on scope: Firstly, all provided examples for concrete means of implementation should be considered as indicative illustrations only, and thus not mandatory elements for grant applications. Rather, applying consortia will need to base their proposals on a clear, evidence informed needs analysis that is centred on the demands from the relevant research and civil society communities. The sophistication of the logical links between needs analysis and activities will form a key part of the evaluation process. Secondly, proposals should focus on quality over quantity: The proposal of a more limited, but highly impactful set of actions is preferable over spreading resources on an overly wide set of actions that could undermine practical feasibility. Thirdly, an emphasis on long-evity is essential. Activities should be planned in a manner that caters to the long-term interests and needs of the relevant communities. A focus on elements such as transferability of outputs will be an important part of the selection process.
Conditions and documents
Conditions
1. Admissibility conditions: Proposal page limit and layout
described in section 5 of the call document.
Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System.
2. Eligible countries
described in section 6 of the call document.
3. Other eligibility conditions
described in section 6 of the call document.
4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion
described in section 7 of the call document.
5a. Evaluation and award: Submission and evaluation processes
described section 8 of the call document and the Online Manual.
5b. Evaluation and award: Award criteria, scoring and thresholds
described in section 9 of the call document.
5c. Evaluation and award: Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement
described in section 4 of the call document.
6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants
described in section 10 of the call document.
Call document and annexes:
Application form templates
Standard application form (DEP) — the application form specific to this call is available in the Submission System
Model Grant Agreements (MGA)
Additional documents:
Support information
For help related to this call, please contact Write to us Funding & Tenders Portal FAQ – Submission of proposals . IT Helpdesk – Contact the IT helpdesk for questions such as forgotten passwords, access rights and roles, technical aspects of submission of proposals, etc. Online Manual – Step-by-step online guide through the Portal processes from proposal preparation and evaluation to reporting on your ongoing project. Valid for all 2021-2027 programmes.
Raw budget overview
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