Connecting research infrastructures and a wider user community across the European Research Area through access to advanced research infrastructure services
Support projects enhancing transnational access to advanced European research infrastructures for wider user communities.
This call funds projects that improve access to advanced research infrastructures across Europe. It aims to connect researchers from different countries and disciplines. The goal is to foster excellent research and train new researchers using state-of-the-art facilities.
Likely relevant for
- Research infrastructure operators
- Research consortia involving ESFRI Landmarks or ERICs
- Projects focusing on transnational access and user community integration
- Early-stage researcher training initiatives
Project signals
What it funds
- Transnational and/or virtual access to advanced national or pan-European research infrastructures
- Provision of a broad portfolio of research infrastructure services relevant for frontier research
- Networking and bi-directional exchanges within the European Research Area user community
- Outreach to increase awareness among researchers, especially early-stage researchers
- Financial support to third party research infrastructures providing access
- Data management, interoperability, and connection to European Open Science Cloud
Expected outcomes
- Better connection and integration of research infrastructures across the European Research Area
- Increased circulation of knowledge and mitigation of scattered excellence
- Wider, simplified, and efficient access to top research infrastructures
- Breakthrough research enabled by advanced infrastructure services
- Enhanced capacities of a wider user community to address research challenges and EU priorities
- Training of new generation researchers to exploit research tools
- Improved management and FAIR data implementation
Who can apply / participate
- Research infrastructure operators
- Consortia including ESFRI Landmarks or ERICs
- Legal entities hosting ESFRI Landmarks
- European Research Infrastructure Consortia (ERICs)
- Proposals must include at least two ESFRI Landmarks or ERICs as beneficiaries
- Distributed ERICs must be beneficiaries
- JRC may participate as beneficiary with zero funding or as associated partner
- Participants must be from the European Research Area
- Non-EU/non-associated countries may have specific eligibility conditions
- Access provision activities must be included
- Compliance with Specific features for Research Infrastructures is mandatory
- Financial support to third parties limited to EUR 100,000 per third party
- FSTP calls may be combined with access provision calls
- Exact list of eligible countries must be checked in Annex B
- Specific eligibility of non-ERIC ESFRI Landmarks must be verified
Must check before shortlisting
- Eligibility of research infrastructures involved
- Compliance with Specific features for Research Infrastructures
- Inclusion of at least two ESFRI Landmarks or ERICs as beneficiaries
- Conditions for financial support to third parties
Money
Total budget around EUR 12 million for 2027 with expected 4 grants. Maximum contribution per grant is EUR 3 million.
- Total budget 2027 — 12000000EURIndicative budget for this call in 2027
- Expected number of grants — 4Expected grants to be awarded
- Maximum contribution per grant — 3000000EURMaximum EU funding per grant
Application notes
- Single-stage submission model. Proposal page limit is 100 pages. No exploitation and dissemination plan required as main objective is service provision.
- Proposals must comply with Horizon Europe General Annexes A, B, C, D, E, F, G
- Specific features for Research Infrastructures section must be followed
- Proposals must identify ESFRI Landmarks or ERIC beneficiaries explicitly
- Financial support to third parties conditions apply
- Prepare proposal adhering to page limits and layout requirements
- Include access provision activities and list of services/installations
- Ensure consortium includes required beneficiaries
- Submit proposal by deadline 15 June 2027
- Compliance with Specific features for Research Infrastructures will be evaluated
- Financial support to third parties capped at EUR 100,000 per third party
- JRC participation possible but not in proposal preparation
- Check eligibility of countries and entities carefully
Derived from official EU Funding portal source · updated 22 Jun 2026, 16:28 UTC. Use this as a shortlisting aid; the official call text remains authoritative.
Related calls
These funding calls are closely related and may be worth considering as part of the same funding landscape.
Official source text
Fine print from the EU source record. Expand when you need the original wording.
Topic description
Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes: Better connection of research infrastructures across the European Research Area reinforcing and spreading excellence throughout the European Research Area; mitigating scattered national and regional research infrastructures and pockets of scientific excellence, and increasing the circulation of knowledge; wider, simplified, and more efficient access to the best research infrastructures available to researchers to conduct curiosity-driven excellent research, irrespective of location; breakthrough and leading-edge research enabled by advanced research infrastructure services made available to a wider user community; enhanced integration of a wider user community in the European research infrastructure ecosystem; enhanced capacities of a wider user community to address research challenges and EU policy priorities; enhanced convergence of research capacities and increase of Europe’s competitiveness; a new generation of researchers trained to optimally exploit all the essential tools for their research; better management, including implementing FAIR data principle, of the continuous flow of data collected or produced by research infrastructures. Scope: The topic targets the further integration of a wider user community in the European RI ecosystem and the strengthening of this ecosystem across the entire European Research Area through access to research infrastructures and other activities. The proposed action should provide trans-national access (on-site or remote) and/or virtual access to services offered by a set of similar or complementary advanced national or pan-European research infrastructures, to enable curiosity-driven excellent interdisciplinary research. Proposals should adhere to the guidelines and principles of the European Charter for Access to Research Infrastructures[ https://op.europa.eu/publication-detail/-/publication/ec4692ae-ac6f-11ef-acb1-01aa75ed71a1 . Research infrastructures or laboratories from across the European Research Area should be consortium members and contribute to the offering of transnational access to services. Financial support to third parties may be used to extend the portfolio of services from access providers that are not beneficiaries, provided that the beneficiaries ensure that the conditions and requirements relating to access provisions as given in the “Specific features for Research Infrastructures” are fulfilled. Transnational access activities should be designed to stimulate excellence and impact and enhance convergence of research skills and capacities throughout Europe, with due attention to early-stage researchers. Proposals should address all the following aspects: Availability to researchers of a broad portfolio of research infrastructure services, including research infrastructures financed from funds under Union Cohesion Policy, which are relevant for frontier research in the chosen scientific area, including data services; all of the transnational access provisions should be led by the target of enhancing integration of a wider community in the European RI ecosystem; Bi-directional exchanges within a wide user community of researchers/research groups across the European Research Area, including also networking activities, all of which potentially leading to longer term collaboration (including short-term exchange programmes, favouring direct interaction over online interaction); Pro-active outreach measures to increase awareness about research infrastructure services among researchers in targeted countries; Activities targeting specifically early-stage researchers. In the case of financial support to third parties (FSTP), the relevant conditions and requirements of the “Specific features for research infrastructures” of this work programme should be included in the FSTP calls and the applicants to the FSTP open calls, should be the third party research infrastructures demanded by user-group(s). In the case of transnational access, the beneficiaries select the user-groups according to the conditions and requirements of the “specific features for research infrastructures” section of this work programme, with the above mentioned further condition. The beneficiaries ensure that the access provider selected through the FSTP calls is a state-of-the-art research infrastructure, and that it will provide appropriate documentation to support and justify the amount of access provided and the information on the users as specified in the “specific features for research infrastructures” section of this work programme. To simplify the selection process, proposals under this topic may combine the calls inviting researchers to apply for transnational access and the FSTP calls so that a one stage selection procedure can be implemented based on a joint application from the user group submitting the ‘user project’ and the needed third party access provider. The recipient of the financial support is the third party research infrastructure that is providing access to the selected user-group(s). The financial support should cover the costs incurred by the third party to provide access (actual costs, unit costs, or a combination of the two) plus any work for service customisation as well as the travel and subsistence of users if visits are needed to use the infrastructures. Alternatively, proposals may opt for centrally managed travel and or subsistence costs for all or part of the selected user projects. In such case, these costs are excluded from the concerned FSTP. Data management (and related ethics issues), interoperability, as well as the connection of digital services (e.g. data services) to the European Open Science Cloud, should be addressed where relevant. Proposals should consider major European or international initiatives relevant in the domain. Whenever appropriate, they should foster the use and deployment of (open) global standards. Proposals are expected to exploit synergies and to ensure complementarity and coherence with other EU grants supporting access provision. Proposals should include the list of services/installations [1] made available by the action for transnational or virtual access and the amounts of units of access made available for users. Further conditions and requirements relating to access provisions that applicants should fulfil when drafting a proposal are given in the “Specific features for Research Infrastructures” section of this work programme part. Compliance with these provisions will be taken into account during evaluation. Proposals could consider the inclusion of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) research infrastructures offering access to external users, that facilitates access and provides training and capacity building to users from user institutions in the European Research Area. In that respect, the JRC will consider collaborating with any successful proposal and this collaboration, when relevant, should be established after the proposal’s approval. [1] “Installation” means a part or a service of a research infrastructure that can be used independently from the rest. A research infrastructure consists of one or more installations.
Conditions and documents
General conditions
1. Admissibility Conditions: Proposal page limit and layout
Applicants are not required to include in their proposal a plan for the exploitation and dissemination of the results as the main objective of these actions is the service provision.
The page limit of the application is 100 pages.
2. Eligible Countries
described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes.
A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects. See the information in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide.
3. Other Eligible Conditions
The following additional eligibility criteria apply due to the specific nature of this topic:
- Access provision activities must be included in the proposal. Please read carefully the provisions under the section “Specific features for Research Infrastructures” at the end of this work programme part before preparing your application.
Due to the scope of this topic, proposals must include at least two of the ESFRI Landmarks[[See the list of ESFRI 'Landmarks' in the 2021 ESFRI Roadmap on https://roadmap2021.esfri.eu/ For ESFRI Landmarks that are not an ERIC or an international European research organisation, the beneficiary must be the legal entity hosting the infrastructure in the lead country (such legal entity is a minimum requirement to become an ESFRI Landmark).]] or European Research Infrastructure Consortia (ERICs)[[European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) | European Commission (europa.eu)]] as beneficiaries. Such beneficiaries, and the research infrastructure(s) that they operate, must be explicitly identified in the proposal. For distributed ERIC the ERIC must be the beneficiary.
The Joint Research Centre (JRC) may participate as member of the consortium selected for funding as a beneficiary with zero funding, or as an associated partner. The JRC will not participate in the preparation and submission of the proposal - see General Annex B.
described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes.
4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion
described in Annex C of the Work Programme General Annexes.
5a. Evaluation and award: Award criteria, scoring and thresholds
are described in Annex D of the Work Programme General Annexes.
5b. Evaluation and award: Submission and evaluation processes
The following additions to the general award criteria apply:
For the 'Excellence' criterion, in addition to its standard sub-criteria, the following aspects will also be taken into account:
The extent to which the access activities (trans-national and/or virtual access) will offer access to the state-of-the-art infrastructures of European interest in the field, high quality services, and will enable users to conduct excellent research.
are described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes and the Online Manual.
5c. Evaluation and award: Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement
described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes.
6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants
Beneficiaries will be subject to the additional access rights:
The rules are described in General Annex G. The following exceptions apply:
Eligible costs may take form of unit costs for trans-national and virtual access to research infrastructures as defined in the Decision authorising the use of unit costs for the actions involving trans-national and virtual access (see Annex 2a of the Horizon Europe Model Grant Agreement).
Beneficiaries may provide financial support to third parties. The support to third parties can only be provided in the form of grants. Given the high operating costs of some state-of-the-art research infrastructures, the maximum amount to be granted to each third party is EUR 100 000, since the objectives of the action cannot be achieved otherwise. For the sake of efficiency, the FSTP calls can be combined with the calls for the access provision activities (see provisions under the section “Specific features for Research Infrastructures” of this work programme part).
described in Annex G of the Work Programme General Annexes.
Specific conditions
described in the specific topic of the Work Programme
Application and evaluation forms and model grant agreement (MGA):
Application form templates — the application form specific to this call is available in the Submission System
Standard application form (HE RIA, IA)
Standard application form (HE CSA)
Evaluation form templates — will be used with the necessary adaptations
Standard evaluation form (HE RIA, IA)
Standard evaluation form (HE CSA)
Guidance
Model Grant Agreements (MGA)
Framework Partnership Agreement FPA
Call-specific instructions
Information on financial support to third parties (HE)
Additional documents:
HE Main Work Programme 2025 – 1. General Introduction
HE Main Work Programme 2025 – 3. Research Infrastructures
HE Main Work Programme 2026-2027 – 15. General Annexes
HE Framework Programme 2021/695
HE Specific Programme Decision 2021/764
EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509
Decision authorising the use of lump sum contributions under the Horizon Europe Programme
Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment
EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement
Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual
Support information
Online Manual is your guide on the procedures from proposal submission to managing your grant. Horizon Europe Programme Guide contains the detailed guidance to the structure, budget and political priorities of Horizon Europe. Funding & Tenders Portal FAQ – find the answers to most frequently asked questions on submission of proposals, evaluation and grant management. Research Enquiry Service – ask questions about any aspect of European research in general and the EU Research Framework Programmes in particular. National Contact Points (NCPs) – get guidance, practical information and assistance on participation in Horizon Europe. There are also NCPs in many non-EU and non-associated countries (‘third-countries’). Enterprise Europe Network – contact your EEN national contact for advice to businesses with special focus on SMEs. The support includes guidance on the EU research funding. IT Helpdesk – contact the Funding & Tenders Portal IT helpdesk for questions such as forgotten passwords, access rights and roles, technical aspects of submission of proposals, etc. European IPR Helpdesk assists you on intellectual property issues. CEN-CENELEC Research Helpdesk and ETSI Research Helpdesk – the European Standards Organisations advise you how to tackle standardisation in your project proposal. The European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for their recruitment – consult the general principles and requirements specifying the roles, responsibilities and entitlements of researchers, employers and funders of researchers. Partner Search help you find a partner organisation for your proposal.
Raw budget overview
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