HORIZON-MISS-2027-04-CIT-02

Hydrogen cities

Status
forthcoming
Programme
Horizon Europe (HORIZON)
Action type
HORIZON Coordination and Support Actions
Opens
9 Feb 2027
Deadline
7 Oct 2027
Fetched
15 Jul 2026, 07:18 UTC
Plain-language summary

Support twinning of Hydrogen Valleys with cities to decarbonise hard-to-abate sectors using renewable hydrogen, enhancing urban sustainability and innovation.

This call funds projects that connect hydrogen innovation hubs with cities aiming to reduce emissions in tough sectors like industry and transport. It supports collaboration, knowledge sharing, and tailored roadmaps for hydrogen use. The goal is to boost clean hydrogen deployment, improve air quality, and foster economic growth in European cities.

Likely relevant for

  • City governments and local authorities
  • Hydrogen technology developers
  • Industrial decarbonisation experts
  • Urban sustainability projects
  • Research institutions in clean energy
  • Climate and environmental NGOs

Project signals

Focus on renewable hydrogen for hard-to-abate sectorsCollaboration between cities and hydrogen valleysDevelopment of implementation roadmaps and feasibility studies

What it funds

  • Twinning of Hydrogen Valleys with cities to decarbonise local and peri-urban hard-to-abate sectors using renewable hydrogen
  • Focus on sectors like industrial uses, heavy-duty transport, aviation, maritime; excluding hydrogen for heating
  • Collaborative activities including feasibility assessments, implementation planning, impact assessments, best practice sharing, education and training
  • Facilitation of communities of practice among cities, ports, industry, governments, researchers, and citizens
  • Enhancement of synergies between the Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission and the Clean Hydrogen Partnership

Expected outcomes

  • Increased investments and deployment of hydrogen applications and infrastructure in urban areas
  • Mitigation of local air pollution and promotion of economic growth and jobs
  • Development of detailed roadmaps for integrating renewable hydrogen in industrial decarbonisation
  • Strengthened stakeholder collaboration and knowledge exchange
  • Improved cooperation between EU Missions and partnerships

Who can apply / participate

  • Cities and local/regional authorities
  • Research and innovation organizations
  • Industry stakeholders
  • Public bodies and NGOs involved in urban decarbonisation
  • Single-stage submission
  • Collaboration with Cities Mission Platform required and formalized by Memorandum of Understanding
  • Eligible countries as per Horizon Europe Annex B
  • Encouraged geographical balance including enlargement countries like Western Balkans, Ukraine, Moldova
  • At least one twinned city should be part of the EU Mission on Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities
  • Eligible costs funded as lump sums under Horizon Europe rules
  • Specific eligibility criteria details to be confirmed in Horizon Europe Work Programme and General Annexes

Must check before shortlisting

  • Eligibility of applicant types and countries per Horizon Europe rules
  • Capacity to deliver lump sum funded coordination and support actions
  • Alignment with EU Mission on Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities

Money

One grant expected with a maximum EU contribution of EUR 5 million for 2027 under a lump sum funding model.

  • Maximum EU contribution — 5000000EUR
    Lump sum funding under Horizon Europe rules

Application notes

  • Single-stage submission via the Horizon Europe Funding & Tenders Portal.
  • Proposal page limits and layout as per Horizon Europe General Annexes and Application Form guidelines.
  • Eligible countries and conditions as described in Horizon Europe Work Programme Annexes.
  • Financial and operational capacity requirements per Horizon Europe rules.
  • Evaluation criteria and award procedures detailed in Horizon Europe Annexes and Online Manual.
  • Grants linked to collaboration with Cities Mission Platform formalized by Memorandum of Understanding.
  • Prepare proposal following the specific application form for this call.
  • Ensure compliance with admissibility and eligibility conditions.
  • Submit proposal before the deadline via the Funding & Tenders Portal.
  • Engage with Cities Mission Platform for collaboration and clustering activities.
  • Include provisions for enforcing synergies and clustering in the work plan.
  • Collaboration with Cities Mission Platform is mandatory and must be formalized early.
  • Eligible costs are reimbursed as lump sums, not on actual costs.
  • Check detailed eligibility and submission rules in Horizon Europe Work Programme and General Annexes.

Derived from official EU Funding portal source · updated 22 Jun 2026, 16:49 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: A growing number of cities across Europe is developing hydrogen strategies, either for mobility applications or for decarbonising their local and peri-urban industries and hard-to-abate sectors. By acting as experimentation and innovation hubs, these cities can be testbeds for the energy transition, balancing decarbonisation with competitiveness and social cohesion. Project results are expected to contribute to the following expected outcomes: Investments in - and deployment of - hydrogen applications and infrastructure for hard-to-abate sectors in and around cities to mitigate local air pollution and lead to economic growth and jobs, bringing urban environments at the forefront of sustainability and innovation. Communities of practice to foster the interaction between stakeholders from cities, ports, industry, local and regional government, as well as researchers and citizens. Enhanced synergies between the Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission and the Horizon Europe Clean Hydrogen Partnership. Scope: The selected project is expected to establish ‘twinning’ of Hydrogen Valleys (in particular those that have elements relevant for cities or ports) with cities that are interested to decarbonise their local and peri-urban hard-to-abate sectors using hydrogen and to improve air quality. Focus should be on hard-to-abate and/or hard-to-electrify sectors, such as industrial uses, heavy-duty and long-distance transport, aviation, maritime uses, or any combination thereof. The use of hydrogen for heating purposes is out of scope. Twinning will help cities to access the best available expertise and tools that can enable them to identify and implement decarbonisation strategies based on renewable hydrogen. To foster cooperation between cities and Member States, it is encouraged that there is a geographical balance between the participating authorities to foster learning from different projects and approaches. This twinning should be based on mentor-mentee pairings; these could also target enlargement countries, such as the Western Balkans, Ukraine, and Moldova. The project is expected to: Organise a selection procedure (for example in the form of public calls for expression of interest) to identify the most promising twinning pairs that will be selected to develop collaborative activities; Develop and implement for each twinning pair a tailor-made set of collaborative activities; Deliver for each twinned city a detailed roadmap outlining the future steps to integrate renewable hydrogen in their industrial decarbonisation; Facilitate the interaction between participating cities to address shared challenges and solutions; Collaborative activities can address for example: Feasibility assessments (including technology choices, sources of renewable hydrogen, business cases, regulatory issues and stakeholder engagement); Designing a detailed implementation plan (including funding strategy, permitting, infrastructure requirements, supply chain integration); Environmental and socio-economic impact assessment; Sharing best practices and lessons learned; Education and training. At least one of the cities selected for twinning is expected to be one of the 112 cities selected for the EU Mission on Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities [1] . The project is expected to enhance the synergies between the Horizon Europe Clean Hydrogen Partnership and the EU Mission on Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities by making optimal use of the information available through the Hydrogen Valley Platform [2] and the Cities Mission Platform [3] . Under the guidance of the Cities Mission Platform, the selected project will engage in clustering activities with other relevant projects supported under the Cities Mission to promote synergies and complementarities. Proposals should ensure that appropriate provisions for activities and resources aimed at enforcing these synergies as well as clustering activities are included in the work-plan. This action supports the follow-up to the July 2023 Communication on EU Missions assessment [4] . [1] The EU Mission on Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities aims to deliver 100 climate-neutral and smart cities by 2030 and ensure that these cities act as experimentation and innovation hubs to enable all European cities to follow suit by 2050. On 28 April 2022, the Commission announced the 100 EU cities that will participate in the Mission. In addition, 12 cities have been selected from countries associated or expected to be associated the Horizon Europe programme. [2] Mission Innovation Hydrogen Valley Platform [3] NetZeroCities [4] COM(2023) 457 final and SWD(2023) 260 final

Conditions and documents

General conditions

1. Admissibility Conditions: Proposal page limit and layout

described in Annex A and Annex E of the Horizon Europe Work Programme General Annexes.

Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System.

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

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

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

Grants awarded under this topic will be linked to the following action(s):

HORIZON-MISS-2021-CIT-02-03

Collaboration with the Cities Mission Platform[[Set up by Horizon 2020 project NetZeroCities - Accelerating cities' transition to net zero emissions by 2030, Grant Agreement n. 101036519, and scaled up through topic HORIZON-MISS-2021-CIT-02-03: Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) for the Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission Platform.]] is essential and projects must ensure that appropriate provisions for activities and resources aimed at enforcing this collaboration are included in the work plan of the proposal. The collaboration with the Cities Mission Platform must be formalized through a Memorandum of Understanding to be concluded as soon as possible after the project starting date.

Eligible costs will take the form of a lump sum as defined in the Decision of 7 July 2021 authorising the use of lump sum contributions under the Horizon Europe Programme – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2021-2027) – and in actions under the Research and Training Programme of the European Atomic Energy Community (2021-2025) [[This decision is available on the Funding and Tenders Portal, in the reference documents section for Horizon Europe, under ‘Simplified costs decisions’ or through this link: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/horizon/guidance/ls-decision_he_en.pdf]].

described in Annex G of the Work Programme General Annexes.

Specific conditions

Not applicable.

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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