Beyond Horizon Europe Cluster 6? EU funding opportunities for your research from food systems to biodiversity!
13th March 2025 at 12:13 pm
Drafts of Horizon Europe’s Pillar 2 Work Programmes for 2025 are now available online, making it the perfect time to identify the most relevant call topics for your research and innovation projects. Our overview of the Cluster 6 draft Work Programme provides an excellent starting point, but what if none of the call topics align with the scope of your research? Thankfully, several other funding opportunities in 2025 could offer the perfect solution. These include a variety of bottom-up funding schemes, such as the EIC Pathfinder and Transition programmes, MSCA Doctoral Networks, as well as additional top-down calls within the EU Missions, the European Partnerships or the EIC Pathfinder Challenges. These avenues can offer alternative paths to help bring your innovative project to fruition.
Additional funding opportunities for environmental and circular economy research
Beyond Cluster 6, several other funding opportunities exist for research and innovation across the food, environment and circular economy realm.
- EU Missions: Two EU Missions focus on restoring and protecting individual ecosystems and ecosystem services. The “Restore our Ocean and Waters Mission” focusses on aquatic ecosystems. The 2025 draft Work Programme includes eight call topics with a total budget of 118.8 million euros and a single deadline on 24 September 2025. Additionally, the “Soil Deal for Europe Mission” aims at protecting European soil health and reduce land degradation. The draft Work Programme for 2025 allocates 120 million euros to 13 call topics related to this mission.
- European Partnerships: Many of the funding opportunities of the European Partnerships are incorporated into the cluster Work Programmes but the institutionalised Partnerships maintain their own Work Programmes providing additional funding opportunities across a variety of topics. Partnerships closely related to Cluster 6 include the Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU). In 2025 the CBE JU has a budget of 165 million euros to fund research and innovation projects in 13 call topics. The call is foreseen to launch on 4 April 2025, with a deadline foreseen of 17 September 2025.
- EIC Pathfinder Challenges: This year’s EIC Pathfinder Challenges provide additional funding opportunities for research and innovation projects on climate resilient agriculture and circular economy with the two challenges on “Biotech for Climate Resilient Crops and Plant-Based Biomanufacturing” and “Waste-to-value devices: Circular production of renewable fuels, chemicals and materials”. The total budget per challenge is 30 million euros and the deadline is on 29 October 2025.
Given the complexity of navigating multiple Work Programmes to find suitable call topics, we have developed streamlined processes to assist you in identifying and securing the right funding opportunities.
How to find the best fit? Strategic grant planning for you!
There are several ways to find suitable European funding opportunities. The obvious choice is to check out the draft Work Programme, search the Web and attend the Cluster-specific Information Day, usually organised by the EC a few months ahead of the submission deadline(s), or focused workshops offered by the so-called National Contact Points in different European countries. On the EU Funding and Tenders Portal, an event calendar is available for you to check out forthcoming events – we would be happy to meet you at one of these events!
A more targeted and time-saving approach is our personalised strategic grant planning (sgp) service which we at accelopment offer to researchers and innovators based in Europe. The sgp helps you identify the best suitable funding opportunity for your research and innovation idea and plan your grant applications for the upcoming years. For the sgp, we use accelGRANTSTM, our intelligent, data-driven tool to analyse funding opportunities within Horizon Europe and beyond, ensuring that your innovative ideas meet the opportunities available. We would be pleased to identify the most promising instruments early on to help you stay ahead in a highly competitive research environment!
Dr. Johannes Ripperger
Research & Innovation Manager
Jacqueline Strehler
Research & Innovation Project Manager