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MK Radar Issue 3 | €500m Changes the 2027 Funding Map — Horizon Europe calls 2027

6 days ago
2 min read

WEEK 41 | 5–11 OCTOBER 2026 · MK RADAR BY METAKNOWLEDGE

€500m changes the funding map

The Horizon Europe amendment is here. Week 41 opens with €500m more funding, new Bridging and Nature actions, an MSCA boost, and three near-term deadlines that require attention now.

Strategic Signal

The European Commission has allocated an additional €500 million to Horizon Europe for 2026–27, bringing the combined two-year envelope to around €14.8 billion. The amendment also adds €237 million for Nature-Positive actions and €260 million for Bridging Actions 2027.

MK view: Week 41 is not mainly about finding more calls. It is about re-running the funding pipeline against an amended programme and asking whether existing research results now have a credible route to validation, deployment or market uptake.

What changed since Issue 2

  • The anticipated Horizon Europe amendment is now reflected in the Commission's Work Programme repository.

  • Two new horizontal pipelines — Bridging and Nature-Positive — materially widen the 2027 opportunity set.

  • MSCA has received more than €210 million in additional funding for Postdoctoral Fellowships and Doctoral Networks in 2026–27.

  • Fresh official participation and submission data give applicants new evidence about where competition is concentrating.

New Opportunity Radar

Bridging Actions 2027 — move results further

CORDIS lists HORIZON-BRIDGING-2027-02-05, an action explicitly focused on advancing promising results from Pillar II collaborative research through the innovation journey. The aim is to move credible results further towards innovative products, processes or services, including additional validation where needed.

Official source — CORDIS / European Commission: https://cordis.europa.eu/programme/id/HORIZON_HORIZON-BRIDGING-2027-02-05

Nature-Positive — restoration through living labs

HORIZON-NATURE-2027-02-02 focuses on living labs for ecosystem restoration. CORDIS specifies three new living labs, each with 8–15 experimental sites, a multi-actor approach, and the possibility of financial support to third parties up to 30% of the proposed budget.

Official source — CORDIS / European Commission: https://cordis.europa.eu/programme/id/HORIZON_HORIZON-NATURE-2027-02-02

Week 41 Deadline Radar

  • 6 October — CEF Transport 2026: €1.1 billion available; deadline 17:00 CEST.

  • 8 October — IHI Call 13: Stage 1 deadline at 17:00 Brussels time; maximum IHI financial contribution €53.2 million.

  • 14 October — ERC Starting Grant 2027: application deadline.

Official source — IHI Joint Undertaking: https://www.ihi.europa.eu/apply-funding/ihi-call-13

Official source — European Research Council: https://erc.europa.eu/apply-grant/starting-grant

What Plus and Pro subscribers receive this week

  • Plus: a deeper map of the new Bridging and Nature pipeline, the MSCA funding increase, topic-level competition intelligence and a Results-to-Funding audit.

  • Pro: strategic interpretation of the Commission's research-to-deployment architecture, a deeper Bridging analysis, a 30-day Forward Look and a portfolio-level action plan.

Work with MetaKnowledge

The amended programme creates a practical question for every research organisation: which opportunities deserve new proposal effort, and which existing results can now be reactivated? MetaKnowledge supports funding intelligence, opportunity qualification, consortium strategy, proposal architecture and exploitation positioning.

Header image credit: Alexander Van Steenberge / Unsplash.

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