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MK Radar Plus Issue 3 | The New Bridging & Nature Pipeline — Horizon Europe calls 2027

6 days ago
4 min read

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

The amendment is here — now re-map the pipeline

The Horizon Europe amendment changes more than the budget. Week 41 Plus maps the new Bridging and Nature pipeline, MSCA's €210m+ boost, fresh competition evidence and the decisions organisations should make now.

Strategic Signal

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

MK view: The strongest Week 41 signal is not simply a larger budget. It is the stronger emphasis on moving research outputs into validation, innovation ecosystems, deployment and scale.

What changed since Issue 2

Issue 2 was written around an anticipated Work Programme update. The Commission's central Work Programme repository now lists the main 2026–27 programme sections with a 29 September 2026 date. Organisations should re-download the programme sections relevant to their active and planned pipeline rather than rely on copies already circulating internally.

New Funding Radar — Bridging Actions 2027

1. Advance Pillar II results through the innovation journey

HORIZON-BRIDGING-2027-02-05 is specifically designed around promising results from Pillar II collaborative research. CORDIS describes progression towards innovative products, processes or services and explicitly includes further validation steps, including clinical studies where relevant.

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

2. Valorise Horizon results through innovation ecosystems

HORIZON-BRIDGING-2027-06-02 targets scouting, selection, validation and valorisation of promising Horizon results. At least 60% of the total requested EU contribution should be allocated through financial support to third parties for validation and valorisation activities.

  • Relevant assets include research results, prototypes, software, data, IP and deep-tech ventures emerging from Horizon projects.

  • Relevant intermediaries include technology-transfer organisations, incubators, accelerators, testing facilities, living labs and innovation ecosystems.

  • The opportunity is strongest where a result already exists but still lacks validation, market evidence or a deployment pathway.

Official source — CORDIS / European Commission: https://cordis.europa.eu/programme/id/HORIZON_HORIZON-BRIDGING-2027-06-02

3. Bridging is deliberately cross-sectoral

The same horizontal portfolio includes HORIZON-BRIDGING-2027-01-12, a large-scale AI-driven energy-system pilot. CORDIS specifies a cross-border ecosystem spanning at least six Member States or Associated Countries and multiple energy, digital, mobility and community actors. It also includes HORIZON-BRIDGING-2027-01-13, focused on advanced scaling frameworks for high-performance AI models under the EU Frontier AI Initiative.

New Funding Radar — Nature-Positive

The Nature-Positive pipeline is not a narrow environmental funding category. It connects ecosystem restoration with health, industrial transformation, digital technologies and strategic-resource dependencies.

Living labs for ecosystem restoration

HORIZON-NATURE-2027-02-02 calls for three new living labs with 8–15 experimental sites each. It requires a multi-actor approach, includes social-sciences and humanities involvement, and allows 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

One Health and nature-positive industry

  • HORIZON-NATURE-2027-03-01 addresses the biodiversity–health interface under a One Health approach.

  • HORIZON-NATURE-2027-01-02 examines impacts and benefits of clean and digital industries on biodiversity, with connections to the Clean Industrial Deal, AI/data-centre development and critical raw materials.

Talent Signal — MSCA gets a €210m+ boost

On 1 October, MSCA announced more than €210 million in additional funding for Postdoctoral Fellowships and Doctoral Networks in 2026–27. The increase is expected to support more than 700 additional researchers. MSCA also reports that the 2026 Postdoctoral Fellowships call received 21,627 applications, an all-time programme record.

MK view: Talent funding is becoming part of the competitiveness agenda. Institutions should treat MSCA as an organisational talent-pipeline instrument, not only as a grant programme for individual academics.

Competition Intelligence

HaDEA reported 132 proposals to the 2026 Horizon Europe Space call, but the distribution across individual topics was highly uneven.

  • HORIZON-CL4-2026-SPACE-03-31: 55 proposals; indicative 3 projects.

  • HORIZON-CL4-2026-SPACE-03-61: 52 proposals; indicative 2 projects.

  • HORIZON-CL4-2026-SPACE-03-11: 6 proposals; indicative 2 projects.

MK view: Topic-level applicant density can differ dramatically inside the same call. Bid/no-bid decisions should consider probable competitive concentration, not only programme relevance and available budget.

Week 41 Deadline Radar

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

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

  • 14 October — ERC Starting Grant 2027: 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

Weekly Positioning Tip — run a Results-to-Funding audit

Do not begin with new proposal ideas. Begin with the last three to five years of funded project outputs.

  • What exists? Prototype, dataset, software, process, IP, demonstrator or clinical evidence?

  • Where did development stop? Lab validation, relevant environment, demonstration or market validation?

  • Who owns the result? Are exploitation rights clear?

  • What evidence is missing? Technical, regulatory, user, market, manufacturing, procurement or investment?

  • What actor is missing? SME, investor, public procurer, living lab, technology infrastructure or deployment partner?

  • Could a new Bridging action finance the missing step?

Verification Note

The Commission's central Work Programme repository now lists the main 2026–27 sections with a 29 September 2026 date. Individual portal pages and cached documents can take time to converge. MK Radar does not resolve official-source conflicts by assumption; where EU sources disagree, the discrepancy is reported and the live application source must be rechecked before acting.

Work with MetaKnowledge

MetaKnowledge can turn an amended Work Programme into a managed funding pipeline: opportunity qualification, result valorisation, consortium design, proposal architecture and impact strategy.

Header image credit: Alexander Van Steenberge / Unsplash.

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