Deadline Date: September 23, 2026
The European Commission has launched this Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Action (RIA) to harness the power of the arts—through “artistic intelligence”—to address complex societal challenges, enhance human soft skills, and strengthen innovation, competitiveness, and cross-disciplinary collaboration across Europe.
The key focus areas, objectives, priorities, and themes of this opportunity include advancing the integration of arts, science, and technology to better understand and address societal challenges while driving innovation in research and policy. The programme emphasizes the development of guidance, toolkits, methodologies, and evaluation frameworks that enable policymakers, educators, and professionals to effectively implement and assess art–science–technology collaborations. It also focuses on strengthening existing and new national, European, and international networks that connect artists with scientific and technological communities. The initiative further highlights the role of artistic intelligence in making complex scientific and technological concepts more accessible, emotionally engaging, and culturally meaningful, thereby supporting inclusive and sustainable innovation.
Under Focus 1, the programme supports the development, testing, and dissemination of approaches that use arts and creative practices to enhance soft skills such as creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, and emotional intelligence across education, public administration, and private sector environments. This focus aims to strengthen workforce adaptability, productivity, and well-being in response to increasing automation and societal complexity. Under Focus 2, the programme supports the implementation of at least three small-scale pilot demonstrators involving emerging technologies and interdisciplinary teams that include artists. These pilots may explore technologies such as immersive media, spatial computing, XR, AI models, multisensory systems, or data-driven storytelling, with the goal of assessing how artistic engagement can improve technological development and societal impact.
The initiative encourages research-intensive, interdisciplinary collaboration between artists, researchers, industry partners, and policymakers. It promotes the development of use cases such as ethical and human-centred AI design, participatory art–science initiatives, public engagement through data-driven artistic storytelling, and the role of artists in innovation ecosystems and policymaking processes. Proposals are expected to generate both qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods, including metrics and key performance indicators, to assess the medium- and long-term impact of these collaborations.
Consortia must include artists and representatives from creative industries, ensuring that artistic practice remains central to the innovation process. Financial support of up to €60,000 per third party may be provided to directly engage artists through residencies and experimental collaborations. Proposals must clearly select either Focus 1 or Focus 2, in addition to the main objectives.
The European Commission also encourages involvement of the Joint Research Centre (JRC), particularly due to its expertise in the SciArt programme and its role in connecting research with policymaking.
The total funding allocation for this call is €15 million, with individual projects typically receiving between €4.5 million and €5 million under the Horizon Europe framework.
Eligible applicants include any legal entity, regardless of country of establishment, including organisations from non-associated third countries and international organisations, subject to Horizon Europe rules. Applicants must register in the Participant Register and obtain a Participant Identification Code (PIC) prior to grant agreement preparation.
For more information, visit EC.
