Deadline Date: August 26, 2026
The European Commission has launched the Smart Social Economy Model in Tourism call to support transnational partnerships that integrate social economy principles into sustainable tourism and promote community-led development along long-distance tourist trails across EU Member States.
The focus areas, objectives, and priorities of the call include integrating social economy principles into sustainable tourism, fostering transnational cooperation among local communities, and promoting socio-economic and territorial development through a bottom-up approach. The initiative aims to develop sustainable tourism models along long-distance trails by enabling territories to collaboratively design, pilot, and evaluate integrated tourism offers while supporting networks among local communities, tourism stakeholders, local authorities, Destination Management Organisations (DMOs), and social economy organisations.
The call also focuses on strengthening capacity through practical toolkits, governance templates, financing models, marketing approaches, and impact measurement frameworks. It aims to develop a transnational blueprint for applying social economy principles to sustainable tourism while encouraging community participation, cultural heritage integration, rural development, environmental stewardship, digital innovation, skills development, social inclusion, entrepreneurship among senior, women, and youth groups, and stronger local value chains that retain economic benefits within rural communities.
The pilot project aims to explore and test smart social economy models that can improve the sustainability and inclusiveness of tourism activities along selected long-distance trails. It will support local actors, including authorities, tourism stakeholders, and social economy entities, in designing and implementing approaches that create lasting economic and social benefits for communities.
The initiative will focus on using existing long-distance tourist trails as testing environments for sustainable tourism models. Through collaboration between different regions and countries, projects will develop approaches that can be replicated across other European areas while strengthening local capacities and promoting sustainable rural development.
Funded projects are expected to follow four main phases: research and analysis, testing community engagement approaches, development or extension of a digital platform, and sharing lessons learned through feedback, evaluation, and dissemination activities.
The research and preparation phase will include needs assessments, analysis of existing social economy practices, mapping of local assets such as heritage sites, farms, crafts, and social economy entities, preparation of strategies for leveraging local resources, development of impact measurement frameworks, and organisation of workshops for feedback and validation.
The pilot testing phase will support community engagement strategies, technical assistance for social enterprises, collaborative governance models, digital literacy activities, sustainable tourism training, social enterprise management support, workshops, seminars, and guidance for strengthening resilience and sustainability among social economy entities.
The digital platform component will explore tools that connect tourism demand with social economy goods and services along trails. The platform will aim to improve visibility of local organisations and cultural heritage sites, support access to local services, enable resource sharing, and track project impact indicators through stakeholder testing.
The final phase will focus on evaluating project outcomes, collecting stakeholder feedback, validating monitoring systems, sharing best practices, developing awareness activities, and promoting replication of successful approaches.
The call has an estimated budget of €1,500,000 and is open to legal entities, including public and private bodies established in EU Member States, overseas countries and territories, and other eligible entities under specific conditions. Projects should involve transnational cooperation and demonstrate potential for testing, evaluation, and scaling of sustainable tourism solutions based on social economy principles.
For more information, visit European Commission.
