Deadline: 21-April-2026
The European Commission is requesting grant applications to advance the exploration, understanding, and sustainable development of European Union raw materials, particularly critical raw materials, to strengthen domestic capacities, support the National Exploration Programme, and foster innovation in the EU raw materials sector.
The focus areas include increasing information on EU raw materials occurrences and deposits while contributing to the implementation of the National Exploration Programme, improving the knowledge base of EU raw materials to identify new areas for exploration and resource estimation, accelerating development of EU domestic raw materials exploration projects integrating innovative technologies that can form the basis for new EU SMEs, developing innovative exploration data acquisition, processing, modelling, and mineral system analysis for identification of critical raw materials deposits, providing technologies and data to strengthen EU Geological Surveys capacities and skills to implement National Exploration Programmes, and accelerating development of EU domestic raw materials exploration projects by junior mining and exploration companies, all supported under HORIZON‑RIA — HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions with an indicative budget of EUR 18,500,000 and expected contributions per project ranging from EUR 5,000,000 to 7,000,000.
Actions should develop and validate advanced geological modelling and mineral system analysis using multi‑source data from geological, geophysical, and geochemical sources and remote‑sensing techniques to produce high‑resolution 3D models of mineral deposits. Integrating new methods such as artificial intelligence and machine learning with conventional approaches is necessary to predict the locations of critical raw materials and their carrier minerals with maximum accuracy. Actions that contribute to the National Exploration Programmes under Article 19 of the Critical Raw Materials Regulation are encouraged.
Further project activities should generate new knowledge and conceptual models supported by innovative technologies to strengthen and secure the EU’s supply of primary raw materials. This includes generating better geological understanding of known mineral deposits to facilitate discovery of new resources, collecting new geological, geophysical, and geochemical data, developing ore genetic models and mineral system analysis to build a broad understanding of EU deposit types including those carrying critical raw materials, advancing mineral prospectivity modelling processes, and facilitating integration of existing multi‑datasets with newly acquired data.
Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including entities from non‑associated third countries or international organisations, is eligible to participate, provided that the conditions of the Horizon Europe Regulation and the specific call/topic are met. A legal entity means any natural or legal person recognised under national, EU, or international law with legal personality, or an entity without legal personality that can exercise rights and be subject to obligations.
For more information, visit European Commission.
