Deadline: December 11, 2025
EIT Food, the world’s largest food innovation community, is offering funding to support collaborative missions programmes aimed at addressing major societal challenges within the food system through systemic, impactful, and partnership-driven initiatives.
The focus areas of this funding opportunity are meeting societal challenges within the food system by delivering one or more Mission Targets, being problem-led with a clearly defined pathway to impact, building a portfolio of connected activities across relevant economic, industry, and social value chains, forging synergies between academia, vocational education and training, industry, NGOs, associations, and policy stakeholders, leading by organisations with the capability to scale and drive adoption of programme results, connecting to EIT Food infrastructure programmes and assets to scale impact, reducing skills gaps and cultivating workforce development in Agricultural Transitions, Food Biotechnology and Food Security, Risk and Resilience, building on a portfolio of previously funded innovations and supporting start-up community capabilities, creating and supporting platforms to address major barriers and opportunities related to Strategic Levers for food systems change, and producing and communicating insights to inform public affairs, fundraising, and strategic decision-making.
This funding opportunity invites proposals from consortia led by organisations capable of delivering high-impact outcomes through connected activities and workstreams across economic, industry, and social value chains. The programme types supported include co-funding open competitions, jointly funding programmes with other funders and NGOs, coordinating consortia across value chains to accelerate innovation impact, supporting knowledge exchange clusters, exploring innovative workforce development approaches, and addressing strategic sectoral issues.
The total funding allocated to this scheme from 2023 to 2025 is €30 million, with applicants able to request up to €1,000,000 per year for up to two years, covering no more than 70% of total programme costs, requiring a minimum co-funding of 30%. Funding durations of up to 24 months are encouraged, with the possibility of a 12-month performance-based extension. Eligible applicants include organisations from European Union Member States and Horizon Europe Associate Countries, and proposals must demonstrate pan-European impact and strategic fit.
Applications are assessed through a multi-stage evaluation process, including eligibility checks, strategic alignment, technical evaluation by internal and external evaluators, and may include clarification panels for borderline scores. A quality threshold score of 3.5 out of 5 is required for selection. Selected projects enter an onboarding process before contracting and funding disbursal.
Funding is released in instalments tied to deliverables and milestones, with ongoing monitoring to ensure progress, impact achievement, and appropriate use of funds. EIT Food also requires impact measurement, communication plans, and may apply a Success Sharing Mechanism for commercial outcomes.
For more information, visit EIT Food.
