Interregional Innovation Investments Strand 1 (I3-2026-INV1)

Objectives

Strand 1 of the I3 Instrument seeks to strengthen the competitiveness and resilience of EU value chains by supporting interregional innovation investments that build on shared or complementary Smart Specialisation priorities and reinforcing Europe’s industrial and technological base. 

The objective of the I3 Instrument Strand 1 call for proposals is to support interregional innovation investments by offering consortia of innovation actors from the quadruple helix ecosystems the necessary financial and advisory support to bring their innovations to a mature level, ready for commercialisation and scale-up, while bridging and reducing the innovation divide in Europe with a strong cohesion policy focus of integrating all regions and in particular the less developed regions into European value chains.

Thereby, applications under this call seek to facilitate:

• the development and expansion of already existing interregional and cross border value chains and stronger connection between regional innovation ecosystems;
• the collaboration between innovation actors, especially SMEs, from less developed regions and innovation actors, especially SMEs, from more developed regions, contributing to cohesion policy objectives;
• the support of innovation actors with investment ideas that are ready to be evolve into mature business cases;
• the identification of new regional technological domains and market opportunities aligned with the EU priorities and bridging the gap between the supply and demand sides to help innovation ecosystems overcome market failures.

I3 Instrument business investment cases start with a minimum TRL 6 and have the ambition to facilitate demonstration and to accelerate market uptake and commercialisation. The development of the business and investment cases is facilitated by the regional innovation ecosystems with companies in the lead. Projects are expected to demonstrate a clear role for enterprises, in particular SMEs, in driving deployment, market uptake and scale-up activities.

The support to be provided shall be (a) financial support, through direct funding to consortium beneficiaries or through cascade funding/financial support to third parties (FSTP), and (b) non-financial support, such as business and investment planning, protection of intellectual property rights (IPR), certification, commercialisation, standardisation, tailored support for the integration of key enabling technologies (KETs)/deep tech in production processes, and support for testing, demonstration and piloting of new solutions.

At the end of the project implementation, all involved regions and partners shall have a clear perspective on how to exploit and build on the I3 Instrument project results, including through the broad introduction of new products, services, or production processes. This shall include a credible perspective for follow-up investment, wider deployment and long-term integration of project results into European value chains.

Main novelties

Applicants for the I3 Instrument Investments calls for proposals (I3-2026-INV1 and I3-2026-INV2a) benefit from a lighter budget table to be uploaded by the call deadline. Compared with the previous I3 Instrument calls, the submitted new budget tables will be much shorter. For example, there is no longer any requirement to submit individual sheets in detail per partner and work package. The simplified table will also be used for the projects to be funded during the grant agreement preparation (GAP) phase. However, for the reporting phase at mid-term and at project end, the previous detailed budget tables remain in use.

Revised Award Criteria: a more comprehensive and transparent evaluation framework 

The revised award criteria for the I3 Instrument provide a more comprehensive and transparent evaluation framework, supporting the evaluation of proposals and guiding applicants in understanding what is expected of them. The introduction of sub-criteria enables a more accurate assessment of proposals. Furthermore, a rebalanced scoring system, with a greater emphasis on Impact (now 10 points) and a reduced emphasis on Relevance (now 5 points), reflects the importance of generating substantial and lasting benefits for the regions involved and the value chains.

The other key change for the newly published calls is the increase of the maximum threshold for SMEs to be funded through financial support to third parties (FSTP) from €60 000 to €100 000. EISMEA opted for this derogation due to the large scale nature of the I3 Instrument projects, with total project grants of up to €10 million. The increase of the FSTP threshold will allow a better critical mass for sub-granted projects and therefore better support the main investments in the I3 Instrument projects.

Budget

The estimated total available call budget for 2026 is €28.2 million.

Info session

An information session on the call targeted at eligible applicants took place on 27 May 2026. Did you miss it? Check the recording and presentations here.