HORIZON-INFRA-2026-TECH-01-01: R&D for the next generation of scientific instrumentation, tools, methods, digitalisation and solutions for research infrastructure upgrades (INFRATECH)

HORIZON-INFRA-2026-TECH-01-01: R&D for the next generation of scientific instrumentation, tools, methods, digitalisation and solutions for research infrastructure upgrades (INFRATECH)

Historical status

This is a historical reference for the 2026 INFRATECH topic. The European Research Executive Agency (REA) recorded 16 June 2026 as the deadline for proposals and reports that 89 proposals were submitted under HORIZON-INFRA-2026-TECH-01-01. The application window has therefore ended. The REA page currently gives post-deadline milestones for the 2026 call, including notification of applicants in November 2026, grant agreement signature for successful projects in February 2027, and project starts in June 2027. It does not announce a new INFRATECH application deadline.

Readers should not treat this page as an open call. It preserves the scope, eligibility logic, funding scale and preparation requirements of the closed 2026 topic so that organisations can understand the type of project the Commission sought, compare it with later work programmes, or use it when tracking results from the submitted proposals. A future Horizon Europe topic would need to be checked independently in the official portal; this record does not predict a next round.

Key details

What the topic was designed to fund

The official topic description focused on innovation that advances the state of research infrastructures and improves the services they can provide. It covered new scientific instrumentation, tools, digitalisation, methods and related solutions. The intended result was not simply a new laboratory device or an isolated software component. Projects were expected to show how the development would improve the operation of research infrastructures, support new research areas, or serve a wider user community that could include industrial users.

The topic identified several relevant work areas. These included research and development of new instruments and methods; technology validation and prototyping; training research-infrastructure staff to operate the new solutions; and work that could lead to industrial exploitation or broader social benefit. A proposal could combine hardware, software, data, automation and operational changes when those parts formed a credible infrastructure solution.

Greening and resilience were expected to be addressed across the proposed development. The official description points to issues such as energy consumption, climate-related pressures, critical components and materials. That means an otherwise strong technical concept still needed to explain its resource use, operational resilience and maintenance implications. Relevant projects could also apply principles such as Safe and Sustainable by Design or circular-by-design when developing and deploying the innovation.

The topic distinguished between the infrastructure use case and possible applications beyond it. Developments intended specifically for research infrastructures were expected to progress beyond technology readiness level 4. If a component also had applications outside research infrastructures, the additional development could be at TRL 3 to 4. Applicants therefore needed to define the target use case, the maturity of the proposed work and the evidence that would be produced at each stage.

Consortium and eligibility requirements

The most important structural requirement was the participation of at least two different research infrastructures as beneficiaries. The official topic record says that two nodes of the same ESFRI infrastructure or ERIC do not count as two different infrastructures. Each qualifying infrastructure had to fit one of the recognised categories: an ESFRI research infrastructure, a European Research Infrastructure Consortium, or another international European research organisation as defined in the Horizon Europe conditions.

This requirement made the topic different from a conventional single-laboratory research grant. The proposal needed to show why more than one infrastructure would use, test or shape the solution, and how the partners’ settings would produce meaningful validation. Simply listing two facilities without assigning each a substantive role would not demonstrate the cross-infrastructure benefit the topic sought.

The official description also said that other technology partners should be involved. These could include industrial organisations, SMEs, startups or scaleups. Their role was intended to support co-development, knowledge sharing, technical validation, exploitation or deployment, with due consideration for EU technological sovereignty. Industry involvement was therefore a significant part of the topic design, although the exact partner composition and eligibility conditions had to be checked in the Funding & Tenders Portal and the applicable Horizon Europe annexes.

The general REA guidance states that any organisation may apply when it has the operational and financial capacity to carry out its proposed tasks. For most Horizon Europe calls, applicants work as a consortium of at least three partner organisations from three different EU or associated countries, with at least one partner from an EU country. Topic-specific exceptions and additional conditions take precedence. A consortium also had to appoint a coordinator to act as the main contact with the European Research Executive Agency.

Potential applicants therefore needed to confirm legal-entity status, country eligibility, operational capacity, financial capacity, participant registration and the responsibilities of every beneficiary. A research infrastructure partner needed to meet the topic’s definition, not merely describe itself as a facility. Technology partners needed a clear task and a reason their contribution could not be reduced to generic subcontracting.

Funding and award mechanics

The topic carried an indicative budget of EUR 110 million. The Commission estimated that an EU contribution of EUR 5 million to EUR 10 million would allow an appropriate project to address the expected outcomes, while noting that this did not prevent proposals requesting a different amount. The published planning table indicated 11 projects for the topic. These figures describe the call-level envelope and planning assumptions; they do not guarantee a particular award size or number of funded projects.

The wider INFRATECH destination had an overall indicative budget of EUR 125 million for two topics. The EUR 110 million topic allocation should not be presented as money available to each applicant, and the EUR 125 million destination figure should not be mistaken for a per-project grant. A budget needed to be tied to work packages, milestones, validation activities, personnel, equipment or prototypes, partner tasks and the relevant Horizon Europe cost rules.

The action type was a Horizon Research and Innovation Action. Proposals could include pre-commercial procurement activities as described in the work programme, where that approach supported competitive development of a specific solution. Such procurement could involve phases for design, prototyping, original development and validation or testing. Any procurement or subcontracting arrangement still had to follow the applicable legal and financial rules and had to support the topic’s research and innovation objectives.

What a 2026 application required

The 2026 submission route was the EU Funding & Tenders Portal topic entry linked in the metadata above. Because the window is closed, these steps are retained as a record of the filing path rather than instructions to submit today:

1. Confirm the exact topic. Applicants needed to select HORIZON-INFRA-2026-TECH-01-01 under the Research Infrastructures 2026 call, rather than a neighbouring INFRADEV, INFRASERV, EOSC or second INFRATECH topic.
2. Build the qualifying consortium. The coordinator needed to confirm at least two different eligible research infrastructures as beneficiaries, along with the wider country and partner requirements. The proposal had to explain each infrastructure’s test environment and contribution.
3. Define the infrastructure problem. The technical case needed a baseline: an instrument, method, data workflow, operational constraint, energy burden, resilience problem or service limitation that the project would address.
4. Plan development and validation. The work plan needed to connect research and development to prototypes, technical validation, staff training and demonstrations in the participating infrastructures. Readiness-level claims needed to match the scope of the specific use case.
5. Add the impact and exploitation route. Applicants needed to show how the result could improve services, broaden users, support industry or SMEs, address policy needs, and remain useful after the grant. Plans for intellectual property, access, standards, maintenance and uptake needed to be consistent with the consortium structure.
6. Complete the portal checks early. The coordinator needed to register participants, collect partner data and legal confirmations, complete the proposal templates and submit through the portal before the hard deadline. The official deadline was 16 June 2026, so the portal’s validation and submission receipt were the relevant evidence of an on-time filing.

How to interpret the topic for future planning

The topic’s central test was whether the proposed development improved research-infrastructure capability at a scale larger than one local experiment. A useful concept would begin with a shared infrastructure problem and identify measurable improvements: better throughput, lower energy use, stronger resilience, improved interoperability, more reliable service delivery, or access for new user groups. It would then identify which infrastructure partners could test the result and why their settings were sufficiently different to make the validation meaningful.

The technical plan needed to be concrete. For an instrument, that could mean a design target, prototype path, calibration method and validation protocol. For digitalisation, it could mean the data architecture, interfaces, security or workflow changes that would improve service delivery. For a method, it could mean reproducibility tests, staff training and evidence that the method works across infrastructure contexts. A broad promise to “modernise” a facility was not enough without a baseline and measurable outputs.

The impact case also needed to connect to actual users. The official description mentions wider communities, including industrial users, and asks projects to consider innovation, knowledge sharing and EU technological sovereignty. A strong plan would identify who gains access, how staff learn to operate the solution, how other infrastructures could adopt it, and what support remains after the funded work. Environmental performance and resilience belonged in the design and validation plan, not as an afterthought in a dissemination section.

Complementarity mattered as well. The official topic says proposals should be complementary with actions funded under the 2022 and 2024 versions of the corresponding technology topic. A 2026 proposal therefore needed to explain what was new, which earlier results it used or avoided duplicating, and why the proposed instrument, tool, method or digital solution addressed a distinct need.

Post-deadline timeline

The official REA INFRATECH page records the 2026 call launch on 10 March 2026, an information day on 18 March 2026 and the proposal deadline on 16 June 2026. It reports 89 proposals for this topic and lists November 2026 for notifying applicants about selection. For successful projects, the page lists grant agreement signature in February 2027 and project starts in June 2027. These are programme milestones, not application dates for a new round.

There is no announced next-cycle deadline in the official REA material used for this update. Anyone looking for a live opportunity should check the current Funding & Tenders Portal and the REA Research Infrastructures pages rather than reusing the 2026 deadline. The archived date remains in the front matter because it is the real deadline for this specific topic, while historicalReference = true prevents the page from presenting that closed date as an active opportunity.

Official links and evidence

• Funding & Tenders Portal topic entry — official topic destination and submission record.
• European Research Executive Agency INFRATECH page — call dates, submitted-proposal count and post-deadline milestones.
• CORDIS topic record — official topic scope, research-infrastructure participation rule, technology-partner expectation and development conditions.

The legal instruments and the Funding & Tenders Portal topic conditions take precedence over this summary. This page is retained as a factual archive of the 2026 topic, not as a promise that applications remain open or that a later INFRATECH cycle will use the same terms.