RIVCircular Interregional Circular Economy Open Call (2026 cycle, closed)

RIVCircular Interregional Circular Economy Open Call (2026 cycle, closed)

Current status

This page is a historical reference to RIVCircular’s 2026 cascade funding call. The official RIVCircular call page says that proposals closed on 17 September 2026 at 14:00 CET and that the consortium is in the evaluation phase. The call is not open for applications. The official project call page and project information available at this update do not announce another application round. Keep the closing date as the deadline for this archived cycle; it is not a date for a currently available application.

The official call page is maintained by the RIVCircular project. Its consortium is coordinated by Comunidad de Madrid. The European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA) also published the opportunity and lists its status as closed. The project’s own page and its revised May applicant guidelines are useful references for the final call scope, including an update that withdrew Košice from the participating territories. This page records the call as it stood in those final applicant materials, not as a currently open grant.

Call at a glance

The call supported projects that developed or deployed circular economy technologies, products, processes, systems, services or solutions. Eligible work could include applied research, technology development and integration, testing, prototyping, demonstration, piloting, validation and market replication. The expected work was practical and interregional: proposals needed to show a credible route from an existing technology or solution to an operationally relevant result and to explain its value for participating regions.

Topics and regional scope

The call had five topics:

1. Construction and demolition waste circularity: reducing waste and improving recovery, reuse or circular use of construction materials.
2. Circular energy integration: using local waste streams to improve industrial efficiency and energy integration.
3. Electric vehicle battery recycling and reuse: developing or deploying approaches for battery reuse, recovery and recycling.
4. Circular economy in the textile industry: addressing circular processes and solutions in textile value chains.
5. Digital solutions for the circular economy: applying digital approaches to improve circularity and resource use.

The revised applicant guidance identifies seven participating territories: Madrid in Spain, Hauts-de-France in France, Innlandet in Norway, Kyiv-Oblast in Ukraine, Extremadura in Spain, Vienna in Austria and Greece at national scope. Košice was removed in version 2 of the applicant guidelines. Older summaries that include Košice should not be used to determine eligibility for this cycle.

The topics available depended on territory. Madrid, Innlandet, Hauts-de-France, Kyiv-Oblast and Extremadura could participate across Topics 1-5. Greece and Vienna were eligible for Topics 1, 2 and 5. Applicants needed to consult the territory-specific topic and applicant tables in the official guidelines: living in a participating country by itself did not make an organisation eligible. The rules required an eligible legal and operational presence in the relevant territory, and entity types were restricted in some regions.

The guidance allowed all kinds of entities based in Madrid, Hauts-de-France, Innlandet and Kyiv-Oblast. Vienna participation was for enterprises. Extremadura eligibility covered enterprises and research and knowledge dissemination organisations. In Greece, public entities and research and knowledge dissemination organisations could apply. Natural persons could not apply. The guide also set out region-specific rules on aid intensity, eligible costs, the required regional presence and other conditions; an archived overview cannot replace checking those clauses for any future programme or audit.

Consortium and project requirements

A proposal needed at least three entities from three different countries represented by participating RIVCircular territories. The legal consortium also had to meet the conditions in the guidelines for the selected topic and participating regions. Topic 5 required at least one SME. SME participation was encouraged, but not made mandatory, for Topics 1-4. Applicants had to verify that each member was an eligible legal entity and that its location, role and topic were admissible under the relevant regional rules.

Projects were Innovation Actions and had to start and finish within TRL 6-8. In other words, a proposal was expected to establish a credible maturity level and describe how the intervention would advance or validate a technology in a relevant or operational environment. A broad sustainability ambition alone would not show that a project met this requirement. The proposal needed to relate its work plan, deliverables, investment and evidence to the selected topic and to the actual conditions in participating territories.

The guidance gave Topics 1-4 a project duration of two to three years and Topic 5 a duration of one to two years. The call documentation said projects were expected to start no earlier than February 2027. It also required a Dissemination and Exploitation Plan, due at a duration-dependent early project month, and a Data Management Plan by month six. These are details of the selected projects’ delivery obligations, not evidence that applications remain open.

The total available budget in the revised applicant guide was €12.35 million. Recommended budgets were €1 million-€2 million per project for Topics 1-4 and €200,000-€700,000 for Topic 5; budgets outside the recommended range needed justification. An individual entity could request no more than €600,000 in cumulative funding across proposals and topics in this call. That cap applied to the beneficiary overall, rather than being an amount that could be multiplied by submitting more than one proposal. The guide further allocated estimated amounts by topic and territory and said allocations could be redistributed to fund the highest-rated projects.

Financial support was not the same percentage for every organisation. The guidelines describe different aid intensities based on entity type and territory. For enterprises in Madrid, Hauts-de-France, Innlandet, Kyiv-Oblast, Vienna and Extremadura, the listed maximum intensity varied by company size: up to 50% for corporations, 60% for medium-sized enterprises and 70% for small enterprises. Research and knowledge dissemination organisations had different rates, and the guide specified separate regional conditions. Eligible cost categories included personnel, travel, depreciation of equipment, other goods and services, limited subcontracting and territory-dependent overhead. Applicants needed to use the detailed version of the guide and regional advice to construct a compliant budget; the project-level budget bands alone did not establish an organisation’s eligible reimbursement rate.

Application materials and submission route used for this cycle

The call is closed, so the following describes the 2026 process for reference only. While the window was open, proposals had to be submitted through the dedicated RIVCircular website submission page, not by emailing a proposal or by using the general EU Funding & Tenders Portal as the application form. One coordinator submitted on behalf of the consortium in a single step. The package had to be in English and include the four required items identified in the applicant guide:

• Form A: administrative information about the proposal and participants. Each participant had to be registered in the EU Funding & Tenders Portal and have a Participant Identification Code (PIC) for the application.
• Form B: the technical proposal, following the provided structure and limited to 30 pages. The template mapped its sections to Excellence, Impact and Implementation evaluation criteria.
• Budget: the official budget template, with costs aligned to partner responsibilities, project activities, territory rules and the proposed work plan.
• Annex 8: the declaration on double funding for recipients.

The official call page also linked the guidelines, FAQ, templates and complaint materials. The applicant guide said no other documents were allowed in the proposal submission. A formal cooperation agreement among beneficiaries was required to establish governance, roles, financial responsibilities and implementation duties; the guide placed drafting and execution of this agreement under the beneficiaries’ responsibility. It was not listed as a fifth upload in the proposal package.

The submission was single-step, and the guide stated that only one submission was allowed: resubmissions were not permitted. Hauts-de-France applicants also had a compulsory parallel submission at regional level and were to be informed about that process. The RIVCircular website offered a matchmaking platform for organisations seeking consortium partners, but use of that platform was not a substitute for the formal proposal submission. These instructions explain the closed 2026 round and should not be assumed to govern a later call if RIVCircular publishes one.

Evaluation and preparation lessons from the published rules

The official guidance assigned 30% of the evaluation to Excellence, 40% to Impact and 30% to Implementation. For a historical application file, those weights clarify the call’s balance: a convincing innovation approach was necessary, but impact and a deliverable work plan together carried most of the weighting. Proposals needed to demonstrate why their selected circular economy problem mattered in the eligible territory, how the consortium could address it, and what evidence would show progress and results.

A suitable work plan would connect each partner to a defined task rather than relying on general consortium claims. For example, a regional operator might provide access to a waste or production stream; a technical company might adapt or deploy a process; and a research organisation could establish measurement and validation methods, where those organisations were eligible for the territory and topic. The proposal would need to demonstrate that those roles produced a shared interregional outcome rather than several disconnected local activities.

The call’s maturity condition called for a clear account of starting and target TRLs. Teams needed to explain the environment in which the technology would be validated and what would count as successful demonstration. For a construction materials project, that could mean traceable evidence about recovered material use and quality; for circular energy integration, measurements of the waste stream and efficiency changes; for battery work, a defined reuse or recovery pathway; for textiles, evidence about the relevant material and process loop; or for digital solutions, proof that the tool changed decisions or resource use. These are examples of evidence types that fit the topics, not extra formal call conditions.

Applicants also needed to check state-aid intensity, eligible cost categories, VAT treatment, regional presence and the consortium’s cumulative beneficiary cap before committing to a financial plan. A partner’s legal eligibility did not automatically mean that all of its costs could be funded at the same rate. Region-specific representatives were named in the call documents for questions, alongside the general RIVCircular contact. The official FAQ and the dated applicant-guideline version were important because the Košice withdrawal changed earlier published territory information.

Archived timeline and current availability

RIVCircular announced the call opening on 20 April 2026. It closed at 14:00 Brussels time on 17 September 2026. The project’s current call page reports that proposals are now being evaluated. There is no late-submission route stated on that page, and the official guidance prohibited submissions after the deadline. Accordingly, the deadline remains the actual 2026 closing date in the metadata, and the page is marked as a historical reference rather than presented as an active funding opportunity.

No later RIVCircular application deadline or next round is announced in the official materials reviewed for this update. The project may continue work with selected projects and regional stakeholders, but that activity is not an open application opportunity. Prospective applicants should check the RIVCircular call page and project news for any formal announcement before relying on a future round. Do not reuse the archived date, topic table or templates as if a new cycle had opened.

Official sources

• RIVCircular Cascade Funding call page — current closed status, evaluation phase, participating regions, topic summary and document links.
• RIVCircular Guidelines for Applicants, version 2 — detailed eligibility, revised territory scope, budget, project requirements, application package and evaluation rules.
• European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency call page — EU agency listing and call dates/status.