Strategic Innovation Open Call

Key Features

EIT Urban Mobility invites innovators from across Europe to submit a proposal to its Strategic Innovation Open Call, designed to accelerate the deployment of impactful solutions that address the most pressing challenges in urban mobility.

Programme:     EIT Urban Mobility

Award:     EUR 60 million

Opens: 19th Jun 2025

Closes: 31st Dec 2028

Overview

EIT Urban Mobility invites innovators from across Europe to submit a proposal to its Strategic Innovation Open Call, designed to accelerate the deployment of impactful solutions that address the most pressing challenges in urban mobility.

Scope

The call focuses on supporting ambitious, market-critical projects that tackle clearly defined problems faced by cities, public authorities, and mobility providers. We aim to de-risk development and enable large-scale deployment by backing solutions with a clear path to market and the potential to scale across Europe.

Through this call, EIT Urban Mobility fosters innovation and strengthens Europe’s competitiveness by encouraging collaboration across the EIT Knowledge Triangle—education, research, and business—alongside a fourth essential partner: cities.

The Call will focus on five sectors in which we believe Europe has the potential to innovate and create impact:

  • Urban logistics,
  • Public transport,
  • Mobility data management,
  • Electrification of transport and alternative fuels, and
  • Health and mobility.

In the future, the Call may also include specific topic scopes to address key market opportunities or urgent market failures that can be addressed through our funding.

Call Objectives

EIT Urban Mobility are looking for ambitious collaborative projects that accelerate the adoption of impactful innovation. To support this, they are refining our project frameworks to better accommodate initiatives with greater scale and vision. While remaining flexible in what they fund, a clear focus on commercialisation is a key pre-requisite — projects must demonstrate strong market potential and a credible path to market by the end of implementation. The solution/s should be designed for sale to external clients and replicable beyond the initial use case. Projects with an internal focus — such as those optimising own operations or lacking a clearly marketable product or service — will be considered out of scope. To this end, EIT Urban Mobility is seeking projects that respond to one of the following frameworks:

  • Solution package projects: Projects developing and testing multiple solutions addressing a shared urban mobility challenge across one or multiple demonstration sites. The focus is on creating a cohort of scalable solutions for commercialisation rather than investing in a single, complex solution.
  • Value chain projects: These projects unite key players across the value chain, ensuring all essential roles are integrated to make an innovation viable. Solutions (products, services, new business models or operational approaches) should address well-identified critical inefficiencies in industrial value chains or public-sector-driven challenges.
  • Single solution projects: Projects supporting high-impact solutions that require longer times and budget for extended development, validation, and regulatory approvals to reach full market readiness.

To ensure strategic fit, all projects must demonstrate market criticality and propose a convincing path to market. EIT Urban Mobility seek initiatives that address clearly defined urban mobility challenges aligned with policy priorities and pressing market or customer needs. At the same time, projects must go beyond prototyping and testing to cover essential steps such as certification, scalability, intellectual property protection, and preparation for commercialisation within the project timeframe.

Expected Outcomes

The Call will focus on five sectors in which we believe Europe has the potential to innovate and create impact:

Urban logistics

  • Solutions (products, services and business models) that reduce the negative externalities of urban logistics – such as congestion, emissions and noise – while enhancing efficiency, resilience, sustainability and integration with the urban environment, especially in last-mile operations.
  • Innovative concepts for logistics hubs and digitally enabled solutions that foster greater collaboration among logistics operators, cities and users are particularly encouraged.

Public transport

  • Solutions that strengthen public transport as the backbone of a resilient, sustainable, inclusive and multimodal mobility ecosystem, by improving its attractiveness and competitiveness – with the clear goal of attracting users away from private cars.
  • New concepts, technologies and business models that enhance demand-responsive transport and integrate shared mobility services with public transit –aimed at improving first- and last-mile connectivity and expanding overall network coverage are encouraged.

Mobility data management

  • Data-driven solutions that enhance the performance, efficiency and responsiveness of urban mobility systems through e.g. the use of advanced analytics, AI, quantum technology or real time data – in alignment with EU-level interoperability and data governance efforts (e.g. common data spaces, European data standards, open digital infrastructures). Solutions that enable cities and public authorities to make data-informed decisions – particularly for the design and implementation of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs), inclusive/participatory planning and citizen engagement, resilience and disruption response, or regulatory monitoring and enforcement (e.g. Low Emission Zones) – are particularly encouraged.
  • All solutions should adhere to principles of data privacy, interoperability, replicability and scalability, while demonstrating a clear pathway to sustainable deployment and uptake.

Electrification of transport and alternative fuels

  • Solutions that advance zero-emission urban mobility through innovation across the electrification value chain, vehicles, new battery technologies, smart /dynamic charging infrastructure, grid integration or life battery extension, reuse and recycle.
  • Alternative fuels solutions such as hydrogen applications, that support early adoption, reducing initial or operative costs, offer integrated solutions to the urban environment, and are viable to scale-up.

Health and mobility

  • Solutions that promote active mobility as a foundation for healthier urban lifestyles, by improving safety, convenience, inclusivity and integration within the urban environment, facilitating a modal shift towards active modes. Proposals should go beyond typical behavioural change campaigns, to include innovative and market-oriented solutions that strengthen the European cycling industry and align with the goals of the European Declaration on Cycling. Digital or public space design innovations must demonstrate a disruptive approach and clear potential for adoption by public authorities.
  • This topic also includes innovations that monitor, reduce, or mitigate the health impacts of air and noise pollution in urban mobility systems – including solutions for cleaner transport, reduced exposure, and health-informed planning.

Eligibility

Collaboration is the cornerstone of innovation. As such, all projects funded require a minimum of two
independent legal entities2, working together. These entities must be established in two different European
Member States, and/or Third countries associated with Horizon Europe.

At least one partner should be identified as the lead commercial partner and is responsible for the contribution to the EIT Urban Mobility Financial Sustainability Mechanism.

While there are no other formal restrictions on consortium composition, it is essential that consortia are fit for purpose. The consortium must include all organisations essential to both the successful execution of the project and, importantly, the future commercialisation of the developed solutions at scale – each with a defined role and appropriate budget allocation. This typically includes, but is not limited to: companies aiming to commercialise all proposed solution(s); pilot hosts such as cities, public transport operators, or mobility providers; relevant knowledge or technology providers; or any other entities required to enable market entry, such as certification bodies or regulatory advisors. Importantly, consortia should remain balanced and streamlined, ensuring that the number of partners is appropriate to maintain efficiency, agility, and effective collaboration throughout the project.

Special cases

Switzerland: Switzerland will become an associated country to Horizon Europe with retroactive
effect as of 1 January 2025, once the Association Agreement between Switzerland and the European
Union is signed. Before the signature, expected in November 2025, transitional arrangements apply
(i.e. applicants established in Switzerland can submit applications and will be evaluated, but can be
awarded and may receive EIT funding only following the signature of the Association Agreement).

Temporary eligibility requirements for Hungarian universities: Due to Council measures protecting the EU budget (effective December 15, 2022), Hungarian public interest trusts and their affiliated universities may face participation and funding restrictions in any EIT Urban Mobility Calls. For details and affected entities, see the document Eligibility of Expenditure published on the Call webpage.

For further information on this funding call, see guidance notes here

How can you apply?

The Strategic Innovation Open Call is open from 2026-2028 with several cut-off dates as outlined below.

Access the EIT Urban Mobility NetSuite platform and find the call for the currently open cut-off date under menu –> Call for Proposals – -> Open Calls. Submit your application form within the given deadline.

If you have never registered in NetSuite, please complete the Partner Information Form (PIF). If the system denies your registration because the PIC number corresponds to an already registered entity, or because your email address is associated with an existing entity, please contact servicedesk@eiturbanmobility.eu.

The assessment of the proposals involves two stage: Stage 1 is the expert evaluation of proposals submitted via the EIT Urban Mobility NetSuite platform (see section 4.2 of the Call Manual for submission steps), followed by Stage 2, which includes a panel hearing and selection by the Selection Committee.

Funding Costs

The total estimated funding allocated to this Call is 60 million EUR for the period 2026-2028 and has multiple cut-off dates.

Each project may receive up to 2 million EUR of EIT funding. EIT Urban Mobility will reimburse up to 65% of the eligible project costs, while the minimum co-funding rate for all proposals is 35%.