Building a sustainable and innovative Blue Economy: mastering digital opportunities and fostering resilience
Horizon Europe · Cascade funding
Summary
A Polish company can use this call for R&D.
Funds transnational marine and maritime research and innovation supporting a sustainable, climate-neutral blue economy and cross-basin collaboration.
- Who can apply
- Unclear from the source.
- Amount
- €37,723,260Indicative budget
- Deadline
- 16 Nov 2026 16:00 CETin 23 days · +1 later cut-off
- Status
- Openopened 14 Sept 2026
Machine-classified from the call text; check eligibility at the source.
Description
Scope
The 2026 Joint Transnational Co-funded Call is the fourth under the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership. It mobilises funding from 33 organisations across 28 countries plus EU contributions, aiming to foster a climate-neutral, sustainable, and innovative blue economy in Europe by supporting research, innovation, and collaboration across marine and maritime sectors. The call contributes to the European Green Deal, Digital Europe, the Ocean Pact, the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, the Marine Spatial Planning Directive, the 2030 Climate Target Plan and the Zero Pollution vision for 2050, as well as the EU Strategies on Coastal Communities and Islands, and the UN Decade of Ocean Science. Proposals must address one main priority area and foster cross-basin collaboration to strengthen the competitiveness and sustainability of the EU Blue Economy.
Priorities Areas
The fourth Joint Co-funded Call encompasses all the five Partnership Intervention Areas converted for this call into four priority areas as follows:
Priority area 1: Transitioning the blue economy sectors for sustainability and strategic autonomy
Priority area 2: Managing sea-uses by advancing digital and ecosystem-based approaches
Priority area 3: Promoting sustainable blue bioresources through innovation in production and harvesting
Priority area 4: Building resilience in coastal communities with infrastructure and businesses
Each of these areas contributes directly to one or more of the Ocean Decade Challenges, supporting actionable knowledge generation, policy uptake, capacity development, and inclusive innovation in the blue economy context.
Geographical coverage
The proposals are strongly recommended to consider a minimum of two EU sea basins which are: the Atlantic Ocean, Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea, and North Sea, and to assess the project proposal’s impact and potential replication/scalability on various sea basins. Proposals can target European regional seas such as Adriatic Sea, Aegean Sea, the Arctic, Barents Sea, Celtic Sea, etc. but they must be from a minimum of 2 different EU Sea basins.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
The call is published on the Partnership website at https://www.bluepartnership.eu/funding-opportunity/sustainable-blue-economy-partnerships-fourth-joint-transnational-call.
Interested applicants must carefully read the relevant national regulations in Annex with the Call text. Each applicant to the call must ensure that its contribution to the overall project conforms to these regulations.
Who can apply, in detail
- Purpose
- Research and innovation
- R&D relevance
- 2 of 3
- Poland eligible
- Yes
- Country limit
- Participating funding countries; the text mentions 28 countries without listing them.
- Region
- Any
- Consortium
- Required
- Readiness level (TRL)
- —
- Topics
- Blue economy
- Marine technologies
- Maritime innovation
- Digital opportunities
- Climate resilience
Machine-classified from the call text; check eligibility at the source. 23 Oct 2026
Conditions
Typed facts extracted from the source documents by Scindu's grant-data review. Each value keeps its own conditions. Unknown means unstated, not zero or unlimited.
- Consortium required
- Yes
Self-funded partners may join, but at least three participating funders from at least three countries must be requested; at least two eligible EU/associated-country partners must be present.
- Other condition
- Under the Belgium BELSPO rules, tax-free scholarships in a project cannot exceed 50% of the BELSPO-funded staff count and cannot exceed two scholarships per project; full salary costs include legally due secondary compensation/allowances, and already funded researcher time cannot be claimed again.
- Other condition
- The Belgium F.R.S.-FNRS national rule says personnel costs (Article III.6) have an annual average cap of €80,000 for this call; the source excerpt does not state the denominator, so this is not encoded as a per-person salary ceiling.
- Other condition
- Under Ireland Research Ireland rules, full-time Master’s and PhD students registered at an eligible HEI may be budgeted at the stated €25,000 annual stipend plus €6,000 annual college fees; eligible salary-related research costs use Research Ireland team member scales and cannot include the applicant’s own salary.
- Other condition
- There is no specific global proposal total budget cap; the total depends on the number of eligible partners and each PFO’s national/regional budget limits. Each partner must verify local eligibility before submission; final funding decisions are made by the respective PFOs.
- Other condition
- Netherlands NWO salary funding includes at least one Postdoc for at least 12 months and at least 0.5 FTE, at UNL or UMCNL rates; non-scientific personnel and research leave have separate rate/range rules, with research leave limited to 10% of grant amount.
- Other condition
- The current intake is the fourth 2026 SBEP Joint Transnational Call (“Building a sustainable and innovative Blue Economy”), attached to the catalogue parent-topic identifier HORIZON-CL6-2022-GOVERNANCE-01-02.
- Other condition
- Pre-proposals are due 16 November 2026 at 15:00 CET (Brussels/Copenhagen/Paris); invited full proposals are due 14 June 2027 at 15:00 CEST, to be confirmed after step 1.
- Expected project duration
- 36
The current 4th-call announcement states a fixed 36-month project duration.
Amounts and costs
- Indicative budget
- €37,723,260
Topic budget as stated in the portal's budget table. Lump-sum and per-project limits are in the call conditions.
- Call allocation
- €37,859,560
The 6 October 2026 call PDF gives a provisional total estimate of €37,859,560; SEDIA metadata records €37,723,260, an unresolved difference. Individual partner PFO limits and national rules control requests.
- Eligible cost
- Personnel costs and whether they may fund employees, secondments, scholarships or contracted researchers depend on each national/regional PFO rule in Annex B; this call has no single global personnel eligibility or salary-rate rule.
Rates and allowances
An allowance, cap or unit contribution is not a guaranteed salary.
- Reference · Stipend · person€25,000/ year
Personnel and services
Other role
Staff cost the grant can fund
BELSPO-specific: full staff costs and double-funding exclusion apply; tax-free scholarship limit is separately recorded.
Student
Staff cost the grant can fund
Student stipend and fees are not an employee salary. Research Ireland funding is country/partner-specific.
Researcher
Staff cost the grant can fund
NWO-specific salary uses UNL or UMCNL rates; no euro amount in this Annex B excerpt.
Source documents
Call facts
- Opens
- 14 Sept 2026
- Deadlines
- 16 Nov 2026 16:00 CET
- 14 Jun 2027 17:00 CEST
- Deadline model
- Multiple cut-off
- Programme
- Horizon Europe · 2021 - 2027
- Call
- Building a sustainable and innovative Blue Economy: mastering digital opportunities and fostering resilience
- Types of action
- —
- Source
- ec.europa.eu
- Checked
- 23 Oct 2026
- Portal updated
- 14 Sept 2026
- Review status
- Partial review
- Reviewed
- 22 Oct 2026
This is a summary of the source page, not the official text. Eligibility, conditions and the submission system are at the source.