EU AI Media Platform – modular multilingual public-interest infrastructure for European news and audiovisual media (IA) - Apply AI
Horizon Europe · Grant topic
Summary
A Polish company can use this call for R&D.
Funds media and technology partnerships developing interoperable AI infrastructure for multilingual public-interest news, audiovisual distribution and experimental immersive experiences.
- Who can apply
- Companies can lead: SME, large company, startup, public body, other.
- Amount
- €10M per projectTotal budget €10,000,000
- Deadline
- 16 Feb 2027 01:00 CETin 115 days
- Status
- Forthcomingopens 20 Oct 2026
Machine-classified from the call text; check eligibility at the source.
Description
Expected Outcome:
The project will support the development of a modular, trustworthy and interoperable AI-enabled infrastructure enabling pan-European public-interest media platform(s) to make available real time news and information from professional media outlets across the EU and associated countries to wider audiences[1]. It will harness AI to translate, process and distribute content for relevant channels through classification, recognition, linguistic analysis, translation and other multimodal workflows. It will also enable prototypic content creation and testing of immersive and innovation-inspired media experiences consistent with a public-interest mission for different age groups, taking into account gender-responsive design and promoting news diversity. Overall, it will improve multilingual access, including low-resource European languages, strengthen media pluralism and resilience for public service media and professional media outlets, content creators and independent publishers, and embed trust, provenance and accountability by design.
The concrete expected outcomes are:
• Reliable, modular and interoperable infrastructure with validated service levels and sustainability pathways, integrating AI-based components that support multilingual and multimodal media workflows including audiovisual processing and adaptation workflows, relevant metadata interoperability for broadcast and streaming contexts, social-media-facing interaction and adaptive, personalised, and interactive content experiences (modular journalism) catering for diverse user needs.
• Content in multiple languages and onboarding conditions and equal access for all types of media organisations, from public broadcasters to small local publishers, SMEs, cultural institutions and civil society groups.
• Built-in safety, transparency and governance features, fair human-data interactions (e.g., legibility, agency, negotiability), traceability of key decisions, open evaluation methods, and validated governance and interoperability frameworks.
• Reliable tracking of content origins through provenance information, attribution metadata and verification signals.
Scope:
This topic will support pilots for AI-enabled media infrastructures, fostering research and innovation in the European media sector. It should deliver innovative solutions by consolidating, integrating and validating reusable AI-enabled infrastructure components and governance arrangements of platform pilots[2] for pan-European public-interest media platform(s), making use, where appropriate, of European AI infrastructure and building on results from relevant Horizon Europe, Digital Europe and pilot actions, in preparation for wider scale-up from 2028 onward. The action will encourage the development, testing and improvement of innovative solutions that respond to the needs of the media ecosystem. Proposals should integrate and scale up relevant results and move existing pilots towards operational validation in real-word conditions against declared service levels, including appropriate resilience, lifecycle-managed storage, a KPI framework and independent evaluation, in line with Union standards, and observability, traceability and content provenance by design. AI components should follow transparent and accountable practices, including documentation, explainability, logging and evaluation, to enable audit, redress and effective oversight.
The project should demonstrate a credible pathway towards broad European language coverage, accessibility and support for relevant emerging formats, with a credible post-grant sustainability approach and, where relevant, onboarding, training and pilot cohorts. It should foster participation of media organisations by addressing industry needs, including bridging tools and common formats linking editorial workflows and platform technologies (e.g. ingestion, aggregation, curation, metadata exchange, rights and licensing parameters, attribution and provenance information). The project should present a mechanism to bring together public and private media outlets and publishers, broadcasters, AI and language-technology providers, platform developers, content creators and social media actors, fact-checking and integrity actors, and rights-management organisations. Where relevant, cultural and heritage institutions and civil society organisations should also be involved. The infrastructure should test advanced open APIs solutions and demonstrate their technical viability. Moreover, the infrastructure should provide SDKs and documentation to enable integration with multiple front ends and third-party environments, onboarding pathways for smaller players, and where relevant, open-source development approaches. This includes social-media-facing interaction and referral functions, and, AI companion-style interactions via an API. Collective contextualisation services, facilitation of user onboarding and support for cooperation, the embedding of robust provenance safeguards for synthetic or manipulated content with clear redress paths and where relevant, cooperation with fact-checking and integrity actors, may equally be considered. The project should contribute to an existing or establish a structured multi-stakeholder governance framework including structured exchanges with relevant stakeholders and related initiatives through an appropriate coordination mechanism.
Technology Readiness Level - Technology readiness level expected from completed projects
Activities are expected to start at TRL 6 and achieve TRL 8 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.
[1] COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL Apply AI Strategy, 2.10. Cultural and creative sectors, and media; Communication on the European Democracy Shield
[2] Such as “Supporting multilingual access to trusted news and public-interest information across Europe”
Who can apply, in detail
- Applicant types
- SME, Large company, Startup, Public body, Other
- Purpose
- Research and innovation
- R&D relevance
- 3 of 3
- Poland eligible
- Yes
- Country limit
- —
- Region
- Any
- Consortium
- Required
- Readiness level (TRL)
- 8+ at completion
- Topics
- Multilingual media AI
- Language technologies
- Interoperable media platforms
- Immersive media
- News integrity
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.
- Application restriction
- As of the exact SEDIA topic-record notice last changed 2026-10-21T08:56:45.676 and API response captured 2026-10-23T12:31:37Z, submission links for HORIZON-BRIDGING-2027-01 topics were described as not yet available; the Portal said it would publish an update when they become available. This establishes the captured notice only and does not establish availability after the capture.
Applies to this exact topic record and the shared HORIZON-BRIDGING-2027-01 submission-link notice. Planned opening date 2026-10-20 is a separate scheduled date; do not infer that the system opened, closed, or remains unavailable from the date alone. As of 2026-10-23T12:31:37Z only.
- Eligible project scope
- The project should provide a credible post-grant sustainability approach and, where relevant, onboarding, training and pilot cohorts; no staff job profiles or pay rates are prescribed.
- Other condition
- This topic is HORIZON-IA (Innovation Actions).
- Other condition
- HORIZON-AG is the budget-based action grant model; listed eligible categories remain conditional on the General MGA and AGA, the signed grant options and general eligibility rules. The separately listed trans-national/virtual access unit-cost component is topic-specific where cited.
- Other condition
- Horizon Europe General Annexes describe personnel as actual costs unless declared as a unit cost; they separately list SME-owner/natural-person personnel unit costs, subcontracting as actual costs, purchases as actual costs unless unit cost, and FSTP only if provided by the specific call. Therefore these personnel categories do not turn an external service purchase or subcontract into a hire, and no specific FSTP entitlement is asserted for this topic.
- Other condition
- For A.1 employees/equivalent, the HE MGA states annual personnel costs divided by 215 as the daily-rate basis; declared day-equivalents must be identifiable and verifiable. The total declared day-equivalents per person across EU grants in a year cannot exceed 215, minus parental leave time where applicable.
- Other condition
- The current Portal budget map reports 1 expected project(s) for this exact topic/action.
- Other condition
- Activities are expected to start at TRL 6; the source gives an expected starting level, not a typed end-level bound.
- Partner requirement
- The proposal should bring together public/private media outlets and publishers, broadcasters, AI and language-technology providers, platform developers, content creators/social-media actors, fact-checking/integrity actors and rights-management organisations; cultural/heritage and civil society actors may also be involved where relevant.
- Technology readiness level at end, minimum
- 8
Expected project-end TRL.
Amounts and costs
- Indicative budget
- €10,000,000
Topic budget as stated in the portal's budget table. Lump-sum and per-project limits are in the call conditions.
- Eligible cost
- The HE MGA allows nonsalaried SME owners and natural-person beneficiaries to claim personnel costs as unit costs under Annex 2a, subject to general eligibility conditions; the AGA gives a daily-rate formula of EUR 8,745.4 divided by 18 days, multiplied by the applicable country-specific correction coefficient for calls opened on or after 30 July 2024. This is a unit-cost calculation, not an employee salary cap or rate guaranteed for every country.
- Funding intensity, maximum
- 100
Conditional maximum only for non-profit legal entities under HORIZON-IA; not the general rate or a personnel pay rate.
- Funding intensity, maximum
- 70
General Innovation Action maximum; nonprofit entities may receive up to 100%. Topic conditions and signed grant agreement govern. Not a staff pay rate.
- Funding intensity, maximum
- 100
Applies only to non-profit legal entities; not a universal IA rate or staff pay rate.
- Expected project funding, up to
- €10,000,000
Same point estimate as reported expected contribution; not a hard maximum or cap.
- Expected project funding, from
- €10,000,000
Point estimate per project as represented by the Portal expected-contribution fields and Work Programme wording “around”; not a hard minimum or a guaranteed award.
- Topic allocation
- €10,000,000
Indicative topic allocation for 2027, distinct from expected individual contribution and personnel budget.
Personnel and services
Other role
Staff cost the grant can fund
Potential fundable personnel category only when the grant conditions and Article 6.2.A.2 apply; assigned to the action, work under conditions similar to an employee, result belongs to beneficiary unless agreed otherwise, and actual direct-contract costs are not significantly different from comparable employees. It is a contractor engagement category, not employee payroll; no qualification, headcount, FTE, duration or rate is set by this topic.
Other role
Staff cost the grant can fund
Potential fundable personnel category under the applicable Horizon Europe General MGA, conditional on actual action assignment and all eligibility rules. This is not a call-specific required team, named job, or promise of award. Qualification, headcount, FTE, duration and salary are not stated by the topic. Employee remuneration must be actual and linked to national law/employment terms; daily-rate and reporting rules are described in the cited MGA.
Other role
Staff cost the grant can fund
Potential personnel unit-cost category where the applicable grant agreement includes Article 6.2.A.4. Applies only to an SME owner not receiving a salary or a natural-person beneficiary not receiving a salary, with work assigned to the action and general unit-cost conditions met. The daily unit rate is country-adjusted; it is not a salary and this packet does not assert a per-person EUR rate without the recipient country coefficient. No required headcount, FTE, duration or qualification is named in this topic.
Other role
Staff cost the grant can fund
Potential fundable personnel category only when the grant conditions and Article 6.2.A.3 apply; assigned to the action, works under conditions similar to an employee and actual costs are not significantly different from comparable beneficiary employees. This is a paid secondment, not a new employment contract with the beneficiary. No call-specific qualification, headcount, FTE, duration or pay rate is stated.
Source documents
Call facts
- Opens
- 20 Oct 2026
- Deadline model
- Single-stage
- Programme
- Horizon Europe · 2021 - 2027
- Call
- HORIZON-BRIDGING-2027-01 · Bridging actions 2027
- Types of action
- HORIZON Innovation Actions
- Source
- ec.europa.eu
- Checked
- 23 Oct 2026
- Portal updated
- 21 Oct 2026
- Review status
- Partial review
- Reviewed
- 23 Oct 2026
This is a summary of the source page, not the official text. Eligibility, conditions and the submission system are at the source.