Does your small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) want to strengthen its competitiveness and develop an innovative product or service with foreign partner companies or research teams? The Eurostars programme can help you do just that.
This support offer is aimed at innovative SMEs, large companies and research institutions.
You can submit your application for the Eurostars programme through calls for projects, which are usually held twice a year.
The EUREKA Secretariat holds a Webinar for applicants for the Eurostars-3 Call 10 on Thursday, 22 January 2026 from 11:00 - 12:30 (CET).
Eurostars promotes cooperation across all thematic areas with partners from 33 European countries, as well as from Canada, South Africa and South Korea. This initiative is aimed in particular at SMEs developing products or services that offer a decisive advantage over existing solutions.
Eurostars is a joint initiative of Eureka and the European Union and is part of the European Partnership on Innovative SMEs. The Eureka Secretariat oversees the evaluation of applications and reporting on projects for all participating countries, located centrally out of Brussels. Innosuisse is responsible for issuing contracts, paying out funding and performing financial reporting in Switzerland.
Are you a Swiss SME and would you like to carry out an innovation project with international partners?
Swiss partners either need to be registered with the Swiss Register of Commerce or be recognised as a research institution. Each Swiss partner is also required to cover part of the project budget through an own contribution. In addition, your project must meet all formal requirements.
The funding covers the following project costs for Swiss partners:
SMEs: 50%
Large companies: 25%
Research institutions: 50%
An innovative SME takes the lead for project coordination. The project lead organises information regarding the submission deadline and oversees that the application is completed by all participating partners in Switzerland and abroad by the given deadlines. A consortium only needs to submit one application for all partners from different countries.
In a first step, the project lead creates an account on the Eurostars website. From there, they are guided step by step through the application process and receive information on the formal requirements for submitting an application. The national funding organisations in the partner countries are available to answer questions about the application process and the funding conditions applicable to individual countries.
Once the submission deadline has passed, the Eureka Secretariat will start the evaluation process.
2. Evaluation and decision
Your application must comply with all formal requirements for Eurostars. Your application must contain all the information necessary to evaluate your project from a technical, scientific and economic perspective. The evaluation covers both form and content. The full evaluation process usually takes four months.
In a first step, the Eureka Secretariat and the national funding agencies check whether your application meets the formal requirements:
Your consortium is led by an innovative SME from a Eurostars country.
Your consortium includes at least two independent organisations.
Your consortium includes organisations from at least two Eurostars countries, with at least one organisation from an EU country or from a country associated with Horizon Europe.
The budget of the SME or SMEs from a Eurostars country contributes 50% or more of the total project costs, excluding subcontracting.
No single participant or country is responsible for more than 70% of the project budget.
The project duration is 36 months or less.
The project has an exclusively civilian purpose.
None of the project partners is involved in pending bankruptcy proceedings, is insolvent or has been convicted of illegal practices.
In a second step, three experts evaluate the content of your application based on the following criteria:
Quality of the consortium
Added value through international cooperation
Innovation content compared with the current state of the art
Contribution to improving knowledge
Level of technical challenge
Achievability of the objectives set and appropriate risk reduction strategy
Feasible and clearly defined project management
Appropriate and rational cost structure
Realistic market potential and commercial impact
Market access and risks
Expected competitive advantage
Clear and realistic planning of market launch
Based on the evaluation of form and content, an independent evaluation panel draws up a ranking list of all applications submitted. The highest-ranked applications will be funded with the highest priority. Applications below a certain score will be rejected.
Once the ranking list has been approved by the participating countries, the process begins for synchronising funding. Each country has a reserved funding budget for Eurostars and allocates this to the applications that received a positive evaluation. If the number of positively evaluated applications exceeds the available budget, the countries will check whether the funding budget can be increased. Approved applications that cannot be funded by the countries will be rejected, unless the partners decide to cover the full costs of the project themselves.
Once the funding has been synchronised, the Eureka Secretariat will rule on the approval or rejection of applications by e-mail.
Once the Eureka Secretariat has delivered the evaluation results, Innosuisse inform Swiss applicants whose applications have been approved about the next steps.
You have two options: you can revise and resubmit your application, or you can object to the evaluation decision. As an applicant, you will be sent all the evaluation documents, which you can then use to revise your application before resubmitting it.
Objecting to the evaluation
The project lead for a rejected application may submit an appeal to the Eureka Secretariat within one month of being notified of the rejection. You may only object to procedural errors. The evaluation performed by the external experts or by the independent evaluation panel is not open to appeal, neither is the evaluation resulting from the initial financial viability assessment by the national funding bodies.
Appeals must be sent in writing and by registered mail to the following address:
Eurostars Redress Committee
Eureka Association
Avenue de Tervuren 2
1040 Brussels
BELGIUM
Only one appeal may be filed per application. The guidelines for submitting an appeal can be found on the Eurostars website.
3. Conclude contract and start project
As a Swiss applicant with an approved Eurostars application, you must conclude a contract before starting the project. You will be contacted by Innosuisse directly and informed about the next steps involved in drawing up the funding agreement between the Swiss partners and Innosuisse.
Parallel to this, you need to conclude a consortium agreement with your foreign project partners detailing the cooperation framework, the sharing of project results, the publication of information, the settlement of disputes, etc. > Available templates for consortium agreements
The project work begins in earnest when the basis for project financing and the details concerning start of the project have been agreed between the partners. Innosuisse and the Eureka Secretariat will track the progress of the project by means of routine project reporting.
4. Project reporting
You are required to submit reports as part of your Eurostars project. These reports keep Eureka and Innosuisse informed about the project’s progress.
Eurostars 3 programme (call 1–6)
Innosuisse does not require any interim financial reports. An interim financial report need only be submitted at the express request of Innosuisse.
From Eurostars call 7
Starting with call 7, the following reporting deadlines will be set out for your innovation project:
Progress Report 3 (half of the project) will be reviewed by Innosuisse and the Eureka Secretariat. Once the report has been approved, payment of the second tranche will be made
An interim financial report need only be submitted at the express request of Innosuisse.
Please note:
Please submit all Eurostars interim reports (required every six months) to the Eureka portal. If you have any further questions, please contact projects@eurostars-eureka.eu.
Innosuisse aims to visit around 20 per cent of Eurostars projects where Swiss partners are involved. Wherever possible, such visits are conducted as part of a regular project meeting with the international partners in Switzerland. The on-site visit is coordinated and agreed with the Swiss partners.
If changes to the project are required which affect all partners (such as a cost-neutral project extension), the project coordinator will submit a change request to the Eureka Secretariat.
At the end of your Eurostars project, you must submit a final report and a final financial report.
At the end of the project, the Eureka Secretariat asks all project partners to submit a final report on the results achieved and their impact on each partner. Final payment will not be issued until this final report has been submitted. Innosuisse automatically has access to all these reports.
> Eureka/Eurostars reporting requirements - final report
At the end of the project, Innosuisse actively requests a final financial report from the Swiss project partners. Innosuisse will provide further information about the templates to be used and the supporting documents needed concerning the project costs.
To make it easier for you to complete the financial report, we have summarised the most important information here:
Final payment will not be issued until the final report has been submitted. Once Innosuisse has approved the final financial report, it will ask the project partners to submit their final invoice for the remaining support contribution. This invoice must include the actual costs incurred according to the final financial report.
Eurostars-2: EU co-financing is disbursed along with the final payment, meaning this final payment is made in euros. Any exchange rate fluctuations must be assumed by the project partners. If individual project partners do not have a euro account, the funding contribution will be automatically converted into Swiss francs by the bank using the applicable daily exchange rate. Eurostars-3: The final payment is made in Swiss francs.
6. Impact analysis
One year after the end of the project period, and then again another year later, the Eureka Secretariat requests a market impact report from all project partners highlighting the commercial success or economic benefit of the project.
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