Mar 3, 2026 · 3 min read

What EIC Transition Winners Actually Reveal

Analysing funded EIC Transition projects reveals consistent patterns in geography, technology focus, funding intensity, coordinator profiles, and project duration.

Each new batch of EIC Transition results raises the same question:

What do the winners actually have in common?

Beyond individual technologies, funding outcomes often reveal structural patterns across:

Geography
Technology focus
Funding allocation
Coordinator profiles
Project duration

Looking at the latest cohort of funded EIC Transition projects, several clear signals emerge.

Geography: broad participation, clear leaders

The funded projects span 14 European countries, confirming that the programme maintains wide geographic reach.

However, some countries clearly dominate the landscape.

The Netherlands and Italy lead with five projects each, followed by France and Sweden.

These results reflect mature national ecosystems with strong experience navigating Horizon programmes and translating research into deep tech ventures.

At the same time, smaller innovation ecosystems demonstrated that they can successfully compete.

Projects coordinated from Cyprus and Iceland stand out as important examples.

CYRIC – Cyprus Research and Innovation Center (Project MIMIR)
Atmonia (Project EASY)

These cases highlight how high-quality proposals from smaller ecosystems can still break through in extremely competitive calls.

Technology focus: healthcare dominates

One of the clearest signals from the data is the strong concentration in healthcare and biotechnology.

Out of the funded portfolio:

Healthcare and Biotech account for 13 projects, nearly double the next category.

Electronics and Software follow behind.

Interestingly, several sectors are almost absent in this cohort:

Agrotech
Space
Advanced materials

These gaps may indicate potential white spaces for future calls, particularly if policy priorities shift or evaluation panels diversify.

Funding intensity: maximum budgets prevail

Another striking pattern concerns funding allocation.

Around 80% of projects secured the maximum funding tranche (≥ €2.4M).

This suggests several things about the evaluation logic:

Projects are entering the call with high maturity levels
Work plans demonstrate credible transition pathways
Evaluators show confidence in the technology-to-market strategy

Rather than under-budgeting to appear efficient, successful applicants tend to fully leverage the available funding envelope.

Coordinator profile: SMEs lead the transition

The distribution of coordinator types strongly reflects the purpose of the programme.

SMEs coordinate 65% of projects
Universities represent around 20%
Research centres account for 15%

Notably, large corporations are absent from the coordinator role.

This aligns with the core objective of EIC Transition: to bridge the gap between research results and market-ready deep tech ventures, often through SME-driven commercialisation pathways.

Project duration: full timelines dominate

A majority of projects adopt the maximum project duration.

62.5% of projects run for the full 36 months

This reflects both the complexity of deep tech development and the need for structured programmes to achieve:

technology validation
pilot demonstrations
regulatory preparation
commercial readiness

Shorter projects are comparatively rare.

What the pattern suggests

Taken together, the data suggests that EIC Transition rewards a very specific type of project profile.

Successful proposals tend to show:

A clear and credible commercial pathway
Deep tech grounded in prior validation
SME-driven execution structures
Full-budget planning aligned with ambitious milestones
Work plans spanning the full project duration

In other words, proposals that position themselves as serious technology-to-market transitions, rather than exploratory research, appear to resonate most strongly with evaluators.