At the EIC Summit 2026, Open Horizons will showcase how challenge-based collaboration between startups and corporates can accelerate technology validation, generate scalable industrial solutions, and create new opportunities for investment and growth.
The Open Horizons journey continues with a new group of women-led deep-tech startups ready to transform bold ideas into real market pilots has joined Open Horizons. Following the evaluation of Open Call #2 applications, 12 startups from across Europe have now entered the Inception Phase of the programme. In this key stage they will prepare the selected teams for collaboration with corporates and future pilot implementation.
For anyone working in the European innovation ecosystem, the underrepresentation of women in deep-tech entrepreneurship is a well-known challenge.
The EmpoWomen project (a Horizon Europe-funded initiative and sister programme to Open Horizons) published a whitepaper attempting to analyse this challenge, find out what works and how it can be improved. The research draws on a structured empirical study comparing funded and unfunded cohorts of women-led deep-tech startups across revenue, team growth, equity dilution, and market traction.
The main finding? EU public funding helps women-led deep-tech startups to transform and grow.
Why Strong Startup Applications Still Get Rejected — Insights from Evaluators
Even high-quality applications fail—often due to avoidable weaknesses. Based on evaluator feedback, here are the five most common issues and how to address them:
Open Call #3 is the final call of the programme, open until 19 May 2026, 17:00 CEST.
If you are thinking about applying, take a moment to reply to these questions:
ne year ago, Open Horizons started with a clear mission: to help women-led deep-tech startups turn innovation into real market solutions.
Since then, we’ve been building a growing ecosystem where startups, corporates, investors, and innovation actors collaborate to bring new technologies closer to real-world applications.
Here is what the first year of Open Horizons looks like.
Deep-tech founders don’t attend events. They use them. The founders who extract real value from the ecosystem don’t treat events as stages, they treat them as systems. Systems for testing their narrative with real stakeholders. For translating complex technology into outcomes that resonate. For understanding who actually needs what they’re building. Because in deep tech, traction often begins before the product is finished. And the right conversation at the right event, in the right room, can become a turning point. The question is never ‘should I attend?’ It’s ‘am I ready to use this?’
Through Open Call #3, Open Horizons invites startups to tackle real challenges defined by industry leaders and turn cutting-edge technologies into market-ready solutions.
Through Open Call #3, Open Horizons invites startups to tackle real challenges defined by industry leaders and turn cutting-edge technologies into market-ready solutions.
The third and final Open Horizons Open Call is offering up to €55,000 in equity-free funding and the opportunity to collaborate directly with leading corporates.
To help applicants avoid common mistakes seen in previous calls, we’ve prepared this simple and practical guide to eligibility criteria.
If you are a women-led startup working in digital or deep-tech, read carefully before applying.
Carefully reviewing your eligibility and alignment before submission significantly increases your chances of progressing.
This is the final Open Horizons call — don’t miss the opportunity to scale your innovation through corporate collaboration.