If you’re an innovative UK SME looking to take a late-stage innovation to market, you could be a great candidate for an EIC Accelerator grant.
Offering up to €2.5 million (£2.1 million) in funding, the European Innovation Council’s Accelerator scheme is perfect for:
- UK startups, scaleups and established SMEs
- That need funding to develop and scale a game-changing technology
- Whose R&D is too risky for private investors
In this article, I’ve explained the key things you need to know about the EIC Accelerator scheme. If you want to know if you’re right for an Accelerator grant, my colleagues and I would be happy to perform a free Eligibility and Competitiveness Assessment.
In this 30-minute consultation, we will tell you:
- Whether you and your project are eligible for an Accelerator grant
- How likely we feel you are to access funding from this competitive scheme
- What other types of government funding you’re eligible for
Book your free Eligibility and Competitiveness Assessment here.
What is the EIC Accelerator?
The EIC Accelerator scheme offers grants of up to €2.5 million (£2.1 million) to SMEs that are looking to develop and scale up a late-stage, highly-disruptive innovation.
Late-stage means innovations that have been validated in a relevant environment but require further testing and refinement before they can be brought to market.
In terms of Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs), a framework used throughout the innovation grants world, the Accelerator scheme looks to mature a project from TRL 6 to TRL 8.
Accelerator grants cover up to 70% of project costs, with awards paid out as a lump sum. This makes Accelerator funding much more attractive than many of the other grants available to UK businesses. The scheme also offers equity funding, but only to companies based in EU member states.
In addition to funding, awardees receive a range of tailored support through the European Innovation Council’s Business Acceleration Services, which include mentoring, coaching and access to networking opportunities.
The Accelerator scheme is run by the European Innovation Council. Established under Horizon Europe, the EIC is the EU’s flagship innovation programme, with a budget of more than €10 billion.
Accelerator is one of three grant schemes run by the EIC, alongside Pathfinder, which funds early-stage innovations, and Transition, for mid-stage innovations that have previously received a grant from the EU.
EIC Accelerator Open and Challenges
The EIC Accelerator has two strands, Open and Challenges.
Open accepts proposals from any field of science and technology.
The Challenges strand targets innovations in pre-defined areas of “emerging and strategic” importance. In 2025, these areas are:
- Acceleration of advanced materials development and upscaling along the value chain
- Biotechnology driven low emission food and feed production systems
- GenAI4EU: Creating European Champions in Generative AI
- Innovative in-space servicing, operations, robotics and technologies for resilient EU space infrastructure
- Breakthrough innovations for future mobility
Who is eligible for EIC Accelerator grants?
Whether you’re eligible for an EIC Accelerator grant depends on two things: your company and your project. Let’s look at these separately.
Your company
To win an Accelerator grant, your company must be a micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (an SME).
The EU defines an SME as a company with:
- No more than 250 employees
- And a turnover of no more than €50 million
- Or a balance sheet worth no more than €43 million
British companies can access this EU-funded scheme because the UK is associated to the EIC’s overarching body, Horizon Europe.
Individuals can also apply for an Accelerator grant if they are planning to establish a qualifying SME before the start of their project.
Your project
Your project must look to develop your groundbreaking innovation to the point that you are ready to take it to market.
As mentioned in the introduction, your innovation must have already been validated in a relevant environment, through prototyping or extensive modelling, but require further testing and demonstration before you can sell it to customers.
Your project must be too risky for private investors to supply all of the capital you need to complete it, hence your need for grants funding.
Your innovation must also have significant commercial potential. There must be a market for your technology, and your team must have the business acumen and strategy necessary to access that market.
Projects should normally be completed within 24 months, but the EIC will allow you more time if you can justify an extension.
How do I apply for an EIC Accelerator grant?
The application for the EIC Accelerator has three steps, making it one of the more time-consuming processes in the grant funding world.
The EIC Accelerator is highly competitive, with only around 6% of proposals receiving funding. So you need to make sure you can dedicate enough time to complete each stage to an extremely high standard, giving an excellent account of your innovation and effectively demonstrating why you should receive funding instead of the hundreds of other worthy applicants.
Step 1 - Short Proposal
The application for the EIC Accelerator has three steps, making it one of the more time-consuming processes in the grant funding world.
The EIC Accelerator is highly competitive, with only around 6% of proposals receiving funding. So you need to make sure you can dedicate enough time to complete each stage to an extremely high standard, giving an excellent account of your innovation and effectively demonstrating why you should receive funding instead of the hundreds of other worthy applicants.
Step 2 - Full Proposal
If your short proposal is accepted, you’ll move on to step 2, submitting a full proposal.
In this step, you will need to submit:
- A full project proposal and business plan
- Detailed information on your company’s finances
- A set of milestones, which the EIC uses to judge funding requirements
- A pitch deck and video, up to 3 minutes long
The documentation for a full proposal usually runs to around 50 pages plus appendices. I usually recommend setting aside at least 8 weeks to prepare this part of the application.
You must submit your full proposal by one of the cut-off dates. The 2025 cut-off dates are:
- 12 March
- 1 October
Your full proposal will be assessed by three EIC evaluators. You’ll find out whether you passed this step 8-9 weeks after submission.
Step 3 - the EIC Jury
If you pass step 2, you’ll be invited to an interview with an EIC Jury. This will be conducted either in person or remotely.
Your interview will take place 4-5 weeks after your full proposal is accepted.
If you pass the jury interview stage, that’s it. You’ve been selected for an EIC Accelerator grant.
All that’s left is for you to negotiate your grant agreement and for the EIC to run its due diligence checks.
How GrantTree maximises your chances of a game-changing EIC Accelerator grant
The competition for EIC grants is fierce, with a little over 5% of proposals funded.
Calling on many years of experience winning grants for innovative businesses, my colleagues and I in GrantTree’s Grants team can save you time while dramatically increasing your chances of success. We do this by:
- Telling you whether you’re eligible for an Accelerator grant before you apply
- Telling you whether you have a good chance of winning, so you can decide whether you want to invest the upwards of 8 weeks of work it takes to prepare a competitive application
- Maximise your chances of winning a grant by writing your application for you, coaching you to write a stronger application, or providing two rounds of detailed feedback from one of the EIC’s evaluators on an application you’ve written yourself
To find out if EIC Accelerator grants are right for your business, or learn more about how GrantTree can maximise your chances of success, just get in touch.
We’re looking forward to hearing from you!
EIC Accelerator FAQs
The current acceptance or ‘success’ rate for the EIC Accelerator is 5.9%.
The EIC awarded funding to 71 out of 1,211 proposals submitted before the most recent cutoff in October 2024. The 71 companies will collectively receive €161 million in grants, an average of €2.3 million apiece.
While this success rate may seem low, it is more than other sector-agnostic competitions, such as Innovate UK’s now-defunct Smart award.
In addition, many of the proposals received by EIC will have been ineligible for an Accelerator grant, uncompetitive, or both.
If your project complies with the Accelerator’s stringent eligibility criteria and your application makes a compelling case for why you deserve funding, your chances of winning a sizeable grant will be far higher than 6%.
You can also increase your chances significantly by working with GrantTree. Learn more about how GrantTree can help you prepare a winning application.
In theory, anyone can apply for an EIC Accelerator grant. However, to be eligible, your company must:
- Be a single start-up or SME in an EU member state or a country associated to Horizon Europe, which includes the UK
- Be working on a late-stage innovation with huge disruptive potential in any field of science or technology
- Be unable to secure sufficient private investment to complete your project
- Have a team capable of both successfully delivering an innovative project and turning your technology into a commercial success
Yes, UK companies are eligible for the EIC Accelerator scheme.
While the UK is no longer a member of the EU, we do have association to Horizon Europe, giving British companies access to the EIC Accelerator scheme.
The budget for the EIC Accelerator scheme in 2025 is €634 million or about £540 million.
This comprises €384 million for the Open strand and €250 million for the Challenges strand.
However, the EIC is able to reallocate budget between the two strands if one receives many more grant-worthy applications than the other.
The EIC Accelerator stands for the European Innovation Council Accelerator.
The European Innovation Council is one of Europe’s leading innovation funding bodies, providing billions to startups, scaleups and research organisations looking to develop groundbreaking technologies.
The EIC open accelerator is an EU competition that provides grant and equity funding to innovative SMEs looking to develop game-changing technologies.
Open is one of two strands that make up the EIC Accelerator. It is called open because it accepts applications from any field of science and technology.
The EIC open accelerator is run by the European Innovation Council, an EU body that funds promising, cutting-edge research and development work.
