What is "Financial Support to Third Parties"?
Some of the calls for proposals in Horizon Europe specify that consortia are expected to reserve a certain amount of their budget for so-called Financial Support to Third Parties (FSTP). This portion of the budget must be distributed to third-party organisations via grants, the idea being that these third parties should contribute to the project's expected outcomes through their grants while not actually being part of the consortium. This is a good way of including for example start-ups and SMEs in the EU projects ecosystem without them having to be full project beneficiaries with all the associated paper work.
The EC has published a guidance document on FSTP which we recommend to read for orientation, no matter whether you are a project beneficiary handling FSTP or interested in applying for FSTP grants yourself.
Did you know? You can find a collection of Horizon Europe Cluster 4 Digital call topics involving FSTP in the Ideal-ist Topic Tree's "ecosystem bubble for Financial Support to Third Parties (FSTP)".
Currently open FSTP Calls from EU Projects
|
Name and Link |
Objective |
Funding |
Opening |
Deadline |
| HERIFORGE 2nd Open Call | The HERIFORGE 2nd Open Call aims to support innovative immersive technology solutions for cultural heritage, addressing four specific challenges defined by the HERIFORGE hubs. | Up to 50,000 € | 25 August 2026 | 27 October 2026 |
| NLnet Restack Open Call | The NLnet Restack Open Call aims to support the development and scaling of free and open-source technologies contributing to a secure, resilient and trustworthy Open Internet Stack. | Projects can receive 5,000 € - 50,000 €, with potential scale-up funding | 3 September 2026 | 3 November 2026 |
| NLnet CodeSupply Open Call | The NLnet CodeSupply Open Call aims to support free and open-source projects that strengthen software supply chain security through open software metadata, tools, standards and infrastructure. | Projects can receive 5,000 € - 50,000 €, with potential scale-up funding | 3 September 2026 | 3 November 2026 |
| FORTIS Open Call 2 |
The FORTIS Open Call 2 aims to support SMEs and other eligible organisations in developing and testing innovative solutions for more resilient and secure transport systems. Two different topics: OC#2.1: Pushing towards the deployment of FORTIS (closed topic) OC#2.2: Exploiting the FORTIS solution in other key sectors (open topic) |
Topic OC#2.1: Topic OC#2.2: |
1 September 2026 | 4 November 2026 |
| FIERCE 2nd Open Call | The FIERCE 2nd Open Call aims to support SMEs in adopting and scaling innovative green solutions enabled by space technologies and digital services, helping them develop, validate and bring sustainable solutions closer to the market. | Up to 50,000 € | 8 September 2026 | 9 November 2026 |
| AENAON Open Call 1 | The AENAON Open Call 1 aims to support external organisations in integrating, testing and validating cybersecurity technologies and services for offshore wind and related critical-energy infrastructure. |
Up to EUR 60,000 per participating legal entity, cumulatively across both AENAON Open Calls. By way of derogation: Up to EUR 100,000 for offshore wind farm operators and manufacturers, which are considered large critical infrastructures/ operators of essential services; and Up to €150,000 per action -in case of small consortia. |
11 September 2026 | 13 November 2026 |
| NOSTRADAMUS Open Call #1 | NOSTRADAMUS Open Call #1 supports the development, testing and validation of open-source digital applications for data-driven decision-making in sustainable agriculture, focusing on crop production, soil health, water efficiency and pest management. | Up to €50,000 | 29 September 2026 | 2 December 2026 |
| GRAIL Open Call 1 | GRAIL Open Call 1 – Data Expansion and Democratisation supports projects that collect and generate new robotics data, including multimodal datasets, crowdsourced data and low-cost data-capture tools, to advance AI foundation models for robotics. | Up to €100,000 | Expected opening November 2026 | NA yet – stay tuned |
| AMALTEA Open Call | AMALTEA Open Call will support SMEs and start-ups developing, testing and validating innovative software and hardware solutions for digitalising the building façade sector, including AI, digital twins, advanced robotics, sensor systems and automated manufacturing. A second funding round will target new plus any untackled challenges and high‑potential innovations, with a similar structure and support package. | Up to €100,000 for software solutions and Up to €200,000 for hardware solutions | Autumn 2026 | NA yet – stay tuned |
Have you spotted an FSTP opportunity that we have missed? Or are you planning to run an FSTP call related to digital technologies in your EU project and would like to advertise it here? Then please send an e-mail with the relevant information to Diego Coglitore ([email protected]) and Jessica Bonanno ([email protected]).
Where to find further FSTP opportunities
Finding FSTP opportunities is not always easy. Some EU projects publish their FSTP calls on the Funding & Tenders Portal, while others have beneficiaries like who are specialised on running FSTP calls and publish these on their own portals. Some others publish FSTP calls only on their project website. Portals you can check regularly yourself include:
- The Funding & Tenders Portal
- The Cascade Funding Hub
- The OnePass portal
- The F6S portal
Ongoing initiatives regularly offering financial support for third parties
- Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU)
- Next Generation Internet (NGI)
- EU Cloud Edge IoT (CEI)
- European Institute of Innovation & Technologu (EIT) Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC)
- AI on-demand platform (AI4EU)
- Quantum Flagship (QT)
Past initiatives
Do you want to learn about previous initiatives and results of cascading grants?
- Innovation for Manufacturing SMEs (I4MS)
- Smart Anything Everywhere (SAE)
- Open Data Incubator Europe (ODINE)
- European Data Incubator (EDI)
- European Coordination Hub for Open Robotics Development (ECHORD++),
- Access Center for Photonics Innovation Solutions and Technology Support (ACTPHAST),
- Supercomputing Exercise for SMEs (SESAME NET)