EIC Horizon Prizes

EIC Horizon prizes are part of the European Innovation Council (EIC) pilot and have the ambitious goal to solve certain major challenges facing society. The prizes are open to anyone willing to think outside the box across sectors and disciplines. Accordingly, they will be awarded to whoever best meets the outlined challenge. Individual prizes amount between €1M to €10M, with a total budget (up to 2020) of €40 million.

The six challenges to be solved in 2018-2020 revolve around:

• ‘Innovative Batteries for eVehicles’
• ‘Fuel from the Sun: Artificial Photosynthesis’
• ‘Early Warning for Epidemics’
• ‘Blockchain for Social Good’
• ‘Low-Cost Space Launch’
• ‘Affordable High-Tech for Humanitarian Aid’

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HORIZON2020: EIC Horizon Prize For Early Warning For Epidemics

Subsidy: €5,000,000

Total budget: €5,000,000

Deadline: 1 September 2020

Funding rate: 100%

Consortium: The contest is open to all legal entities (i.e. natural or legal persons, including international organisations) or groups of legal entities.

Scope: The challenge is to develop a scalable, reliable, and cost-effective early-warning system prototype. Resultantly, we will be able to better forecast and monitor vector-borne diseases in order to contribute to the prevention of outbreaks, mitigate their impact on local, regional and global scales. Lastly, this should provide support to existing elimination efforts.

HORIZON2020: EIC Horizon Prize For Innovative Batteries For Evehicles

Subsidy: €10,000,000

Total budget: €10,000,000

Deadline: 17 December 2020

Funding rate: 100%

Consortium: Open to any legal entity or a group of legal entities established in an EU Member State or Associated Country.

Scope: The challenge is to develop a safe and sustainable battery for electric vehicles. This is achieved through the development of new materials and chemistries. These  should make use of abundant, sustainable low cost materials, which are easily available in Europe.

Solutions must to provide the same or better performance than vehicles with internal combustion engines. In addition, solutions should be capable of recharging the electric vehicle within an equivalent time to refilling a conventional gasoline/diesel fuel tank.

HORIZON2020: EIC Horizon Prize For Fuel From The Sun: Artificial Photosynthesis

Subsidy: €5,000,000

Total budget: €5,000,000

Deadline: 3 February 2021

Funding rate: 100%

Consortium: The contest is open to all legal entities (i.e. natural or legal persons, including international organisations) or groups of legal entities.

Scope: The challenge is to build a fully functional, bench-scale prototype of an artificial photosynthesis-based system that is able to produce a useable synthetic fuel. The result of the grant should be a number of innovative devices and systems demonstrating the use of sunlight to produce a fuel ready to be used.

HORIZON2020: EIC Horizon Prize For Low-Cost Space Launch

Subsidy: €10,000,000

Total budget: €10,000,000

Deadline: 1 June 2021

Funding rate: 100%

Consortium: The contest is open to all legal entities (i.e. natural or legal persons, including international organisations) or groups of legal entities established in an EU Member State or in a country associated to Horizon2020

Scope: The challenge is to develop a European technologically non-dependent solution for launching light satellites into LowEarth Orbit (LEO), which will enable dedicated low-cost launches with committed schedule and orbit.

About Horizon prizes

Horizon prizes are part of the European Innovation Council pilot (EIC pilot), which was launched on 27th October 2017 as part of the Horizon 2020 Work programme 2018-2020. At this time the SME Instrument, Fast Track to Innovation (FTI), FET-Open and Horizon Prizes were all brought under the EIC pilot umbrella. Resultantly, EIC pilot provided a ‘one stop shop’ for funding of innovators/innovations in the EU.

Individual prizes amount to 5 or 10 million euro and the total budget for Horizon Prizes until 2020 is €40 million.

The six challenges to be solved in 2018-2020 revolve around:

1. ‘Innovative Batteries for eVehicles’
2. ‘Fule from the Sun: Artificial Photosynthesis’
3. ‘Early Warning for Epidemics’
4. ‘Blockchain for Social Good’
5. ‘Low-Cost Space Launch’
6. ‘Affordable High-Tech for Humanitarian Aid’

Read more about Horizon 2020 or visit the EIC pilot prizes website