The topic EdTech Accelerator, under the Digital Europe Programme’s “Advanced Digital Skills” call, aims to strengthen Europe’s EdTech ecosystem by supporting startups and SMEs in developing, testing, and scaling innovative digital learning solutions. It funds an accelerator programme that guides companies from concept validation to real-world deployment, ensuring solutions are pedagogically sound, inclusive, and aligned with European values. The overall goal is to boost innovation, improve learning outcomes, and enhance Europe’s global competitiveness in EdTech.

Expected Outcome

• Three open calls for pilots (at least one call per year) launched and managed, providing financial support to third parties to at least 20 EdTech start-ups/SMEs from across Member States and eligible countries. A minimum of 60% of the total budget should be spent on Financial Support for Third Parties (FSTP), and the maximum amount per third party can amount up to 150.000 EUR to allow short pilots testing in real education or training environments; 

• Develop and implement a yearly 12-month incubation and acceleration programme providing a mix of mentoring, networking services, consultancy, training and/or business and access-to-market support to the selected companies; 

• Short pilots implementation in real education and training environments to gather impact assessment data of the selected solutions. Human-centric design methods that involve users and have strong linkages to learning design methodologies are recommended for the piloting phase. 

• European-wide communication and awareness-raising activities; 

• At least one major event per year to be organised to reach a large number of investors, market partners, ministries of education (or other ministries), educational institutions, learning content providers, training providers, and other stakeholders in the field.

Scope

The scope is to establish an EdTech-specific environment to nurture and accelerate growth, providing both business guidance and market access for selected startups and SMEs. Additionally, the scope involves streamlining the integration of supported solutions into the educational and/or training landscape, including schools, universities, training facilities, and other informal learning environments. This integration is crucial for empowering end-users, particularly teachers/trainers and students, along with other stakeholders, in the development and application of educational solutions. Furthermore, testing these solutions in real educational or training settings should be included to obtain impact assessment data through short-cycle piloting.

Type of action and funding rate: Coordination and Support Action (CSA) — 100% funding rate
Maximum grant amount per project: 2.7 million EUR
Deadline: 1 October 2026 (17:00 Brussels time)
Call text:  View the official call document here.
Call information: Available on the Funding & Tenders Portal.
Info session and matchmaking event: 29 April 2026, register here.

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