2026 EuroHPC matching funds

This is the EuroHPC access mode built specifically for AI workloads, and it is the most direct route for European researchers who need serious compute without a Horizon Europe grant behind them. Allocations are made in node hours across four petascale and pre-exascale systems - LUMI in Finland, Leonardo in Italy, MareNostrum5 in Spain and MeluXina in Luxembourg - for six-month access periods. The stated scope is explicit about modern AI: ethical artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cutting-edge foundation models and generative AI including large language models, which means training and fine-tuning runs are in scope rather than being squeezed into a traditional simulation-oriented HPC framing. Eligibility is deliberately wide. All scientific users qualify whether or not their work is funded by national or European programmes, as do public sector users, and industrial users participating in EU-funded research and innovation projects such as Horizon Europe or the Digital Europe Programme. The one important boundary: industrial users not involved in an EU research project are directed instead to the AI for Industrial Innovation access modes, so a commercial applicant with no EU project affiliation should check which door they are meant to use before drafting. The call operates on rolling cut-offs rather than a single deadline, with 2026 cut-offs at 27 February, 30 April, 30 June, 31 August, 30 October and 11 December, each at 10:00 CET. That cadence means an unsuccessful application can be revised and resubmitted roughly two months later, and a team that misses one window is never waiting long for the next. As with all compute schemes, no money is awarded - staff and data costs must come from elsewhere.

The AI Gigafactories Call is the largest single AI funding instrument in Europe and one of the least like a grant. EuroHPC JU is not funding research projects; it is co-investing in the construction of up to seven physical facilities that combine massive computing power with state-of-the-art AI processors, the necessary software and cloud technology stacks, high-bandwidth connectivity and energy-efficient data centres, to provide frontier AI training, fine-tuning and inference as sovereign European services. The applicant profile follows from that: applications are open to consortia or Special Purpose Vehicles bringing together companies, public entities, investors and other partners, and a facility may sit within a single Member State or be distributed across several. This is a call for infrastructure developers and capital syndicates, not for research groups. The financial structure is co-funding rather than full funding - successful projects receive differing levels of EU and national support reflecting the size and range of sovereign services they commit to provide, against an EU and national envelope of up to 10,000,000,000 euros that is expected to mobilise at least 20,000,000,000 euros of private investment. The timeline is long and worth planning around: the submission deadline is 12 November 2026, competitive evaluation follows, selections are expected in early 2027, and operations are to commence within 18 months of selection. Note that the AI Gigafactories are a tier above the existing AI Factories - EuroHPC currently oversees 19 AI Factories and 13 AI Factory Antennas that provide free access to SMEs and startups - so organisations wanting to use European AI compute rather than build it should look to the AI Factories access calls instead. Submission is through the EU Tenders and Funding Portal.