Japan to join Horizon Europe, strengthening EU role in global science

Japan has agreed to join Horizon Europe, becoming the biggest country yet to associate to the EU’s €93.5 billion research and innovation programme. The development confirms the EU’s emerging role as a leader in global science and technology cooperation.

The deal, announced on December 22,  is to be signed off officially in 2026, but Japanese researchers and companies can already apply for calls starting in January and join projects on an equal footing with partners in the EU and other associated countries. They can apply for grants under the so-called Pillar II of Horizon Europe, a set of funding schemes for collaborative projects between academia and industry.

According to Japan’s foreign affairs ministry, “Both sides will continue to work on necessary procedures” in order to finalise the “draft text of the agreement” and get it ready for signing in 2026.

Until the deal is rubberstamped, a transitional agreement has entered into force allowing Japanese participants to “receive EU funding as beneficiaries and lead consortia on the same footing as entities from the EU member states,” said Signe Ratso, the European Commission’s chief negotiator. 

Japan is the 23rd non-EU country to join Horizon Europe, after a broader political push in Brussels to create stronger links with the world’s major science powers. The country is among the world’s top science powers, spending 3.4% of its gross domestic product on research and development in 2023 – matching the US, and surpassing the EU itself, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. 

The deal also highlights the endangered role of the US in global science, as the Trump administration has been hacking funding and attacking top universities over the past year.

In response, the EU has been pushing harder to win new science partners. The effort paid off, culminating with a string of deals that allowed the Commission to expand the pool of countries associated to the programme by adding South Korea, Switzerland, Egypt, Canada, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. And Australia might be next.

“We believe that scientific cooperation can build bridges, even in challenging geopolitical times,” EU Commissioner for start-ups, research and innovation Ekaterina Zaharieva said in a statement.

The EU has been courting Japan for years, but formal negotiations only began in November 2024. The pace of negotiations picked up a few months later and, at a July summit in Tokyo, EU and Japanese leaders said that they hoped to complete negotiations “this year.”

Hit the ground running

But Japanese researchers are no strangers to EU research and may be able to hit the ground running in 2026. 

Researchers in non-associated countries are not usually eligible for direct EUfunding but can partake in projects and even secure funding in a select few schemes. Data analysed by Science|Business shows that 84 Japanese organisations have already participated in Horizon Europe 169 times, receiving €1.25 million in funding. That’s only a fraction of the project costs, of course – with most of the bills having been paid by the Japanese government.

About a third of Japanese participations in Horizon Europe have been in natural science-related projects. Social sciences and engineering and technology meanwhile each make up around a fourth of the collaborations.

Cooperation is notably low in medical and health sciences, with only 11 projects overall and only two participations in big collaborative projects under Horizon Europe’s cluster for health.