EIT Water prepares to call for projects in 2027

EIT Water, the EU’s new community for water-related innovation, is set to start work in 2026, with the first calls for projects and training launching in 2027.

The new knowledge and innovation community will be the tenth launched by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). Like its predecessors, it will provide entrepreneurship training, and business and acceleration support to innovators around Europe.

In November, the EIT selected a group of 50 organisations from 24 countries to launch EIT Water, with Denmark’s Aarhus University in the driving seat. They will have €5 million and a year to establish the organisation, recruit staff and develop a strategy. "It's like rapidly building and scaling a very fast start-up," Michelle Williams, project coordinator at Aarhus University, told Science|Business. 

The headquarters will be based in Aarhus, but seven other branches are foreseen, in Leeds, Berlin, Antwerp, Vienna, Sibenik, Malaga and Varna.

The EU has tasked the new community with addressing three challenges: water scarcity, drought and floods; marine and freshwater ecosystem degradation; and the development of a circular and sustainable blue economy.

Within these areas, EIT Water will work across Europe to fill the sector's entrepreneurial skills gap and tackle fragmentation by funding projects, training innovators and supporting start-ups. 

“Water management in Europe, in coastal zones, in rivers and lakes, in the marine and maritime sector is highly fragmented. We see that every local water board has their own practice in water management,” said Hero Prins, EIT Water’s newly appointed chief executive. “Our main impact is that we work across Europe and create an ecosystem on a pan-European level.”

By 2033, EIT Water promises to market 247 innovations, create 58 start-ups, support another 1,380 and prevent €1.2 billion in economic losses from ecosystem degradation. 

Growing policy field

Water is becoming a pressing priority for Europe, with the price of water supply and sanitation rising 10-15% each year and climate change threatening to wreak havoc on its supply. Much of Europe’s infrastructure needs to be upgraded in order to meet emerging challenges, such as drought, chemical pollution and flooding. 

To start work on securing supply, the European Commission adopted an EU water resilience strategy in 2025, following up with a Water Resilience Forum in December to discuss how to accelerate the strategy’s implementation.

In the policy area, EIT Water has already identified nine “action programmes” in which it will fund targeted activities, such as innovator training and spin-out support. These include circular water and resource recovery, emerging contaminants, water quality and pollution, among others.

Another key goal is boosting water re-use. While water may not seem scarce, “it is a very limited resource, and we need to circulate and look at water as a much more valuable and critical resource,” said Williams.

Money is also important, with the EIT Water working to make innovation in the fragmented sector smarter and cheaper. Europe already spends €100 billion a year on water, but this number is set to grow to €255 billion in 2030.

“You can imagine that you have to invest in new and optimised sewage systems that cost a lot of money,” Prins said. “If we can unlock innovations and start-ups to do that in a smarter way, we can avoid a lot of costs and improve the use of water.”

One way that EIT Water hopes to optimise innovation and bring costs down is by helping all European countries and regions get access to a digital twin of their water infrastructures, allowing different climate scenarios to be tested. Some EU countries already do this, but the EIT hopes to make it a pan-European practice.

Future in Horizon Europe

EU policymakers asked the EIT to launch a water innovation community in 2020 when they finalised the Horizon Europe research programme, for which water is a key topic. It’s the EIT’s tenth community, joining earlier initiatives covering health, climate, digital technologies and advanced manufacturing, among others.

But while there was appetite for new innovator communities in 2020, the EIT’s future in the next seven-year EU framework, due to start in 2028, is less than certain. 

The proposal for the next Horizon Europe mentions the EIT’s mission but not the agency itself. A few years ago, some research heavyweights, including Germany’s Fraunhofer research organisation, even called for it to be scrapped.

The current EIT funding runs until 2028. Williams and Prins are positive about the impact the new community can achieve in the next few years, but admit the future is uncertain. “Nobody has any certainty, and that's the same at the end of every Framework Programme,” said Williams.

But despite a potentially rocky road ahead for the EIT, water is likely to stay a priority for the EU, and the new community’s chiefs believe it can bring something to the table that no other EU initiative can. 

Horizon Europe already runs a Mission to save Europe’s oceans and waters, which aims to catalyse action across the bloc, and a Water4All partnership that funds research for freshwater security, pooling EU and national research agency funding. “Those initiatives are typically focused within one part of the water landscape, the oceans or fresh water. And they aren't really looking for the most in a holistic perspective across the water landscape, and that's what we will be doing,” said Williams.

To make this a reality and cover the whole value chain, EIT Water will look for more partners in 2026, such as investors, insurance companies, banks and non-governmental organisations as well as industries that heavily rely on water, including food, energy and digital.