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Women TechEU: how to apply for the €75,000 grant (2026–27 call)

Women TechEU 2 EIC: who is eligible, the two-step Sploro application, weekly Tuesday cut-offs and the next Full Proposal deadline, 14 January 2027.

Women TechEU gives women-led, early-stage deep-tech startups a €75,000 grant that takes no equity, plus a six-month support programme. The current call, Women TechEU 2 EIC, is open, and applying takes two steps on the Sploro platform. First you pass the Eligibility Strand, which has a cut-off every Tuesday until 15 June 2027. If you are confirmed eligible, you then submit a Full Proposal. As of October 2026, the next Full Proposal deadline is 14 January 2027 at 17:00 Brussels time.

The rules below come from the official call page, the FAQ and the September 2026 guidelines for applicants. The call is funded under the European Innovation Council part of Horizon Europe, with EISMEA as granting authority and a consortium coordinated by Sploro running the call.

What the grant includes

  • €75,000 lump sum, paid in three parts tied to KPIs you agree at the start: €37,500 after month 1, €30,000 after month 3 and €7,500 after month 6. You do not submit timesheets. The first payment follows the month-1 setup milestones, including legal validation, the signed agreement and the agreed KPIs. The full month-3 payment requires at least 40% of the KPIs to be met; a lower rate reduces it proportionally.
  • A six-month programme with a monthly woman mentor and help with investor readiness, sales, leadership and environmental impact. You must also attend at least one ecosystem event.
  • Scale: €12 million in total for 160 startups, which means 40 per Full Proposal deadline. At each deadline, 16 places are reserved for startups from widening areas and 24 are open to all other eligible countries.

According to the FAQ, the money can go on any activity that helps the company grow, such as business-model validation, IP strategy, certification or investor outreach. There are no fixed cost categories.

Who can apply: the eligibility checklist

As of October 2026, you must meet every one of these criteria. Failing any single one makes the application ineligible.

  • Company type and age: a private company with its own legal personality. Sole traders, foundations and NGOs are not eligible. It must have been registered for at least six months and no more than five years on the eligibility cut-off date you apply to.
  • Size: an autonomous SME under EU Recommendation 2003/361/EC. That means fewer than 250 staff and a turnover of up to €50 million or a balance sheet of up to €43 million.
  • Funding raised: less than €1 million in equity. Money from angels or VCs counts, as do convertible loans and SAFE notes once the cash is in the company's bank account. Founders' own money, sweat equity and public grants do not count.
  • Stage: technology between TRL 4 and TRL 6, before a high-fidelity MVP.
  • Deep tech: the innovation must move the underlying technology forward. Simply using standard technology does not qualify. For AI products, you must be past concept development, dataset collection and algorithm development.
  • Woman founder in charge: a woman who was a shareholder at incorporation, or who became one within a year of it. She must now hold a top role: CEO, CTO, CSO or an equivalent post such as director or general manager.
  • Ownership: women hold at least 25% of the shares when you submit.
  • Location: an EU member state (outermost regions included) or a Horizon Europe associated country, such as the UK, Switzerland, Norway, Israel, Türkiye or Ukraine. The official associated-countries list on your submission date applies.
  • No double funding: the project must not have received money from an earlier Women TechEU round or the EIC Accelerator. Other regional, national or EU grants are allowed.
  • Civil use: purely military technology is excluded. Dual-use technology can qualify if it is aimed at civil applications.

Widening areas

40% of the budget is reserved for startups in widening areas: 15 EU states (Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia), associated countries such as Ukraine, Serbia, Georgia and Türkiye, and outermost regions such as the Canary Islands, Madeira and the Azores. Unused widening budget rolls over to the next deadline.

Step 1: the Eligibility Strand

The Eligibility Strand is a self-declaration form on the Sploro platform, linked from the active calls page. You enter company details, a VAT or tax ID, your PIC number if you have one, and a cap table listing each shareholder's gender and stake. You then answer yes or no to each criterion. No legal documents are needed at this point.

  • Cut-offs: every Tuesday at 17:00 Brussels time until 15 June 2027.
  • Answer: an eligibility letter arrives no later than one week after the cut-off you submitted to.
  • Corrections: a submitted application cannot be edited. To fix a mistake you submit a new one (up to three resubmissions are allowed). Appeals are possible within seven calendar days of the result.
  • Language: English only, at every stage.

Step 2: the Full Proposal

The eligibility letter contains a single-use link that creates your Full Proposal. After that, you log in to the platform and continue the draft under "My Applications". The form follows the EIC Accelerator's three criteria.

  • Impact: your investor pitch, business plan, scale-up potential, five main competitors and a SWOT analysis.
  • Excellence: the technology and roadmap, results so far, fundraising history, what difference the grant makes, a budget for the €75,000, IP strategy, and whether you intend to apply to the EIC Accelerator or Pre-Accelerator.
  • Implementation: the work plan, the team, the gender balance and the roles women hold, and your main risks with mitigation.
  • EIC challenge: you pick one of the 2026 EIC Accelerator challenges or the open option.
  • Also required: an ethics self-assessment and a declaration of honour.

Attachments: CVs of the woman founder and the team, plus an investor pitch deck, all as PDFs in English. Neither the CV nor the deck has a template. You also need a video pitch of up to three minutes in which the woman founder appears. Upload it to YouTube or as a Zoom recording, and keep the link public for at least eight weeks after the deadline. A phone recording is acceptable. A corporate video without the founder will get the application rejected.

Full Proposal deadlines (as of October 2026)

  • 16 September 2026, 17:00 CEST (closed)
  • 14 January 2027, 17:00 CET
  • 1 April 2027, 17:00 CEST
  • 8 July 2027, 17:00 CEST

Your deadline depends on when the eligibility letter arrives. If it comes more than 15 days before the nearest deadline, you must submit by that deadline; if it comes closer to that deadline, you can submit at the following one instead. So request the eligibility check only when you can write the full proposal in the weeks after it. Each startup gets at most three Full Proposal attempts across the four deadlines.

How proposals are evaluated

  1. Formal check: the form must be complete, in English and in the right formats.
  2. Automatic red-flag screen: this checks growth orientation, interest in investors, IP defensibility and whether the company mostly lives on grants; the detailed flags stay unpublished until the project ends. According to an official statement, only the top 350 applications per deadline move on, and only those receive an evaluation report.
  3. Remote evaluation: two independent experts, one technical and one business, score Excellence, Impact and Implementation from 0 to 5. You need at least 3 on each criterion and 10 in total; scores are then normalised across evaluators.
  4. Ranking: there are separate lists for widening and non-widening applicants. Ties go to the higher Impact score, then Excellence, then Implementation, and finally the number of women on the team.

Results come within eight weeks of a deadline. For the 14 January round, the Full Proposal guidelines give a tentative results date of around 12 March 2027 and a cohort running from 12 April to 14 October 2027. Selected startups then pass an ethics review and legal validation, which asks for the signatory's ID, an SME declaration, the last two years' accounts, a cap table, bank details and a validated PIC or legal entity form. Collect these early.

Practical points before you apply

  • The helpdesk (helpdesk@womentecheurope.eu) will not tell you whether you are eligible or which TRL you are at. Use the Eligibility guidelines and the FAQ to judge that yourself.
  • Submit at least two days before any deadline; questions sent in the final two days are not answered.
  • The next online InfoDay is on 10 November 2026 at 16:00 CET, followed by one on 12 January 2027 at 10:00 CET. Recordings are published on the programme website.
  • The programme is set up as a step towards larger EIC funding. Startups selected after the month-3 review get a fast track to the EIC Accelerator. Our EIC Accelerator step-by-step guide covers what that application involves.
  • The required ecosystem event can be one of the consortium partners' events, such as PODIM or the EU-Startups Summit, or another approved event. Our 2026–27 conference calendar lists the main options, and more is in our Conferences section.

More on young companies and the people building them: our Startups and Founders sections.

Frequently asked questions

How much is the Women TechEU grant?

Each selected startup receives €75,000 in non-dilutive funding as a lump sum. It is paid in three parts (€37,500, €30,000 and €7,500) as you reach the KPIs agreed at the start of the six-month programme.

Is Women TechEU open in 2026?

Yes. As of October 2026 the Eligibility Strand accepts applications with weekly Tuesday cut-offs until 15 June 2027. The remaining Full Proposal deadlines are 14 January, 1 April and 8 July 2027.

Can startups from the UK or Switzerland apply to Women TechEU?

Yes. The programme's FAQ confirms that companies established in the UK and Switzerland are eligible, along with the other Horizon Europe associated countries listed in the call guidelines.

Can I apply if my startup already received EIC funding?

Not if the same project or any part of it was funded by the EIC Accelerator or an earlier Women TechEU round. Other public grants are allowed and do not count towards the €1 million equity limit.