Horizon Europe Clusters 1 to 6: which one fits your project

Horizon Europe clusters are the six thematic blocks of Pillar II, where the Commission funds collaborative research projects built around topics it writes itself. Today 205 cluster topics are live in the portal data, 35 of them open for submission, with an indicative budget of €3.51 billion. Pick the wrong cluster and your proposal answers questions nobody asked. Pick the right one and you compete for a topic written for the work you already plan to do.

The short answer: start from the problem your project solves, find the cluster whose areas of intervention name it, then check which of that cluster’s topics match your outcomes. The rest of this guide gives you the live numbers and the official rules to do that in an afternoon.

What are the six Horizon Europe clusters?

The Commission’s Horizon Europe page lists them under Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness, the second of the programme’s three pillars (source). Each cluster page names its areas of intervention, and that list is the fastest test of fit:

Cluster 1 topics carry the code HLTH, the others CL2 to CL6. Read the code in any topic ID and you know the cluster at a glance.

How many cluster topics are open right now?

Right now Climate, Energy and Mobility carries the largest live budget (€977.88 million), and Digital, Industry and Space has the most topics you can apply to today (15). Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society and Civil Security for Society have no topic open at this moment, so every live topic there is announced and waiting for its opening date. That is planning time, and consortia that use it apply with a finished draft.

These counts come from the same Funding & Tenders Portal data behind the full list of Horizon Europe calls, refreshed 3 times a day.

Which cluster pays for research and which for market-ready work?

The action type decides how close to the market your work has to be and how much of it the EU pays. The General Annexes of the 2026-2027 work programme set these maximum funding rates (source):

The mix differs a lot by cluster. In Climate, Energy and Mobility, 59% of live topics are Innovation Action topics, the highest share of the six. A company partner in an IA covers 30% of its own eligible costs, so budget for that before you commit.

How has the 2026-2027 work programme changed the clusters?

The Commission published each cluster’s 2026-2027 work programme on 29 September 2026. Its General Introduction lists the changes that affect you most (source):

• 33% fewer topics than in the 2023-2024 work programme, and 45% fewer topics that fund only one project. Fewer, larger topics mean bigger consortia compete for each one.
• Half of the call budget runs through lump sums, mostly for topics with grants below EUR 10 million. You report on work packages done, without itemising every cost.
• Shorter, less prescriptive topic texts, with more open topics in Pillar II. The whole document is 30% shorter than the 2023-2024 version.

The same introduction shows how much of each cluster goes to climate action. The numbers tell you where a climate angle strengthens a proposal and where it is a side note:

Clusters 4 and 5 also finance the horizontal Clean Industrial Deal call, so an industrial decarbonisation project has topics outside both cluster documents too.

How do you pick the right cluster in 6 steps?

1. Write your project’s outcome in one sentence. Who uses the result and what changes for them.
2. Match it to the areas of intervention in the first table. Two clusters fit some projects: a digital twin for flood response sits in Cluster 3 and Cluster 4 territory.
3. Open the cluster’s live topics on Yellow Grant and read the expected outcomes. A topic whose outcomes you cannot deliver is the wrong topic, no matter how close the title sounds.
4. Check the action type and funding model on the call page: RIA, IA or CSA, lump sum or actual costs.
5. Check the consortium rule. By default you need three independent legal entities from three different countries, at least one in an EU Member State and the other two in different Member States or Associated Countries (General Annexes).
6. Book the info day and call your National Contact Point. The Cluster 5 info day runs on 19 November 2026 in Brussels with a live stream, Cluster 1 follows online on 26 November 2026 and Cluster 6 on 13 and 14 January 2027 (Commission cluster pages).

Which mistakes cost cluster proposals their score?

• Writing to the cluster instead of the topic. Evaluators score against the topic’s expected outcomes, and a strong project that answers a neighbouring topic loses on excellence and impact.
• Ignoring two-stage deadlines. In two-stage topics the first deadline is for a short proposal only, and the full proposal follows months later. Check the deadline model on each call page.
• Missing the EU Missions. Topics coded MISS fund work close to Clusters 1, 5 and 6, and they sit in their own part of the work programme.
• Treating a lump sum like a cost grant. In a lump sum grant the money follows completed work packages, so a vague work plan puts payments at risk.

Put the cluster deadlines on your own site

Research offices and National Contact Points keep cluster call lists by hand, and those lists go stale within weeks. The free EU deadlines widget shows the live Horizon Europe topics on any site, filtered by programme or theme, and updates itself 3 times a day.

Source of all call data: EU Funding & Tenders Portal, © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Counts by Yellow Grant.