RIA, IA or CSA: Horizon Europe action types compared

The RIA, IA and CSA difference decides more of your Horizon Europe proposal than most applicants expect. The action type printed on the topic page fixes how much of your costs the EU pays, how many partners you need, how many pages you get and how evaluators rank you. Right now 300 live Horizon Europe topics use one of these three types: 145 Research and Innovation Actions (RIA), 108 Innovation Actions (IA) and 47 Coordination and Support Actions (CSA).

The short answer: an RIA pays 100% for new knowledge and lab-scale prototypes, an IA pays 70% for pilots, demonstrations and work close to the market, and a CSA pays 100% for coordination and support with no research. All three rules come from the General Annexes of the 2026-2027 work programme (source), and a topic can change any of them in its own conditions.

What does each Horizon Europe action type fund?

The General Annexes define the three types in one paragraph each. Read them closely, because evaluators check your work plan against them:

• Research and innovation actions (RIA): “Activities that aim primarily to establish new knowledge or to explore the feasibility of a new or improved technology, product, process, service or solution.” The definition goes up to “validation of a small-scale prototype in a laboratory or simulated environment”.
• Innovation actions (IA): “Activities that aim directly to produce plans and arrangements or designs for new, altered or improved products, processes or services.” They “may include prototyping, testing, demonstrating, piloting, large-scale product validation and market replication”.
• Coordination and support actions (CSA): activities that contribute to the programme’s objectives, with research work excluded unless the topic sits in Widening participation and spreading excellence.

Put on the Technology Readiness Level scale from the same annexes, a prototype validated in a lab is TRL 4 and a prototype demonstrated in an operational environment is TRL 7. The annexes leave the target TRL to each topic, so the topic text tells you where your project has to start and finish.

How do RIA, IA and CSA compare side by side?

This table puts the rules that differ next to each other. Every line comes from the 2026-2027 General Annexes:

All three share the scoring scale: Excellence, Impact and Quality and efficiency of the implementation, each out of 5, with a threshold of 3 per criterion and 10 overall. Actual cost grants of every type add indirect costs at a 25% flat rate of eligible direct costs. In lump sum grants the funding rate is already built into the lump sum, so it does not appear in the grant agreement.

How many RIA, IA and CSA topics are open now?

Two patterns stand out. CSA grants are smaller, and CSA topics run almost entirely on lump sums, so a CSA work plan has to define each work package clearly enough to be paid on completion. Two-stage submission belongs to RIA and IA topics: none of the live CSA topics uses it. The figures come from the same Funding & Tenders Portal data behind the full list of Horizon Europe calls.

Which live topics show the difference best?

The next deadline of each type, taken from the live data:

Open any of them and the action type sits on the topic page next to the funding model. The topic ID also tells you the cluster: CL4 is Digital, Industry and Space, HLTH is Health, and the Horizon Europe clusters guide decodes the rest.

How do you check which action type fits your project?

1. Describe the end state of your project. A tested method or a lab prototype points to an RIA. A pilot plant, a demonstrator with real users or a product ready for replication points to an IA. A network, a sector strategy or a support service for other projects points to a CSA.
2. Read the topic, then the type. The Commission fixes the action type per topic, so you choose a topic and accept its type. A project that fits an IA topic and an RIA topic needs a different work plan for each.
3. Run the 70% test for an IA. Every for-profit partner in an IA covers 30% of its eligible costs. Ask each company partner to confirm that share before you write.
4. Count your partners. RIA and IA need three independent legal entities from three countries. A CSA can go in with one applicant when the topic allows it.
5. Write to the scoring. In an IA, put the exploitation plan and the pathway to impact up front, since Impact carries a 1.5 weight in the ranking. In a CSA, show the coordination measures and who uses them.

Which mistakes come from mixing up the types?

• Research tasks in a CSA. Outside the Widening part, research work is ineligible in a CSA, and evaluators mark it down under Excellence.
• An RIA work plan in an IA topic. An IA that ends with a lab result misses the expected outcomes about piloting and market replication.
• Budgets built at 100% for an IA. Company partners that discover the 70% rate late leave the consortium weeks before the deadline.
• Partners from China in an IA. Legal entities established in China are not eligible in any Horizon Europe Innovation Action under the 2026-2027 General Annexes, and IA topics in the listed critical technology areas also exclude entities controlled from China where the topic conditions say so.

Put the Horizon Europe deadlines on your own site

Research offices and National Contact Points that explain action types to their applicants also need the dates. The free EU deadlines widget shows the live Horizon Europe topics on any site, with their deadlines, 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.