Why the EU portal lists closed calls as open
The EU Funding & Tenders Portal labels every record open, forthcoming or closed. We checked the deadlines behind those labels, 3 times a day, and found that most of the open label is out of date.
The numbers
On 2026-11-03, the portal’s search service returned 1,202 records labelled open for submission or forthcoming. For 665 of them (55%), every deadline was already in the past. They are closed calls with an old label.
When did these “open” calls close?
Year of the last deadline of each record that is still labelled open:
| Last deadline in | Records | |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 350 | |
| 2024 | 285 | |
| 2025 | 24 | |
| 2026 | 6 |
Most of them closed in 2023 and 2024. A researcher who filters the portal on “open” today still gets topics whose deadline passed 2 or 3 years ago, mixed in with the live ones.
Which programmes carry the most stale records?
| Programme | Closed calls still labelled open |
|---|---|
| Horizon Europe | 488 |
| European Defence Fund | 32 |
| Single Market Programme | 31 |
| LIFE | 31 |
| Digital Europe | 24 |
| Euratom | 11 |
| Connecting Europe Facility | 9 |
| Horizon 2020 Framework Programme | 7 |
Horizon Europe leads because it publishes the most topics. Topics with several cut-off dates stay “open” in the search records long after their last cut-off.
How we counted
- We query the portal’s public search service (the same one its website uses) for grants, calls for proposals and cascade funding calls labelled open or forthcoming, 100 records per page.
- For every record we read all its deadline dates. A record counts as stale when the latest one is before the moment of the check.
- The count runs again at every update, 3 times a day, so the numbers on this page are the latest ones.
What it means for you
- Never trust the status filter alone. Sort or filter on the deadline date.
- Check the topic page. The deadline on the call’s own page is the one that counts.
- Use a list that filters for you. All open EU calls on Yellow Grant drops stale records at every update, and the free widget puts the same clean list on your own site.
Source: EU Funding & Tenders Portal search service, © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Counts by Yellow Grant.
Questions
Are these calls still open on the EU portal's own call page?
No. The topic pages show the real deadlines, and the deadlines have passed. Only the status field in the portal's search records was never switched to closed, so lists and tools built on that field show them as open.
Does this affect lists built from the portal?
Yes, any list that trusts the status field. A filter on the deadline date fixes it, and that is what Yellow Grant does at every update.