EIT Water will strengthen Europe’s water, marine and maritime sectors by building a future-ready workforce and accelerating the market uptake of innovative solutions. By supporting technologies that improve water quality, restore ecosystems and promote circular water use, it will help boost Europe’s resilience to climate change and other emerging risks.
Boosting collaboration across sectors
EIT Water currently has 140 core partners, representing 29 countries, organisationally aligned to a Head Office in Denmark and 8 Co-location-centres across Europe. This funding will enable EIT Water to involve its international partnership from the outset and ensure early alignment across regions and sectors. It will accelerate its establishment and the launch of pilot activities across its nine Action Programs in 2026, focused on entrepreneurial education, innovation, and business creation to address Europe’s most urgent water challenges.
In 2026, this funding will support early pilot activities bringing together industry, academia and the public sector to test promising approaches for water resilience, circularity and sustainable water management. This will include open innovation calls, strategic planning for EIT Water’s 7‑year agenda, mapping of European demonstration sites and mentors, and a series of entrepreneurial education activities, including hackathons hosted across Europe.
A significant part of the donation is earmarked for open calls supporting collaboration between researchers and industry.
EIT Water is expected to become the central hub for water-related innovation in Europe, supporting startups, breakthrough technologies, and systemic change through education, innovation projects, and entrepreneurship support across its network.
About EIT Water
EIT Water is Europe’s innovation community for water, marine and maritime systems. We connect industry, innovators, researchers, educators and policymakers to tackle the most urgent water challenges-from scarcity, drought and flooding to pollution and ecosystem decline.
By bringing together the right expertise, investment and partners, we help new ideas flow into real-world solutions that strengthen Europe’s water resilience, support the blue economy and protect ecosystems from source to sea.
EIT Water is part of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union.