Transversal Centres of Excellence
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Funding Overview
This call, Transversal Centres of Excellence (HORIZON-JU-EUROHPC-2026-COE-LH-02), is a HORIZON JU Research and Innovation Action (RIA). It aims to establish strategic technical hubs—Transversal CoEs—to provide essential expertise, tools, and support for European HPC application developers. These CoEs will bridge the gap between cutting-edge HPC infrastructure and the diverse scientific and industrial domains that rely on it.
The initiative seeks to streamline software development, optimize application performance, and accelerate the adoption of best practices and emerging technologies across the European HPC ecosystem. The EU-funding rate for this action is up to 50% of the eligible costs, with a total indicative budget that supports large-scale, impactful projects.
Key Focus Areas
Proposals must address one specific, coherent transversal technical area that supports multiple HPC application communities. While not exhaustive, proposals can focus on pooling European expertise in domains such as:
* Performance & Optimization: Application profiling, performance tuning, and energy-efficiency studies.
* Software Development & Delivery: Application deployment, portability, automated testing, validation, and integration (CI/CD).
* System Integration & Co-design: Cooperation with HPC vendors, code adaptation for the computing continuum (cloud, edge), and ensuring scalability on heterogeneous systems.
* Data-Centric Challenges: Data processing, interoperability, reusability (FAIR principles), and standardization.
* System Integrity: Addressing resilience, fault tolerance, security, and data privacy.
In addition to the technical focus, all CoEs are expected to provide advanced training and play a crucial coordination role within the broader EuroHPC ecosystem, collaborating closely with Community CoEs and Lighthouse Codes.
📊 At a Glance
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🇪🇺 Strategic Advantages
Fostering a Unified European HPC Ecosystem
This grant is fundamentally designed to act as a powerful catalyst for European integration in the high-performance computing (HPC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) domains. By establishing Transversal Centres of Excellence (CoEs), the EU is not merely funding isolated projects but building the critical connective tissue for its entire digital infrastructure ecosystem.
• Breaking Down Silos: The 'transversal' nature of these CoEs is key. They are designed to address cross-cutting technical challenges (e.g., performance optimization, data interoperability, security) that are common to multiple scientific and industrial domains across all Member States. This prevents the duplication of effort and fragmentation common in nationally-funded initiatives.
• Mandated Collaboration: The grant explicitly requires strong links and dedicated resources (at least 12 person-months) for collaboration with Community CoEs, Lighthouse Codes, and the Support Centre for HPC-powered AI Applications. This creates a formal, EU-wide network that ensures knowledge, tools, and best practices flow seamlessly between domain-specific users and technical experts, strengthening the entire European HPC value chain.
• Harmonization of Standards: A core objective is to harmonize performance standards and metrics. This creates a level playing field and ensures that an application optimized in one European supercomputing centre can perform efficiently in another, fostering a true single market for computational services.
Aligning with EU Strategic Autonomy and Digital Sovereignty
The call's structure and conditions directly support the EU's overarching policy goals of achieving strategic autonomy in critical digital technologies.
• Safeguarding Strategic Assets: The eligibility condition limiting participation to entities from EU Member States and Associated Countries underscores the strategic importance of HPC. This ensures that European-funded expertise in optimizing critical applications (e.g., for energy, health, or security) remains within Europe, reducing dependencies on non-EU entities.
• Building a Sovereign Technology Stack: The requirement to engage with initiatives like the European Processor Initiative (EPI) and RISC-V is a direct move to build and strengthen a competitive, indigenous European hardware and software ecosystem. The Transversal CoEs will be instrumental in ensuring that European applications are optimized for European technology.
• Enhancing Cybersecurity and Resilience: By focusing on transversal challenges like security, data privacy, resilience, and fault tolerance, the CoEs will develop pan-European solutions to protect Europe's most powerful digital infrastructures and the sensitive data they process, contributing to a more secure Digital Single Market.
Accelerating Innovation and Pan-European Market Access
The Transversal CoEs will serve as a launchpad for European industry, particularly SMEs, to innovate and compete globally.
• Democratizing Access to Expertise: The CoEs will act as a centralized hub of elite technical expertise. This allows an SME from any Member State to access world-class support for HPC/AI application development, services that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive or inaccessible. This directly enhances competitiveness across the entire EU.
• Reducing Time-to-Market: By providing advanced tools and services for automated testing, validation, and delivery, the CoEs help European companies and researchers accelerate their R&D cycles. This allows for faster innovation and quicker deployment of new services and products on the pan-European market of over 450 million consumers.
• Fostering a Skilled European Workforce: The emphasis on advanced training, workshops, and webinars, coordinated with the EuroHPC Academy and AI Factories, ensures the upskilling and reskilling of the European workforce. This creates a deep, cross-border talent pool that is essential for maintaining a long-term competitive advantage.
Driving the European Green Deal through Sustainable Computing
The grant aligns with the EU's climate goals by embedding sustainability at the core of Europe's digital transformation.
• Energy-Efficient Software Optimization: The call explicitly targets heterogeneous, energy-efficient computing and system scalability. A Transversal CoE focused on this area can develop and disseminate software optimization techniques that significantly reduce the energy consumption of Europe's supercomputers.
• Pan-European Impact: The solutions developed by such a CoE would not be limited to a single machine or country. They would be shared across the entire EuroHPC network, leading to a substantial, EU-wide reduction in the carbon footprint of digital research and innovation, directly contributing to the European Green Deal objectives.
🏷️ Keywords
Ready to Apply?
Get a personalized assessment of your eligibility and application strategy
See in 5 min if you're eligible for Transversal Centres of Excellence offering max €60.0M funding