EU Grants for Ukraine: Practical Guide to All Programmes

€200 billion. That’s the EU’s total support to Ukraine since February 2022. But if you’re looking for a grant for your organisation, that number tells you almost nothing: it includes defence aid, humanitarian supplies, macro-financial assistance to the government and concessional loans.

Behind those macro figures sits a wide set of competitive grant programmes open for applications right now: from €300,000 for a startup through the EIC Pre-Accelerator to €95.5 billion Horizon Europe, where Ukrainian researchers compete on equal terms with organisations from EU member states. Universities, NGOs, IT companies, cultural organisations, municipalities, youth groups. Each type has its own programme.

This guide maps all 9 major EU grant programme categories: what they fund, who can apply, and where to submit.

Ukraine Facility: the largest single support instrument

Ukraine Facility covers 2024–2027 with up to €50 billion in combined loans and grants. As of April 2026, €36.8 billion has been mobilised. Three pillars each serve different types of organisations and needs.

Three pillars

Pillar 1 covers budget support to the Ukrainian state: €5.3 billion in grants and €33 billion in loans, channelled through the government to finance public sector salaries, pensions and social payments. Individual organisations do not apply here directly.

Pillar 2 is the Ukraine Investment Framework (UIF) at €9.5 billion. Of that, €7.8 billion goes to loan guarantees and €1.7 billion to blended finance (a mix of grants and loans for specific projects). The UIF targets €40 billion in total mobilised investment for reconstruction. By sector: energy (40%), transport (9%), social housing (6%), water infrastructure (5%), digital infrastructure (3%). In November 2025, UIF opened financing for dual-use manufacturers, including drone producers, for the first time.

Pillar 3 allocates €2.43 billion to technical assistance for reform implementation, institutional capacity building and EU integration. Consultancy organisations, think tanks and reform-focused NGOs can engage as implementers or partners on technical assistance projects.

EU4Business: SME lending through partner banks

Within UIF, a dedicated SME initiative signed agreements with 7 Ukrainian banks in 2025, making €250 million available to 4,600 businesses. Priority categories include veterans, internally displaced persons, women entrepreneurs and young business owners. The programme runs through Raiffeisen Bank Ukraine, Ukrsibbank, Piraeus Bank Ukraine and Credit Agricole Ukraine. The fund targets €500 million by end of 2026.

Horizon Europe: science and innovation on equal terms

Ukraine’s association agreement to Horizon Europe entered into force on 9 June 2022. Ukrainian researchers and organisations participate under the same conditions as entities from EU member states. The programme runs to 2027 with a total budget of €95.5 billion and three pillars: Excellent Science, Global Challenges, and “Innovative Europe” (the EIC pillar for startups and companies). All three are open to Ukraine. Open Horizon Europe calls, filtered by Ukrainian eligibility, are updated daily in the GetGrant database, which is easier than manually reviewing the EU F&T Portal each week.

ERC: grants for individual researchers

The European Research Council funds individual researchers who want to build their own research group in Europe. Four grant types cover different career stages: Starting Grant (up to €1.5 million, up to 7 years post-PhD), Consolidator Grant (up to €2 million), Advanced Grant (up to €2.5 million) and Synergy Grant (up to €10 million for groups of 2–4 researchers). The ERC4Ukraine initiative has already supported over 500 Ukrainian scientists.

MSCA: mobility and fellowships

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions support researcher mobility at all career levels: Doctoral Networks for PhD candidates and Postdoctoral Fellowships for early-career researchers. The dedicated MSCA4Ukraine initiative, with a €35 million fund, supports displaced Ukrainian researchers continuing their work at EU institutions and associated countries (fellowships from 6 to 24 months).

A specific open MSCA competition: MSCA Doctoral Networks 2026 (€593M, deadline 24 November 2026) →

EIC: from research to market

The European Innovation Council runs three instruments in 2026 with a combined budget of €1.4 billion, each targeting a different stage of technology development.

EIC Pathfinder (€262 million) funds research groups at early stages (TRL 1–4), with grants up to €4 million per project. The 2026 call includes both thematic Pathfinder Challenges and an open Pathfinder Open call with no predefined topic restrictions.

EIC Transition (€100 million) bridges the gap between laboratory results and validated prototypes, with grants up to €2.5 million covering the move from TRL 3–4 to TRL 5–6.

EIC Accelerator (€634 million) is the EU’s flagship instrument for deep-tech startups and SMEs at TRL 5 and above. Grants go up to €2.5 million, with optional equity investment from €0.5 to €10 million. Six submission batches in 2026: January 7, March 4, May 6, July 8, September 2 and November 4. The application form was cut from 50 to 20 pages.

EIC Pre-Accelerator specifically targets startups from “widening” countries, and Ukraine is on that list. Grants range from €300,000 to €1,000,000 for up to 2 years, combining funding with coaching and mentoring to prepare companies for the main Accelerator or private investment rounds.

A full overview of EIC and Digital Europe grants for tech companies: IT and AI Grants 2026 →

COST Actions: research networks

COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) has funded research networks since 1971. Ukraine is a full member. The programme supports coordination between scientific teams across countries: conferences, short scientific missions, training schools. Typical grant per network: up to €690,000 over 4 years.

Open COST competition in 2026: COST Open Call 2026 – overview and terms →

Erasmus+: education, youth and sport

Erasmus+ runs with a budget of €5.2 billion in 2026. Ukraine has been an associated country since 2014. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the programme directed over €208 million specifically to Ukraine’s education sector, and more than 52,000 Ukrainians participated in mobility activities.

Three Key Actions structure the programme. KA1 covers individual mobility: students, teachers, school educators, youth workers. KA2 funds cooperation partnerships between universities, schools, vocational centres, companies and NGOs. KA3 supports reforms in education and youth policy at the systems level. The 2026 programme adds a specific priority for projects addressing the consequences of Russia’s war of aggression in the education and youth sectors.

Creative Europe: culture and media

Creative Europe splits into two sub-programmes. The Culture strand funds cultural and creative organisations: cooperation projects, literary translation, networks and platforms. “Support to Ukraine” is a dedicated priority that applicants can select in Culture strand cooperation project applications. A dedicated call, CREA-CULT-COOP-UA, funds preparation for post-war recovery of Ukraine’s cultural and creative sectors.

Under MEDIA, Ukrainian organisations can fully participate in training, festivals, markets and film education. News media organisations can join supported news media consortia under the Cross-Sectoral strand.

CERV: rights, equality and values

The Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme (CERV) has a total budget of €1.55 billion for 2021–2027, with €305 million for 2026. Four strands: Equality and Rights (€27 million) covers anti-discrimination, gender equality and children’s rights; Citizens’ Engagement (€76 million) funds town twinning, civic participation and European remembrance projects; Daphne focuses on combating violence against women and children; Union Values (€181 million) is the largest strand, protecting EU values and supporting civil society organisations.

Eligible applicants include NGOs, civil society organisations, municipalities, public authorities and research centres. Most calls require a transnational consortium of at least 2 countries. Co-financing rate is typically 90%. Tracking 12+ annual CERV calls, filtered by organisation type and open deadline, is considerably faster through GetGrant than monitoring the EU F&T Portal manually.

European Solidarity Corps: volunteering for organisations

The European Solidarity Corps operates within the Erasmus+ framework and gives young people aged 18–35 the opportunity to volunteer across Europe and beyond. For organisations, two paths exist: hosting an EU volunteer or submitting a project application where your organisation runs a volunteering initiative. EU Aid Volunteers covers humanitarian volunteering in crisis-affected contexts, directly relevant for organisations working in Ukraine.

Digital Europe and the Single Market Programme

The Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL) funds projects in five areas: supercomputing, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, advanced digital skills, and the broad deployment of digital technologies across society and the economy. Ukraine can apply to specific topics. Typical formats include Digital Innovation Hubs, cybersecurity and AI joint projects, and digital skills programmes.

Ukraine signed its participation agreement in the Single Market Programme in February 2023. The programme supports SME competitiveness, standardisation and access to EU markets. A visible result: from 1 January 2026, Ukraine joined the EU’s “Roam Like at Home” zone, meaning mobile calls between Ukraine and the EU now use domestic rates.

Interreg: cross-border cooperation

Interreg programmes fund cooperation between regions on both sides of EU borders. Three programmes are directly relevant for Ukraine: Interreg NEXT Poland–Ukraine, Interreg NEXT Romania–Ukraine and Interreg NEXT Hungary–Slovakia–Romania–Ukraine. Ukrainian organisations apply in consortia with EU member state partners. Typical topics: local infrastructure, tourism, environmental protection, social services and local economic development.

TAIEX and Twinning: institutional support

TAIEX and Twinning are EU technical assistance instruments for government bodies and regulators. Through these tools, Ukrainian ministries, agencies and local authorities receive support for EU legislation implementation, staff training and institutional capacity development. Applications go through the EU Delegation to Ukraine’s official channels.

EU programmes for Ukraine: overview table

Practical steps to get started

Most EU grant applications go through the EU Funding & Tenders Portal (ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders). Registering your organisation in the Participant Register and obtaining an EUID (European Unique Identifier) is free, done once, and gives access to all programmes on the portal at once.

Four steps from zero to application

Step 1. Register in the Participant Register (EU Login account and upload of legal and financial documents). Step 2. Find a specific call on the portal by programme, topic and deadline. Step 3. Read the Work Programme and Call document: they specify which organisation types are eligible, the minimum consortium size, and the evaluation criteria. Step 4. Prepare and submit the application through the portal. For Erasmus+, Interreg and some Creative Europe calls, submissions go through separate national platforms, not the central portal.

What actually determines the outcome

A common mistake: writing an application without first understanding the evaluation criteria. Most EU competitions assess three blocks: scientific or technical quality (excellence), expected outcomes (impact), and execution capacity (implementation). Each block typically scores 0 to 5, and passing requires exceeding a minimum threshold on each block independently, not just accumulating a high total score.

On the EIC Accelerator in 2025: over 8,000 applications competed for €634 million. The selection rate after the first stage sits around 10–15%. But Ukrainian teams with prior Horizon Europe experience or previous contact with the EIC ecosystem (networking events, mentoring, prior Pathfinder work) pass the first stage at roughly twice that rate.

Building a consortium: where to find partners

Most EU calls require a consortium of 3–4 organisations from different member states or associated countries. The EU Funding & Tenders Portal has a Partner Search feature, but it sees relatively light use. Better sources: EURAXESS for scientific partnerships, IDEAL-IST for technology projects, COST Actions communities within your research discipline, and specific Horizon Europe brokerage events organised around each Work Programme.

One practical principle: partner searches work far better when you come with a project idea and a clear role distribution, not just a statement that you’re “looking for a partner for a grant.” Organisations that arrive with a concrete proposal in hand find partners significantly faster. GetGrant subscribers can also search for consortium partners directly in the platform, filtering organisations by type, topic area and country.

AI and grant search: the shifting dynamics

According to Ukraine Donor Platform data, $264.8 billion in international donor commitments to Ukraine accumulated between February 2022 and end of 2025. The number of active competitions in tracking databases grows every month. Manually monitoring 9 EU programmes plus bilateral donors takes a grant development specialist between 8 and 15 hours per week. Most grant managers spend more time searching than writing applications.

GetGrant‘s AI model processes the same dataset and surfaces results matched to an organisation’s profile in minutes. The matching logic works on simultaneous criteria: your organisation type, your thematic area, an open deadline, and eligible partnership conditions, all at once, not as separate filters applied one at a time. Subscribers receive a personalised digest of new competitions each week, without manually checking dozens of portals.