Understanding Biomass Flows in Europe: A €6M Horizon Europe Call Agrifood Founders Shouldn't Miss

A question we've been getting a lot lately, including from our own LinkedIn community, is some version of: "Can my startup actually apply for this, and how?" This time it's about Understanding biomass flows in Europe (HORIZON-CL6-2026-01-CIRCBIO-05), a Horizon Europe call with a total budget of €6,000,000 that opened on 17 April 2026 and closes on 17 September 2026. It's exactly the kind of opportunity worth breaking down properly, because the honest answer is "yes, but not the way most founders assume."

Here's what the call actually funds, who's eligible, and the concrete steps to get from "interested" to "submitted."

1. Why This Call Matters

Biomass, wood, agricultural residues, food-industry by-products, algae, and more, sits at the heart of Europe's bioeconomy. It's a limited resource, and the solutions it enables, for climate, biodiversity, and new products, depend on how well we understand where it comes from, where it goes, and how much is actually available for sustainable use.

The problem is concrete. The EU's forest carbon sink is below target and declining in most member states, while the need to restore ecosystems keeps growing. At the same time, industrial demand for biomass keeps rising. The result is tension between supply and demand that today is managed with incomplete, fragmented data spread across regions and sectors.

That's precisely where this call comes in. The European Commission is funding projects that build better monitoring and assessment tools for biomass flows, from regional to EU-wide scale, and that show how that data can translate into real business decisions. It sits within the Commission's broader push on biotechnology and biomanufacturing, the Clean Industrial Deal, the new EU bioeconomy strategy, and the Circular Economy Act, so the data infrastructure built under this call is likely to shape policy and funding decisions for years afterward.

2. The Call at a Glance

3. What the Project Must Deliver

Every proposal has to address all three mandatory activities:

• Build better monitoring tools. Develop or improve administration-light methods and digital tools for monitoring and modelling biomass flows at regional, national, and EU-wide scale, with particular attention to areas with untapped sustainable biomass potential.

• Update the supply-and-demand picture. Provide an updated estimate of biomass supply and demand today, and projected to 2050, at national and EU level, factoring in quality, potential uses, sustainability, and risks such as the spread of pathogens, together with scenarios for the EU's future bioresources.

• Test it in the real world. Test and demonstrate, together with stakeholders, the feasibility of biomass reporting in test regions across at least 10 countries in Europe with differing biomass supply potential.

The European Commission's own Joint Research Centre (JRC) may join the winning consortium, either with zero funding or as an associated partner, since the tools developed are expected to feed into the EU-wide biomass assessment led by the Knowledge Centre for Bioeconomy. Proposals are also encouraged to build on existing efforts: the Circular Biobased Europe Joint Undertaking, the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform, the BIOEAST Initiative, and prior projects like BIO2REG, CONCERTO, and NextGenCarbon.

4. Who Can Apply

This is where most solo founders self-select out too early, and where a little context changes the calculation.

This call requires a consortium, not a solo application. To be eligible, a proposal must include at least three independent legal entities established in three different countries: at least one in an EU member state, and at least two more in different member states or countries associated to Horizon Europe.

Eligible organisation types include SMEs and startups, private companies, research institutions and universities, public bodies, NGOs, and EU bodies. So a startup or SME absolutely can take part, but typically as a consortium partner rather than the lead applicant, since this is a Research and Innovation Action requiring broad, international expertise rather than a single company's product roadmap.

Eligible countries include all EU member states, their linked overseas countries and territories, and countries associated to Horizon Europe: Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, the Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, South Korea, Serbia, Switzerland, Tunisia, Türkiye, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.

5. Getting Registered: PIC and Your Participant Profile

Before you can be named on any proposal, your organisation needs a Participant Identification Code (PIC) on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal. It's a one-time setup, but it's worth doing early:

1. Create an EU Login account using a professional email address on the Funding & Tenders Portal, this is the entry point for everything else.

2. Go to "Organisations" → "Register your organisation" in the Participant Register and search first to confirm your organisation isn't already registered. Duplicate PICs cause delays.

3. If it isn't found, complete the registration form, sometimes referred to as the Participant Identification Form (PIF), with your organisation's exact legal name, address, legal status, and financial details. This generates a provisional 9-digit PIC.

4. Appoint a LEAR (Legal Entity Appointed Representative) for your organisation, the person who manages your organisation's data and user access on the Portal going forward.

5. Be ready to upload supporting documents (statutes or registration act, VAT certificate) if the Commission's validation services request them. Accuracy at this stage avoids delays later.

6. Do this well before you need it: a provisional PIC is enough to be listed in a proposal, but full validation is required before signing a grant agreement.

6. Finding Partners and Announcing You're Looking

Building a three-country consortium from scratch is the part founders underestimate most. A few concrete places to start:

• Use the Portal's own Partner Search tool. On the topic page for HORIZON-CL6-2026-01-CIRCBIO-05, log in and publish a partner request: what expertise you offer, what role you're looking to fill, and your contact details, visible to other registered users browsing the same call.

• Check the Pilots4U database, powered by the COPILOT project (biopilots4u.eu). It's a free, searchable directory of 100+ open-access pilot and demonstration infrastructures for the European bioeconomy across 21+ countries. Since Activity 3 of this call requires testing biomass reporting in at least 10 countries, these facilities and their contacts can become genuinely useful regional partners.

• Reach out to National Contact Points (NCPs) for Cluster 6 in your country and in countries where you need partners. They run their own partner-search tools and matchmaking events tied to specific calls.

• Use complementary networks: EURAXESS Partnering, the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN), and thematic platforms such as the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform and the BIOEAST Initiative, both explicitly named in the call text itself.

• Prepare a short pitch before you contact anyone. One to two pages, or a 3-5 slide deck, stating the topic reference (HORIZON-CL6-2026-01-CIRCBIO-05), your organisation's role and expertise, the kind of partner you're looking for (a research institution to lead modelling, or an SME with regional biomass data, for example), and a short paragraph on how you'd contribute to the three required activities. A tailored pitch gets replies; a generic one doesn't.

7. Preparing and Submitting Your Application

Once the consortium and roles are set, the submission itself follows a fairly standard Horizon Europe process:

1. Appoint a coordinator, usually the partner with the strongest RIA track record.

2. Fill in Part A directly online in the submission system: administrative information about the organisations, a summarised budget, and call-specific questions.

3. Download the Part B template from the Portal, complete the technical description of the project (maximum 45 pages), and re-upload it as a PDF.

4. Include a mandatory plan for the exploitation and dissemination of results, including communication activities.

5. Submit entirely electronically through the Portal before 17 September 2026, 17:00 Brussels time. Paper submissions aren't accepted.

Eligible costs are funded as a lump sum rather than reimbursed line by line, meaning the budget is agreed against the activities and results described in the proposal, not against detailed invoices after the fact.

8. Practical Tips for Startups and SMEs

• If you're a startup or SME without in-house research capacity, aim for a partner role bringing expertise in data, digital tools, or a specific sector (agricultural residues, forestry, algae), rather than the coordinator role, which is usually held by a research organisation.

• Anchor your proposal to initiatives already named in the call text: the Circular Biobased Europe Joint Undertaking, the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform, the BIOEAST Initiative, and projects like BIO2REG, CONCERTO, and NextGenCarbon. Referencing these strengthens a proposal's credibility.

• If you don't have a research partner or consortium yet, but already have a market-ready product or technology, this may not be the right vehicle. Consider whether the EIC Accelerator or cascade funding through a different Cluster 6 project fits your stage better than a standalone RIA proposal.

• Give yourself real lead time before 17 September 2026. Building an international consortium across at least three countries, registering PIC numbers, and preparing a 45-page technical proposal all take weeks, not days.

9. How Agriventures Can Help

This is exactly the kind of opportunity Agriventures exists for: not just a grant listing, but the connective work of finding partners, reviewing the fit, and getting a proposal submitted on time.

Agriventures maintains a curated database of 500+ agrifood funding opportunities, including EU calls like this one, filterable by country, funding rate, and sector focus. Our AI Funding Scanner can read your organisation's profile and surface programmes aligned to your work, and our team offers direct support on PIC registration, consortium building, and application preparation for founders navigating exactly this kind of process.

If you're weighing whether this call, or one like it, is worth the effort for your organisation, reach out to our team or explore current funding opportunities on the Agriventures platform.

Checkout our guides for funding opportunities

Agriventures Connect 3.0 is coming on 20th of April 2026 in Sofia, Bulgaria

The role of Agriventures in supporting agrifood innovation

As the agritech startup ecosystem grows across Europe, initiatives such as Agriventures are helping connect entrepreneurs, researchers, investors, and policymakers working in agriculture and food innovation.

Agriventures focuses on supporting agrifood startups, biotechnology innovation, and access to European funding for agriculture, while also helping entrepreneurs navigate the complex landscape of startup financing, venture capital, and research commercialization.

By strengthening connections between startups, research institutions, investors, and farmers, Agriventures contributes to building a stronger agricultural innovation ecosystem that can accelerate the transition toward sustainable agriculture and resilient food systems.

Through knowledge sharing, events, and ecosystem building, Agriventures helps ensure that promising agritech innovations can scale and reach farmers, food producers, and global markets.