Creative Innovation Lab

Open

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Objective:
WARNING: BEFORE SUBMITTING, APPLICANTS ARE STRONGLY ADVISED TO CHECK THE RELEVANCE AND ELIGIBILITY OF THEIR APPLICATION WITH THEIR DOMESTIC CREATIVE EUROPE DESK (https://culture.ec.europa.eu/resources/creative-europe-desks)
The Creative Innovation Lab support shall support the design, development and/or spread of innovative tools, models or solutions applicable in the audiovisual (compulsory) and at least one the following sectors: music, books or museums.
The audiovisual sector covers all activities and companies related to the development, production, distribution, promotion and circulation of the following content:

• Feature films, animations and creative documentaries intended primarily for cinematic release;
• Fiction audiovisual works (one-off or series), animation (one-off or series) and creative documentaries (one-off or series) intended primarily for the purposes of television or digital platform exploitation;
• Interactive, non-linear fiction, animation or creative documentary projects (e.g. narrative virtual reality projects);
• Narrative video games and interactive narrative immersive experiences. In order to be considered narrative, the story must be told or shown throughout the whole game (in-game storytelling) or interactive immersive experience, and not only as an introduction or an ending. The objectives of the scheme is to encourage cooperation between the audiovisual sector and the music, book or museum sectors to accompany their environmental transition and/or to improve their competitiveness and/or the circulation, visibility, discoverability, availability, diversity and the audience of European content across borders. The support also aims to enable the European audiovisual sector and these three sectors (music, books and museums) to better adapt to the opportunities offered by the development of Artificial Intelligence.
Expected results

• Improve the competitiveness of the European audiovisual and other cultural and creative sectors: transparency, data collection and the appropriate use of artificial intelligence/big data, adaptation to the challenges and opportunities driven by the ongoing changes in those sectors;
• Improve the adaptation of the European audiovisual and other cultural and creative sectors to the opportunities offered by the development of virtual worlds (also called metaverse(s)).
• Improve the production/financing and circulation of European audiovisual and cultural content in the digital age;
• Increase the visibility, discoverability, availability and diversity of European audiovisual and cultural content in the digital age;
• Increase the potential audience of European audiovisual and cultural content in the digital age.
• Accelerate the environmental transition of the European audiovisual, cultural and other creative sectors, in line with the priorities of the European Green Deal and the New European Bauhaus. Description of the activities to be funded
Projects must focus on one (or several) of the below topics:

• Virtual Worlds as a new environment for the promotion of European content, audience renewal and competitiveness of European content industries;
• Innovative Business Tools for production, financing, distribution or promotion enabled or enhanced by new technology (AI, big data, blockchain, Virtual Worlds, NFT, etc.), in particular:
• Rights’ management and monetisation (including innovative bundled subscription offers to access diverse European cultural content from various existing European platforms), at the same time ensuring transparency and fair remuneration for creators and artists;
• Data collection and analysis, with particular emphasis on prediction for content creation and audience development (including innovative cross-sectoral tools to improve the quality of the subscriber service and a better valorisation of European content offered by European online platforms);
• “Greener” practices in order to lower the impact on the environment of the audiovisual and other cultural sectors in line with the Commission’s Green Deal and the New Bauhaus initiative. Cross-sectoral cooperation between the audiovisual and other cultural and creative sectors is at the heart of the Call. Therefore, applications must clearly demonstrate the extent of the cross-sectoral approach, the conditions for its implementation and the expected benefits for the sectors covered.
Applications should present adequate strategies to ensure more sustainable and more environmentally-respectful industry and to ensure gender balance, inclusion, diversity and representativeness.
A wide spectrum of organisations will be invited to participate, including private and public entities, tech companies and start-ups, audiovisual, cultural and creative organisations. The participation of business incubators and accelerators shall be encouraged, to provide space and time for creative ideas to be shaped.
Special emphasis will also be placed on attracting private investment and on own investment. The project’s ability to apply for a sound and reasonable level of EU public funding below the 80% authorised will be assessed.
The following activities are ineligible:

• multimedia art projects and installations;
• immersive tours, events, music videos and immersive experiences used in retail;
• works of a promotional nature being part of a promotional campaign or advertising for a specific, destination (tourism), product and/or brand and institutional productions to promote a specific organisation or its activities;
• reference works (encyclopaedias, atlases, catalogues, databases and similar), “how-to” works (instructional guides, manuals and similar) and (interactive) e-books;
• projects focusing on live recordings, TV games, talk shows, cooking shows, magazines, tv-shows, News, Media literacy, reality shows, educational, teaching and “how to” programmes;
• documentaries promoting tourism, “making-of”, reports, animal reportages, news programmes and “docu-soaps”;
• projects including pornographic or racist material or advocating violence;
• E-learning platforms; Costs related to content production/development, organisation of cultural events are not eligible under this Call.
Financial support to third parties is allowed for grants.

Status

Open

Deadline

22 April 2027 (time not stated)

Opens

22 October 2026

Published

20 October 2026

Total budget

€7,183,502

Country

European Union (EU-wide)

Programme

Creative Europe Programme (CREA)

Funder

European Commission

Official page

Open at the source portal

What applying involves

10 steps, all of them taken from this call's own documents.

Understand the call

• Read the call on the source portal and download its documents
• Write the proposal against the award criteria and thresholds

  Evaluation criteria, scoring, threshold and process are described in the call document — conditions §5b

• Check the grant's legal and financial set-up standard for this programme

  described in the call document . Call document and annexes: Call document Application form templates Standard application form (CREA MEDIA) — the application form specific to this call is available in the Submission System Information on independence and ownership control (CREA MEDIA) Model Grant Agreements (MGA) CREA MGA Additional documents: CREA Annual Work Programmes CREA Regulation 2021/818 EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509 Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR … — conditions §6

• Check the amount you plan to request against the call's range

Check you are eligible

• Check every partner is established in an eligible country standard for this programme

  described in the call document — conditions §2

• Meet the call's other eligibility conditions standard for this programme

  described in the call document — conditions §3

• Be able to show financial and operational capacity standard for this programme

  described in the call document — conditions §4

Prepare the documents

• Prepare Part B of the Application Form standard for this programme

  Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System. — conditions

Submit

• Check the submission and evaluation process standard for this programme

  described in the call document — conditions §5a

• Submit before the closing date shown above

  The source states the closing day but no closing time — check the portal before the last day. — calls.deadline

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