In addition to the Work Programmes published by the European Commission to support projects between 2026 and 2027, the Horizon Europe Horizontal Activities Work Programme 2026–2027 has been published to open new calls in interdisciplinary fields. Besides the official Horizontal Activities Work Programme published in December 2025 and accessible via the Funding & Tenders Portal, a new draft version of the Horizontal Activities Work Programme—incorporating various additional topics—was published in May 2026 via the Comitology Register, as previously announced in the relevant news post on our website.
Under the Cluster 5: Climate, Energy and Mobility 2026-2027 Work Programme, applications for the 2026-coded calls related to Autonomous and Connected Vehicles will be accepted between 04.06.2026 and 08.10.2026. You can access the details regarding these calls in our news post. In addition to these 3 related calls, it has been announced in the updated draft of the Horizontal Activities 2026-2027 Work Programme under the "Bridging" category that a new call titled "HORIZON-BRIDGING-2027-01-10: Autonomous Drive Ambition Cities (IA) - Apply AI" will be opened. This call, which has a budget of 15 million Euros, is expected to be open for applications between 06.10.2026 and 18.03.2027.
Within the scope of the projects to be submitted under this call, it is expected to prepare the integration, operations, and deployment of autonomous vehicles in 5-7 European city pilots located in 5 or more EU Member States or Associated Countries (such as Türkiye). This includes prototyping equipment (vehicle, software, hardware), integration of vehicles into the transport infrastructure and mobility system, performing initial demonstrations in real-life traffic, and developing scaling and financing roadmaps.
You can access the call details on pages 86-88 of the relevant Work Programme.