The Horizon Europe 2025 Workplan For Cluster 4 (Digital, Industry & Space)

In mid-May, the EC finally released the long-awaited Pillar II workplans for 2025. In this article, we will analyse the workplan for Cluster 4 (Digital, Industry & Space) and draw out the research priorities set by the EC. All Horizon Europe workplans can be downloaded from Science Business.

In their workplan, the EC has set out six so-called “Destinations”, areas of strategic importance for Europe. A breakdown of each destination, its key thematic focus, and an overview of calls under the destination are provided in this article. All destinations have the overarching aim to foster competitiveness and independence of European industries through excellence in research and innovation activities.

Comparison to previous workplans

The latest Horizon Europe Cluster 4 workplan shares many long-term objectives set by the European Commission, but also has some key differences.

Net-zero processes and circular economy in supply chains and manufacturing are still important topics, together with a stronger emphasis in the 2025 workplan on European autonomy and leadership in raw materials, chemicals and advanced materials. Equally, the previously set strategy for data and computing technologies is continued and expanded in the 2025 workplan. Responding to emerging results, the focus is broadened from the technologies themselves into how they can form a digital infrastructure suitable for the economy and society. An increased number of call topics are for AI-related research, reflecting the increasing importance of AI across all levels of society. Going hand in hand with these trends, human-centred and ethical development of these technologies continues to be an important aspect of European competitiveness.

It is the “digital and emerging technologies” destination that has the biggest difference from previous workplans. The Horizon Europe 2025 workplan marks a clear departure from previous workplans that had a focus on low-TRL photonics research. Only one call in the newly published workplan is from the co-programmed Photonics Partnership. Instead, AI, quantum technologies and robotics are the prevailing topics.

Lastly, the call topics for space-related research continue where the previous workplan ended, aiming to advance European access and leadership across all aspects, branching further into the domains of utilising space-data on Earth and acting in space.

Destination 1: Achieving global leadership in climate-neutral, circular and digitised industrial and digital value chains

The first Horizon Europe Cluster 4 destination focuses on the twin green and digital transition, with an emphasis on the Net-Zero Industry Act.

Working towards net-zero manufacturing, several of the calls address different aspects such as remanufacturing, physical and cognitive augmentation, and enhanced logistics and operations. This is complemented by a clear mission to make energy-intensive industries more sustainable, for example, through green production processes, use of renewable energy carriers, and upcycling technologies

Looking at the call topics under this destination, there is a clear trend towards industrial implementation with more Innovation Actions (TRL4/5 to TRL6-8) than Research and Innovation Actions (TRL2/3 to TRL5/6), complemented by several Coordination and Support Actions.

Destination 2: Achieving technological leadership for Europe's open strategic autonomy in raw materials, chemicals and innovative materials

Strongly linked to Destination 1 in its support to support the twin green and digital transition, this destination focuses on European autonomy in materials through advancements in the materials’ value chains. For compliance with the European Green Deal objectives, safety, sustainability, and circularity should be addressed for all materials and chemicals. The efforts in this destination are expected to cover a wide range of TRLs and all stages of supply chains, including investigation of raw materials, advanced materials, test methods and applications technology development.

Highlighting the push for translation of research to market-ready materials, products and methods, this destination also contains more Innovation Actions than Research and Innovation Actions. For these topics aiming for high TRLs (TRL6/7), detailed exploitation plans, business cases and potentially training materials are expected and will form a core criterion of the Impact section assessment.

Destination 3: Developing an agile and secure single market and infrastructure for data-services and trustworthy artificial intelligence services

In a departure from the green transition focus, destination 3 emphasises the digital transition aspect and in particular data economy. Responding to the increasing data flows between all stakeholders, e.g. businesses, customers and governments, in all directions need to be facilitated in an efficient and safe way.

To achieve that ambition, efforts are expected to contribute towards the realisation of Connected Collaborative Computing Networks (3C networks) and trustworthy AI solutions. This destination contains more Research and Innovation Actions at lower TRLs, as well as Coordination and Support Actions, and fewer Innovation Actions. The call topics are focused on digital infrastructure and digital technologies, not on hardware.

Destination 4: Achieving open strategic autonomy in digital and emerging enabling technologies

This destination is complementary to destination 3 and addresses hardware needs going hand in hand with digital technologies, thus also being key in achieving the digital transition.

Quantum and AI technologies are the main topics of this destination. Advancements in the production of semiconductor chips and quantum chips, together with required microelectronics, are intended to maintain and enhance Europe’s positioning in these fields and facilitate advanced innovations. This will be accompanied by software solutions and architectures that can be seamlessly integrated with the 3C networks developed under destination 3.

In destination 4, the relative novelty of quantum and AI technologies is reflected in the clear prevalence of low-TRL Research and Innovation Actions over Innovation Actions. The long-term aim is clearly to lay the foundation for European leadership and competitiveness in the emerging technologies by facilitating a supply chain and piloting environment towards smooth industrial uptake.

Destination 5: Open Strategic Autonomy in Developing, Deploying and Using Global Space-Based Infrastructure, Services, Applications and Data

This is the space destination of Cluster 4, encompassing all aspects of space-related research: How to bring satellites cargo and humans into space; how to utilise space infrastructure on earth for observation, communication and navigation; how to track and anticipate the trajectory of any object in space towards safe space traffic management; how to access and carry out operations on objects in space; how to conduct high-profile space exploration; and finally, how to foster European competitiveness in the space sector.

This destination contains a fairly large number of call topics, reflecting the broad ambition of the destination. The topics address the development of hardware solutions, digital infrastructures, and data analysis models. The call topics under this destination are almost entirely Research and Innovation Actions. This call is a clear push for Europe to develop competitiveness and autonomy in the space sector with collaborative European research projects.

Destination 6: Digital and industrial technologies driving human-centric innovation

Thematically, this destination is close to destinations 3 and 4 in this Horizon Europe workplan and focuses on the human-centric aspect of digitalisation. How humans interact with emerging technologies, and how the technologies can be harnessed to the benefit of society and economy, are the focus areas in this destination.

Only a few of the call topics are Research and Innovation Actions or Innovation Actions addressing digital or hardware technology development in support of virtual worlds and AI. In contrast to the other destinations, most call topics are Coordination and Support Actions intended to bring together, coordinate and standardise various other calls from this Horizon Europe workplan. Social sciences and humanities are clearly encouraged to be included due to the human-centric focus in this destination

Concluding remarks

The newest Horizon Europe Cluster 4 workplan continues to implement European strategies such as the Twin Green and Digital Transition, the European Green Deal, the ‘Safe and Sustainable by Design’ recommendations and the Digital Europe Programme. In this workplan, more room is given to current topics such as AI and quantum technologies, while other aspects, such as photonics, have less coverage.

This, of course, has implications for the researchers wanting to apply. Many researchers who have been active in the Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe framework programmes will find call topics that will present a natural continuation of their research. For some, this might not necessarily be the case. Due to larger numbers of photonics calls in previous workplans, there are many consortia in this field looking for their next project. Inevitably, the only Photonics Partnership call in the 2025 workplan will be extremely competitive and attract a very high number of proposals. At the same time, the number of applications for individual AI-related calls is expected to go down as there is more choice for researchers in this field.

Another issue many researchers are facing is the slightly unfortunate timing of deadlines. All deadlines are clustered in the space between mid-September to early October. That means everyone must choose wisely to avoid spreading their efforts too thinly and not winning any grant at all. Normally, researchers apply to multiple Horizon Europe calls of a workplan with different deadlines. Due to the late publication date of the 2025 workplan and the standardised period of about three months between call opening and deadline, there were of course no deadlines in the first half of the year. Nevertheless, it is unfortunate that the deadlines have not been spread wider across the second half of the year into the months of October and November.

Looking ahead, the community strongly hopes that the 2026/27 workplans will be released before the start of 2026 and have a better distribution of deadlines across the year, allowing to apply to several calls without being restricted by the clustering of deadlines.