FP10 is taking shape. Here's what's changing, what isn't, and where the Commission still has room to get it right.
By Roger Horan, CCG EU Funding Expert, Written 28th August 2026
Eighteen months ago, the research community's biggest worry was whether there would be a dedicated Framework Programme at all after 2027. That question is now settled. The Commission's July 2025 proposal confirmed a standalone tenth Framework Programme — once again branded Horizon Europe — running 2028 to 2034, with a headline figure of €175 billion. On paper, that is close to double the current programme. The debate has shifted from "will it survive?" to "what will it actually fund, and who gets to decide?"
Here is where we think things stand, and where they still have room to move.
What it looks like right now
FP10 sits inside a redesigned EU budget, alongside a much larger European Competitiveness Fund (ECF). The programme stays independent — a genuine win after the earlier push to absorb research into the competitiveness machinery — but it is far more tightly coupled to the wider industrial and competitiveness agenda than anything we've seen before. That coupling is the single most important thing to understand about FP10. It shapes the money, the governance, and the language applicants will need to speak.
From three pillars to four
The familiar three-pillar architecture is gone. FP10 proposes four:
→ Pillar I — Excellent Science. The safest ground. ERC and MSCA continue, with a sharper "Choose Europe" emphasis on attracting and retaining talent. Broad convergence here across Parliament and Council.
→ Pillar II — Competitiveness and Society. This replaces "Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness," and this is where the real change lives. Collaborative research is now steered in close alignment with the ECF, through a new coordination mechanism, and pointed at priority areas such as the clean transition, digital leadership, industry, space and defence.
→ Pillar III — Innovation. The European Innovation Council takes centre stage, with a stronger, more ARPA-style posture on scaling breakthrough technology.
→ Pillar IV — European Research Area. Widening, infrastructures and "brain circulation" are promoted into a pillar of their own — a welcome signal, provided it doesn't become a residual once budgets tighten.
Will we keep the same clusters?
Probably not in the form we know them. The six clusters that organise Pillar II today — from Health, to Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society, to Climate, Energy and Mobility — are the part of the programme most likely to be redrawn. The direction of travel is fewer, broader, more mission-oriented thematic areas, aligned to the ECF's priority windows rather than to a purely research-led logic. For those of us who help partners build consortia around specific cluster calls, that matters enormously: the map applicants have navigated by since 2021 is being redrawn, and the decision criteria may tilt from scientific towards industrial.
What we'd gently suggest the commission considers
We say this as friends of the programme, not critics of it.
1. Keep "Society" as load-bearing as "Competitiveness." The pillar carries both words. Social sciences, humanities, inclusion, democracy and environmental research must not be quietly crowded out by an industrial framing. Some of Europe's hardest problems are social, not just technological.
2. Make the FP10–ECF interface legible early. A dual steering system risks two committees, two logics and one very confused applicant. Clarity on who decides what, published well before the first calls, would save the whole ecosystem months of guesswork.
3. Let "simpler and faster" be real, not rhetorical. Lump sums, fewer templates and shorter time-to-grant are genuinely welcome. The prize is lost if new governance layers reintroduce the complexity simplification was meant to remove.
4. Protect the on-ramps for smaller and third-sector actors. Bigger and more strategic should not mean narrower. Universities, SMEs, charities and social enterprises all bring evidence and reach that a competitiveness-only lens can miss.
What happens next
With Parliament and Council positions now on the table, FP10 has entered trilogue — the decisive phase. The structure is broadly agreed; the fights are over budget, governance and how tightly research is bound to the competitiveness agenda. Nothing is final until it's final, and there is still real room to shape the detail.
For anyone planning consortia, partnerships or institutional strategy for 2028 and beyond, now is the moment to engage — not once the first calls land.
We'll be watching closely, and we're always happy to compare notes.