Open Call for Cutting-Edge Defence Solutions
Open Call for Cutting-Edge Defence Solutions supports SMEs and start-ups developing AI, simulation and autonomous technologies to advance defence mission planning, training and execution.
Funder: European Commission
Due Dates: November 16, 2026, 17:00 CET (Application deadline)
Funding Amounts: Up to €60,000 per beneficiary and €180,000 per six-month experiment; €1,200,000 total available
Summary: Supports experiments developing and validating AI, simulation and autonomous technologies for defence mission planning, training and execution.
Key Information: Applicants must be established in the EU, Norway or Ukraine and not controlled by non-eligible-country entities.
Description
The BattleVerse project runs this cascade-funding call with co-funding from the European Commission through the European Defence Fund. It supports six-month experiments that develop, demonstrate and validate technologies for mission planning, simulation, training and execution in defence environments. Selected solutions will be assessed for their contribution to BattleVerse’s human-centred ecosystem for battlefield modelling, adversarial AI and multi-domain simulation.
Proposals must address one of three technical topics: large language models and AI for strategic decision-making and planning under uncertainty; multi-physics simulation across warfare domains; or distributed AI for autonomous systems and coordinated swarm operations. Experiments should demonstrate a clear technological contribution, a credible implementation approach and potential to advance BattleVerse’s simulation capabilities. They are expected to achieve at least technology readiness level 5 by completion.
