Next-Generation AI Agents for Real-World Applications in the Apply AI sectors (RIA) - European Commission
Funds research to advance autonomous AI agents and collaborative multi-agent systems for complex tasks, focusing on innovation, robustness, and coordination within European and international partnerships.
This grant is no longer accepting proposals
European Commission has archived this opportunity.
Funder: European Commission
Due Dates: April 15, 2026
Funding Amounts: €38,000,000 total; ~€19,000,000 per grant; typically 2 grants awarded
Summary: Funds research on advanced, autonomous AI agents and collaborative multi-agent systems for complex real-world tasks, emphasizing innovation, robustness, and European/international collaboration.
Key Information: Participation is restricted to entities from EU Member States and select associated countries; entities from China are not eligible.
Description
This funding opportunity supports research and innovation on next-generation AI agents—autonomous systems powered by large language or multimodal models capable of planning, tool use, and real-time adaptation to achieve complex goals from high-level instructions. The aim is to significantly improve the autonomy, robustness, and reliability of AI agents through advanced planning, memory management, and reasoning. Projects should develop innovative multi-agent frameworks for decentralized coordination, enhance memory/state management for long-term interactions, and integrate external tools and APIs to overcome current model limitations.
Research may include self-planning, self-optimization, lifelong learning, and multimodal reasoning, with strong emphasis on benchmarking, progress monitoring, and sharing results with the European R&D community. Proposals are expected to collaborate with the AI Factories, leverage Data Labs, and align with the European Partnership on AI, Data, and Robotics (ADRA), fostering synergies with relevant European and international initiatives.
