Montpellier: The Horizon Europe nature call has opened with €230 million for research on biodiversity, giving universities, institutes and companies a fresh route to fund work on the decline of wildlife and ecosystems across the Union. The European Commission announced the call on 2 October 2026, and the first two funding actions opened for proposals on 13 October.
The Commission titled the call “Transformative Change Towards a Nature-Positive Economy and Society”. It aims to raise the share of Horizon Europe money that goes to biodiversity under the 2026-2027 work programme, and it ties nature research to wider EU priorities on food security, water and sustainable competitiveness. The funding sits in the programme’s second pillar, which covers global challenges and industrial competitiveness.
The Research Executive Agency manages two actions. The first, worth €41.45 million across three topics, examines how PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals, affect biodiversity and ecosystem services, and how clean and digital industries affect nature. The second, worth €108 million across five topics, covers the decline of invertebrates, co-creation labs for restoring damaged ecosystems, wildlife trafficking, invasive alien species and cheaper ways to monitor biodiversity for EU policies. The ten topics in total also reach into the One Health link between nature and human health, the Global Ocean Observing System and Europe’s resilience to climate change.
The Horizon Europe nature call arrives inside a wider €500 million top-up that the Commission allocated on 29 September 2026 for the period until the end of 2027. That package also contains so-called bridging actions that prepare the ground for Horizon Europe 2028-2034 and its links to the future European Competitiveness Fund. Two of them, worth €32.5 million and €20 million, open on 20 October and help project owners carry mature research results towards the market through innovation ecosystems.
The mix of topics in the Horizon Europe nature call shows what regulators currently lack. Biodiversity monitoring matters because authorities cannot judge whether nature restoration plans work without cheap, comparable data. The PFAS topic connects chemicals policy with ecology, an area where rules advance faster than evidence on harm to wildlife. Invertebrates, which pollinate crops and feed other species, rarely attract dedicated funding despite their role in food systems.
For researchers, timing is tight. The Commission held an online information day on 16 October for the horizontal activities, with live questions on topics, project design and expected impact. A brokerage event for the nature topics follows on 19 October, organised by CARE4BIO, the network of national contact points for Cluster 6 of Horizon Europe. Applicants submit proposals through the EU Funding and Tenders Portal, where each topic lists its own deadline and eligibility rules.
The Horizon Europe nature call also answers a political question. Member States and Members of the European Parliament have pressed the Commission to show that Horizon Europe delivers on biodiversity commitments, and a dedicated €230 million envelope gives them a concrete figure to point to. Whether it changes outcomes will depend on the quality of the proposals and on how quickly results reach policymakers who write the monitoring and restoration rules.
For consortia that work on pollution, invasive species or ocean observation, the Horizon Europe nature call is one of the largest dedicated biodiversity opportunities of the 2026-2027 work programme.
