Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society 2026

Europe’s rich cultural heritage and strong creative industries not only reflect our past but also shape our future. It is by building on this foundation and developing our strengths that we can face the great challenges of our time with confidence and shape a desirable common future. Europe's cultural heritage originates from the interaction between people and places through time and is constantly evolving^[1]. Every citizen has a right to engage with the cultural heritage of their choice, while respecting the rights and freedoms of others, as an aspect of the right to participate freely in cultural life^[2].

Europe’s diverse tangible and intangible cultural heritage and dynamic cultural and creative industries (CCIs) are strategic assets. They enrich our lives, foster social cohesion and societal resilience, and contribute to a sense of belonging. They underpin a growing economy that generates more employment than the automotive industry and a similar trade balance as food, drinks and tobacco combined. Many of Europe’s multinational companies build their international success on European heritage and creativity. At the same time, the sector is nurturing large numbers of dynamic small, medium (SMEs) and micro enterprises, creating employment not the least for young people, while deploying their creativity not only to generate income but also to contribute to social and cultural sustainability, wellbeing and to projecting European values at home and abroad. The cultural and creative industries are engines of innovation not only in themselves, but across the entire economy, thus contributing strongly to Europe’s overall competitiveness and future prosperity.

This destination adopts a people-centred perspective and places cultural heritage and the cultural and creative industries at the very heart of the European economy, its competitiveness and sustainability. R&I activities under this destination will be aligned with the main principles and objectives of the Culture Compass for Europe and support objectives such as circular and just fashion and textiles value-chains, social cohesion and resilience through arts, design and cultural practices and creative entrepreneurial ecosystems for regional development. R&I activities under this destination will support and strengthen European cultural heritage and cultural and creative industries essentially along the following lines:

Europe’s sustainable prosperity and competitiveness: To secure Europe’s future prosperity and competitiveness, it is necessary to unlock the innovative power of our cultural heritage and CCIs. The CCIs contribute strongly to drive innovation not only in themselves but also in other industries and economic sectors, shape new technologies and can contribute to user-driven innovation, open innovation and cross-sectoral innovation, in addition to their wider societal contributions such as to cultural wealth, social cohesion and resilience.

R&I actions under this area will focus on boosting the innovation-driving role of the CCIs, on creative startups, on the impact of artificial intelligence technologies on creativity and CCIs, while ensuring that new technologies are fairly deployed, along with the contributions of artistic intelligence and soft skills, boosting a circular economy and global partnerships in cultural policies and CCIs, among other things.

Supporting people, strengthening our societies and our social model: Cultural heritage, the arts and the CCIs have a crucial role to play for resilient and socially sustainable societies, shaping and strengthening the values that hold us together and give meaning and a sense of belonging.

R&I actions under this area will focus on boosting the role of culture, the arts and creative industries in contributing to well-being, to the social economy and in general the societal impact of cultural heritage. R&I actions will explore and strengthen the role of culture, heritage and CCIs in shaping the technologies of the future and focus on safeguarding intangible heritage and linguistic diversity, on sustainable cultural tourism and on countering illicit trafficking of cultural goods, among others.

Some actions funded under this Destination will need access to and/or generate data. Where appropriate, actions should leverage the data and services available through European Research Infrastructures federated under the European Open Science Cloud or included in the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) and the ESFRI roadmap, as well as data from relevant European Data Spaces. In particular, projects that produce data or digital tools of potential interest to cultural heritage institutions or researchers should, as appropriate, establish links to and/or consider integrating their results in the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH)^[3].Particular efforts should be made to ensure that the data produced in the context of actions under this Destination is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable).

The innovation ecosystems created and nurtured by the Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), in particular the KIC “EIT Culture and Creativity”, may contribute to actions under this destination, and may as appropriate be considered by applicants. Furthermore, applicants are invited to consult funding opportunities in other parts of the Horizon Europe Work Programme, including for instance the funding opportunities for companies, high potential start-ups, entrepreneurs and innovative researchers offered under the European Innovation Council.

R&I actions under this Destination will help ensure Europe’s sustainable prosperity and competitiveness, support people, strengthening our societies and our social model, contribute to protecting our democracy, upholding our values and boosting a global Europe, leveraging our power and partnerships. They will contribute to reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goals and to building a stronger, more participatory and crisis-resilient society and economy. They will support the realisation of the full potential of cultural heritage, arts and cultural and creative industries as drivers of sustainable innovation and a European sense of belonging.

To maximise the impacts of R&I under this Destination in line with EU priorities, international cooperation is encouraged whenever relevant in the proposed topics.

Expected impact:

Proposals for topics under this Destination should set out a credible pathway to contributing to the following expected impact of the Horizon Europe Strategic Plan:

• The full potential of cultural heritage, arts and cultural and creative industries and sectors as drivers of both sustainable innovation and a European sense of belonging is realised through a continuous engagement with society, citizens and economic sectors.

[1] Council conclusions of 21 May 2014 on cultural heritage as a strategic resource for a sustainable Europe (2014/C 183/08) https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52014XG0614(08)

[2] CETS 199 - Council of Europe Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (coe.int)

[3] See further for instance https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/research-area/social-sciences-and-humanities/cultural-heritage-and-cultural-and-creative-industries-ccis/cultural-heritage-cloud_en

Expected Outcome:

Projects should contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Increased evidence collection and intelligence gathering, effective cross-border and cross-domain cooperation and uptake by the Law Enforcement Authorities (LEA) and experts of the consolidated tools and platforms within their operational systems and methodologies in accordance with the different user’s requirements.
• Capacity building and consolidated training ecosystem, developed with concrete, validated, actionable, interactive training materials tailored to the specific needs of different user groups across EU Member States and beyond.
• European Union law enforcement, judiciary and other competent authorities and practitioners gain a better understanding and enhanced capabilities in addressing crimes related to cultural heritage thanks to the consolidations of existing solutions, standardized and tailored trainings and workshops and practical learning materials.
• Actionable solutions to the threat to cultural heritage trafficking by illicit excavations crime that do not necessarily amount to organised crime but are still illegal activities that considerably endanger Europe’s cultural heritage, as well as cultural heritage in third countries.
• A robust and long-term sustainable support framework and plan which will ensure and make operational a long-term cooperation in the prevention and fight of illicit trafficking of cultural goods.

Scope:

Trafficking in cultural goods is a serious crime that poses significant threats to cultural heritage, particularly in conflict and crisis areas. This illicit trade involves the illegal import, export, and transfer of ownership of valuable cultural items, including theft from institutions and private collections, looting of archaeological sites, assets laundering and forgery of cultural goods. At the EU level, combatting cultural goods’ trafficking is supported by the EU Security Union Strategy 2020-2025^[1], the EU Strategy to Tackle Organised Crime 2021-2025^[2], the EU action plan against trafficking in cultural goods^[3] and the related Council Conclusions^[4], ^[5],^[6], the EU Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment (EU-SOCTA)^[7]. Cultural goods’ trafficking is a highly specialised criminal market. The criminals range from specialised criminal networks to corrupt dealers or expert dark web traders. Criminal networks and actors active in the area of cultural goods trafficking are characterised by a high degree of expertise and specialised knowledge^[8]. To overtake the challenges there is the necessity to use advanced analytics, including machine learning and AI technologies, in order to curate, process and share large volumes of dynamic interoperable and high-quality data and transforming it into meaningful intelligence. By facilitating data exchange across borders and between stakeholders, it would ensure real-time access to relevant information, enhancing collaboration and coordination.

Proposals should strongly build on existing expertise and developments, focusing on (1) developing a cohesive ecosystem to be promoted among LEAs, with integrations and operational interfaces between existing tools, systems (including LEA systems) and the solutions developed to trace, protect, safeguard and repatriate goods, including methodologies for combating crimes through data and network analysis; (2) fostering the utilisation of the aforementioned systems by LEA and push them forward to market readiness level to ensure their effective impact on combating illicit trafficking cases; (3) strengthening the collaboration between the different stakeholders providing effective tools and actionable and standardized training materials for boosting capacity in cataloguing and provenance information analysis; (4) improving data quality, robust data governance and data interoperability across stakeholders and cross borders, improving LEA access to critical databases; (5) provide support to evidence collection thanks to the analysis and interpolation of different sources of information and open source and geospatial intelligence.

Proposals should design and consolidate the solution space, tools and the training ecosystem to demonstrate real uptake and adoption and ensure they reflect the priorities of diverse personas, including law enforcement authorities, customs officials, police authorities, cultural heritage professionals, policymakers and citizens. The training ecosystem should build on the results and findings of relevant national and EU-funded projects, such as for example OPFA-CULT^[9], in order to leverage existing knowledge and avoid duplication of effort. The development of these materials should be integrated with existing EU and international legal frameworks and measures on the trafficking of cultural goods, including those applicable beyond EU borders^{[1] [2] [3]}. For police authorities’ training-related aspects, cooperation of successful proposals with CEPOL is expected, provided that the Agency opts out from applying for funding.

The proposals should build on the achievements and findings of related previous national and EU-funded projects as well as create complementarities or synergies with projects and European research infrastructures in the field, such as, for example the ones funded under Horizon Europe Cluster 2 and Cluster 3, ERC, the Internal Security Fund (ISF), Creative Europe, the Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM), the European research infrastructure for heritage science (E-RIHS). Where possible and relevant, synergy-building and clustering initiatives with successful proposals in the same area should be considered, including the organisation of international conferences in close coordination with the Community for European Research and Innovation for Security (CERIS) 18activities and/or other international events.

Proposals are encouraged to seek synergies, and collaboration, with relevant initiatives already developed from international stakeholders working in the field of cultural heritage as well as in the security sector. The creation of new tools and the duplication of existing ones should be avoided; instead, priority should be given to leveraging opportunities for consolidation and maximizing impact. of existing tools and resources.

Scientists and practitioners doing research in the field of Cultural Heritage (such as archaeologists, museologists, art historians or related fields) must have an essential role in the production of the outputs assuring that they efficiently take into account the real needs and problems of the field, as well as in ensuring scientific quality of information and data.

Proposals are encouraged to actively collaborate, create synergies and developments with the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH)^[13] and the Europol Innovation Lab during the lifetime of the project, including validating the outcomes, with the aim of facilitating future uptake of innovations for the law enforcement community. Proposals should ensure alignment on the formats and standards used to exchange interoperable high-quality data with the Cultural Heritage Cloud.

Beneficiaries may plan their activities opting to provide Financial Support to Third Parties in order to support practitioners (such as Police Authorities, Non-Governmental Organisations/Civil Society Organisations, cultural and creative industries [CCIs], research groups and communities of practitioners in the field of Cultural Heritage) for expanding the proposed work in terms of, for instance, additional user groups and needs, complementary assessments, technology- or methodology-testing activities.

Proposals funded under this topic are expected to actively develop, configure and implement a long-term sustainable governance and cooperation framework which will ensure long term engagement beyond the duration of the funding. Particular emphasis should be placed on the co-creation of a detailed, realistic, and jointly agreed roadmap and validated business model to ensure functionality after the project ends. The model needs to be already validated and operational before the end of the funded project. The scope of the research should include under-studied regions, zones in conflict areas and under environmental disasters, considering existing initiatives, for example the Recommendation on Safeguarding Cultural Heritage in Ukraine^[14].

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52020DC0605

[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52021DC0170

[3] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52022DC0800

[4] Council Conclusions on the fight against trafficking in cultural goods ‒ Council conclusions (8 June 2023) (10249/23)

[5] Concept on Cultural heritage in conflicts and crises. A component for peace and security in European Union’s external action. (9962/21)

[6] Council Conclusions on EU Approach to Cultural Heritage in conflicts and crises (9837/21)

[7] https://www.europol.europa.eu/publications-events/main-reports/socta-report

[8] EUROPEAN UNION SERIOUS AND ORGANISED CRIME THREAT ASSESSMENT 2025. THE CHANGING DNA OF SERIOUS AND ORGANISED CRIME.

[9] https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/projects-details/31077817/101003506

[10] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52020DC0605

[11] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52021DC0170

[12] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52022DC0800

[13] https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/research-area/social-sciences-and-humanities/cultural-heritage-and-cultural-and-creative-industries-ccis/cultural-heritage-cloud_en

[14] https://culture.ec.europa.eu/news/the-eu-presents-expert-recommendations-on-safeguarding-cultural-heritage-in-ukraine