Accelerating Food Sustainability - through Household Dietary Shifts, Trust and Transparency, and Innovations in Circular Food Processing Systems

Description

Central to the FutureFoodS Partnership is the ambition that tackling the complex challenges making current European food systems unsustainable requires mobilizing knowledge, actors and resources through a food systems approach. An approach of this kind is important as it propounds a holistic view when addressing wicked problems, acknowledging enduring dependencies between food system actors, as well as identifying drivers and leverage points within systems. The proposals submitted to this call should clearly delineate and characterise the particular food system under inquiry. What are its key actors? What are the main dependencies within the system? What levers may induce enhanced sustainability of the system? How does the chosen one connect to other food systems? Applicants shall demonstrate the originality of their approach and build on the results of existing EU level initiatives. Funded projects shall foster synergies with other initiatives and shall have the capacities to take a changing policy environment into consideration - also during the life-time of the project. Each application submitted under this call should focus on one of the three call topics listed below. The topic chosen should be clearly indicated in the proposal: 1 Domestic food practices for enhancing sustainable and healthy diets 2 Towards diverse, sustainable and circular food processing systems 3 Importance of trust and transparency In addition, the type of projects, Exploratory Research Project or Accelerating Innovation Project, chosen should be clearly indicated in the proposal. Please note that primary production (on land and sea/water), such as growing food, agricultural production and other specific aspects related to it, as well as diseases related to nutrition and lifestyle are not in focus in this partnership. These aspects are covered in other Horizon Europe partnerships. However, dependencies and impacts related to these aspects may need to be reflected upon in a project to fully embrace a food systems approach. The Call Announcement highlights the aim, expected approach and topics of the call. It also details the countries/regions participating in funding the call, the eligibility criteria, submission, evaluation and selection procedures, and modalities for projects funding and reporting. Specific funding regulations apply depending on the funding organisations: each partner applying to the call must ensure that its contribution to the overall project conforms to these regulations, as reported in the document “Annex I - National/regional regulations” available for download on the submission platform.

Beneficiary & submission

Submission and evaluation procedures are detailed in the Call Announcement available on the FutureFoodS Partnership website and on the submission platform. CALL SCHEDULE A two-step process will apply, with a mandatory submission of pre-proposals at the first step and submission of full proposals at the second step, via an Electronic Proposal Submission System (EPSS). The submission platform is available at https://futurefoods.ptj.de. Launch of the call: Wednesday 3 December 2025 Deadline for pre-proposals submission (mandatory): Wednesday 11 February 2026, 13:00 CET (local time in Brussels) Results of the evaluation of the first step: May 2026 Deadline for full-proposals submission: Monday 27 July 2026, 13:00 CEST (local time in Brussels) Recommendations for funding: late October 2026 Start of the projects: between 1 December 2026 and 1 April 2027 ASSESSMENT CRITERIA Research proposals will be evaluated by independent experts against the following criteria: - At step 1 (pre-proposal stage): (1) excellence and (2) impact; - At step 2 (full proposal stage): (1) excellence, (2) impact and (3) quality and efficiency of the implementation The detailed list of evaluation criteria to be used for this call as well as resources to help you prepare your applications are available on the submission platform, at https://futurefoods.ptj.de.