Women TechEU continues with another €12 million in equity

The third edition of Women TechEU(2026-2028), an EU-funded project supporting women leading deep tech startup companies from Europe, has been launched and opened its call for applications.

Another 160 selected startups will receive €75,000 in non-dilutive funding, together with a personalised business development programme including one-to-one mentoring, training, matchmaking with investors and corporates, and networking opportunities.

Women TechEU has cemented itself as one of the EU’s most dynamic and impactful innovation support programmes, with its legacy beginning when it was launched and administered directly by the European Commission in 2021. As of 2024, the Women TechEU Scheme and related calls were externalised to a consortium who ran Women TechEU as an EU-funded TSTP project. The first iteration of Women TechEU as an external project closed to resounding success in May of 2026, having received 3,792 applications, from 43 eligible countries, with its successor project immediately following. The current 15 organisation consortium, led by Sploro (coordinator), AwakenHub and AcrossLimits as core partners, will run the scheme until 2028.

The main objective of the Women TechEU scheme remains to foster European innovation by addressing structural barriers that hamper European women entrepreneur’s talent, including under-represented deep tech sectors and European regions. The project is rooted in the belief that diversity drives innovation, and the scheme provides women in deep tech with more opportunities, resources, networks, and support in order to build market-shaping companies at global level.

Since 2021, Women TechEU has supported 344 women-led companies over 6 cohorts who are pushing the boundaries of European deep tech. Recent winners have called the programme “instrumental” to their goals and a “catalyst” to their progress, through interventions at three critical levels; strategic guidance, a collaborative network, and essential funding. Founders assert how the powerful network of female leaders built during the programme, as well as the recognition that comes from being selected as a deep tech leader in such a competitive call, will be the most durable asset for their journey forward, continuing to open doors well into the future.

Indeed, every winning company has continued on their journey to redefine their sector and prove that recognising and investing in talent matters. Just last week, at the 2026 EIC Summit in Brussels, Judit Giró Benet, founder of The Blue Box and a Women TechEU alumnus from the first 2021 cohort, was awarded the runner-up European Prize for Women Innovators in the Rising Innovators category.

Support schemes such as Women TechEU are not a matter of paying lip service to gender equality. Extensive data and research proves time and again that there is a complex and deeply-rooted web of intersectional barriers that prevent women in deep tech from succeeding at the same levels as men-led companies, despite the evidence showing that women-led companies perform just as well as their peers, if not better. Indeed, data from the startups comprising just 3 cohorts of Women TechEU shows that they alone collectively raised over €53.8 million in private funding (a 6:1 return on the €9 million in EU funding invested) within a year.

Looking forward to the next two years, Women TechEU continues its mission with critical adjustments that make it even more relevant as a vehicle for startup acceleration. A two-phase application process, separating the eligibility check from the full proposal into two separate phases, will eliminate the high percentage of non-ineligible proposals and avoid ineligible entrepreneurs needlessly spending resources to develop proposals. A more cohesive focus on geographical inequalities will see 40% of the budget exclusively reserved to companies based in Widening areas. Lastly, the project will strengthen access to private capital and markets via direct connections and matchmaking with corporates and investors, as well as invest heavily in enhancing the support provided to Women TechEU beneficiaries to become EIC Accelerator applicants.

The Women TechEU open call will be receiving applications over the next year. The eligibility application phase was launched on 1 June 2026, with weekly cut-offs every Tuesday at 17:00 (Brussels time) starting on 30 June 2026, and the final eligibility check cut-off being 13 July 2027. The application for the full proposal will open in July 2026, with 4 submission deadlines. All information and the application can be accessed via the Women TechEU website: womentecheurope.eu

Previous Women TechEU beneficiaries can be viewed here: 2021 Pilot Cohort; 2023 Cohort; 2024-2026 Cohorts.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.