The European Commission has opened applications for the Horizon Impact Award. The prize aims to
recognise and celebrate outstanding projects that have used their results to provide value
for society. These projects must have been funded by FP7 and/or Horizon 2020 funding
programmes and they must be closed by the time of application.

Award value - 5 awards of EUR 10,000 each

The winners will be invited to European Research and Innovation Days hosted in Brussels, which will include a selected audience of high-level representatives and promoters of innovation in industry and the public sector. The Horizon Impact Award will provide the winners with high visibility in the form of public interest and increased media coverage. The Commission will further promote the winners by inviting them to provide testimony at other major events.

Who can apply?

The contest is open to all legal entities, individuals or teams, that have completed an FP7 and/or Horizon 2020 project. The applicants will be required to submit a letter of support from at least one user or user community, stating the importance of the research and how using it created concrete benefits for the specific user-community. This user should not be an academic organisation.

Award criteria

The applications must address the following cumulative criteria:

• From results to societal benefits - proven link between funded project results to their uptake and creation of societal benefits.
• Applicants must demonstrate that they have directly exploited their research and innovation results or have played an active role in the uptake of the results by third parties.
• The direct and indirect exploitation of results can take many forms among which are influencing policy change, commercialising a service or product, creating a start-up/spin-off, creating a new standard and more.
• The results should also benefit or address a well-defined target audience.
• Impact - potential longer-term impact for society, the economy and/or policymaking
• Applicants must demonstrate how the uptake of their research results has helped solve a societal challenge and generate economic, societal, environmental or policy impact.

Evaluation

Two different panels of experts will evaluate applications

• internal European Commission experts for the eligibility check and pre-selection
• external high-level experts for final selection