SME Call 2025: Round 2

The Top Sector Life Sciences & Health (LSH) invites SMEs and research organizations to participate in the SME Call 2025. This call stimulates public-private partnerships (PPP) focused on innovative industrial research within the LSH-sector.

Why participate in the SME Call?

SMEs play a key role in strengthening innovation and accelerating the valorisation of research results. The SME Call enables SMEs to hire or retain an R&D employee (under certain conditions). This helps them enhance their development capacity and innovative strength.

Who is this call intended for?

The SME Call targets projects focused on innovative industrial research, where an SME acts as the lead applicant. Together with research organizations, they work on a specific innovation challenge that leads to a new or improved product, service, or process. The project has a maximum duration of 2 years.

How much funding can the consortium apply for?

• SMEs: in total up to €150,000 PPP subsidy per project year
• Research organizations: in total up to €150,000 PPP subsidy per project
• Available budget: approximately €5 million for this round, of which €3.3 million is reserved for SMEs

Important: Co-financing by both parties is mandatory and must comply with the PPP regulations.

Application procedure and deadlines:

Please note: Unlike previous SME Call rounds, there will be no pre-application phase for this round.

Phase 1: Submit full application

• Deadline: July 1, 2025 (5:00 PM CET)
• Required documents:
  • Application form
  • Budget form
  • Signed letters of commitment (all partners except the lead applicant)
  • Video pitch
  • (Draft) consortium agreement
  • Signed declaration ‘non-Enterprise in Difficulty’ (only for SMEs applying for subsidy)
  • Confirmation of SME-status via the SME Check
• You can find the instructions for submitting your application here. Please note: Due to the requirement to submit the video pitch in addition to all necessary documents, there is a possibility that the total file size may exceed the limits for sending as e-mail attachments. In this case, we recommend compressing all documents into a single zip file and sending it by e-mail to tki@health-holland.com. For security reasons, e-mails containing links to cloud services, WeTransfer, Dropbox, or other external storage platforms will not be accepted as valid submissions. If the zip file still exceeds the size limit for e-mail, our recommended workaround is described in the instructions.
  We strongly advise you to start the submission process well in advance in order to avoid late submission.

Phase 2: Pre-selection of applications

• An independent selection committee will review applications based on the video pitch and core questions.
• Only the 30 most innovative and relevant projects proceed to Phase 3.
• Results Phase 2: mid-September 2025

Phase 3: Full evaluation

• The selected applications will undergo a full evaluation by an external and independent evaluation committee.
• Results Phase 3: mid-December 2025 via a formal decision by the Board of the Stichting Life Sciences & Health-TKI.

Want to learn more or get started?

You can find all details, required documents, and templates for submission in the full subsidy call below. For further questions, please contact tki@health-holland.com. 

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