Through an agile and flexible process, following the Horizon Europe cascade funding mechanism, ongoing NGI Research and Innovation Actions (RIAs) provide support to projects from outstanding academic researchers, hi-tech startups and SMEs.
Funding is allocated to projects using short research cycles targeting the most promising ideas. Each of the selected projects pursue their own objectives, while the NGI RIAs provide the programme logic and vision, technical support, coaching and mentoring, to ensure that projects contribute towards a significant advancement of research and innovation in the NGI initiative.
The focus is on advanced concepts and technologies that link to relevant use cases and that can have an impact on the market and society over all. Applications and services that innovate without a research component are not covered by this model.
NGI Zero Review
NGI Zero Review Open Call
Supporting quality and maturity of digital commons.
Opening date: 1st August 2022
Closing date: 31st July 2025
Short description:
NGI Zero Review is a three year support programme offering various targeted services to free and open source projects within the Next Generation Internet initiative. Goal is to improve the quality and inclusiveness of these projects, and make them more sustainable where possible by supporting the most promising ideas to live up to high standards (sometimes called ‘walk the talk’) in terms of security, privacy, accessibility, open source licensing compliance, standardisation, etc.
Target participants: The NGI Zero Review program is open to grantees within the NGI initiative. Available to free and open source projects if the project has received a grant from the Next Generation Internet initiative, and contributes to the vision of the Next Generation Internet.
Visit:
nlnet.nl/NGI0/review/
Contact for more info:
nlnet.nl/NGI0/review/
NGI Zero COMMONS FUND
7th Open Call
Reclaim the public nature of the internet
Opening date: April 1st , 2025.
Closing date: June 1st , 2025, 12:00 PM (noon) CEST (Brussels time).
Short description:
The goal of the NGI Zero Commons Fund is to help deliver, mature and scale new internet commons across the whole technology spectrum, from libre silicon to middleware, from P2P infrastructure to convenient end user applications.
Free and open source software and hardware, open standards, open data & AI, open science, creative commons and open educational resources are democratising innovation and learning, and are together driving society and industry forward at an unprecedented pace.
Between now and 2027 we will award small to medium-size R&D grants between 5.000 and 50.000 euro — with the possibility to scale them up significantly if there is proven potential. Besides grants we offer support services to improve the quality and maturity of digital commons. Grantees can request support with security, privacy, accessibility, open source licensing compliance, standardisation and more. In total the NGI Zero Commons Fund will distribute 21.6 million euros of R&D on technology commons that improve openness, trustworthiness, resilience and user autonomy, and make these available as free/libre/open source software and hardware.
Target participants:
The call is open to SMEs, academics, public sector, non-profits, communities and individuals. Outcomes must be open: all scientific outcomes must be published as open access, and any software and hardware must be published under a recognised open source license in its entirety.
We assist researchers and developers to create powerful technologies, and to help them put it in the hands of future generations as building blocks for a fair and democratic society and a sustainable and open economy that benefits all.
Visit:
nlnet.nl/commonsfund/
Contact for more info:
nlnet.nl/contact/
NGI Taler
7th Open Call
Privacy-preserving digital payments
Opening date: April 1st, 2025.
Closing date: June 1st, 2025 12:00 PM (noon) CEST (Brussels time).
Short description:
NGI TALER is a project funded by the European Commission and the Swiss State to roll out a new electronic payment system that benefits everyone: people, merchants, banks, financial authorities, auditors and anti-corruption researchers. The project doesn’t start from scratch, but builds on the strong foundations of GNU Taler — the privacy-preserving digital payment system developed by the GNU community and Taler Systems SA.
We invite your contributions to help reshape the state of play of digital payment systems, and to help create an open, trustworthy and reliable internet for all. Of course you can contribute exciting new capabilities to GNU Taler itself, build auxiliary tools or work on user experience, but you could also developing integrations into FOSS applications and open standards (enabling P2P micropayments in for instance an instant messenger, open social media platform or video conferencing tool), or develop improvements to infrastructure components like merchant backends.
Target participants:
The call is open to SMEs, academics, public sector, non-profits, communities and individuals. Outcomes must be open: all scientific outcomes must be published as open access, and any software and hardware must be published under a recognised open source license in its entirety.
Part of the budget of NGI TALER is reserved for open calls to fund additional free and open source efforts that are aligned with the topics and approach of NGI TALER.
We are seeking project proposals between 5.000 and 50.000 euro’s — if the project works out well you can subsequently scale up in other NGI programmes.
Visit:
nlnet.nl/taler/
Contact for more info:
nlnet.nl/contact/
NGI Mobifree
7th Open Call
Working towards mobile freedom
Opening date: April 1st, 2025.
Closing date: June 1st, 2025 12:00 PM (noon) CEST (Brussels time).
Short description:
NGI Mobifree is a pilot programme designed to push beyond the status quo of mobile software, and create a virtuous cycle of innovation through free and open source software, libre hardware and open standards. It has brought together a number of the “movers and shakers” of the open mobile ecosystem, in order to deliver a comprehensive development effort and advance a number of important free and open source technologies.
Target participants:
The call is open to SMEs, academics, public sector, non-profits, communities and individuals. Outcomes must be open: all scientific outcomes must be published as open access, and any software and hardware must be published under a recognised open source license in its entirety.
Part of the budget of NGI Mobifree is reserved for open calls to fund additional free and open source efforts that are aligned with the topics and approach of NGI Mobifree.
We are looking for projects who are bringing solutions for an open mobile ecosystem closer. We are seeking project proposals between 5.000 and 50.000 euro’s.
Visit:
nlnet.nl/mobifree/
Contact for more info:
nlnet.nl/contact/
NGI Fediversity
5th Open Call
Creating the hosting stack of the future
Opening date: April 1st, 2025.
Closing date: June 1st, 2025 12:00 PM (noon) CEST (Brussels time).
Short description:
Fediversity is a comprehensive effort to bring easy-to-use, hosted cloud services with service portability and personal freedom at their core to everyone. It wants to provide everyone with high-quality, secure IT systems for everyday use. Without tracking, without exploitation, in a way that runs everywhere and scales effortlessly.
Target participants:
The call is open SMEs, academics, public sector, non-profits and individuals. Outcomes must be open: all scientific outcomes must be published as open access, and any software and hardware must be published under a recognised open source license in its entirety.
15% of the budget of NGI Fediversity is reserved for open calls to fund additional free and open source efforts that are aligned with the topics and approach of NGI Fediversity.
We are looking for projects who are bringing the Next Generation hosting stack closer. We are seeking project proposals between 5.000 and 50.000 euro’s.
Visit:
nlnet.nl/fediversity/
Contact for more info:
nlnet.nl/contact/