Guide · 13 min read

Horizon Europe Cluster 1 Health 2026: Topics, Deadlines, Tips

Cluster 1 Health is the largest health-research pillar of Horizon Europe, the EU’s €95.5 billion R&I framework. The 2026 work programme allocates roughly €750M across six destinations, from prevention and health systems to biomedical breakthroughs. This guide covers who can apply, the topic structure, deadlines, and how to position a proposal that survives a 12–15% acceptance rate.

1. Cluster 1 in plain terms

Horizon Europe groups its collaborative research into six clusters under Pillar II. Cluster 1 covers Health: disease prevention, public-health systems, infectious threats, non-communicable diseases, environmental and occupational health, and health-care innovation. It is the largest cluster by budget and by application volume; in the 2024–25 cycles it consistently received 1,500+ proposals across its annual calls.

The cluster is structured around six destinations, each with its own thematic logic. Topics (the actual call lines you apply to) sit inside destinations. The 2026 work programme keeps the same six destinations as 2024–25 with refreshed topics:

• D1 — Staying healthy in a rapidly changing society: prevention, lifestyle, mental health, healthy ageing.
• D2 — Living and working in a health-promoting environment: environmental, climate, and occupational determinants of health.
• D3 — Tackling diseases and reducing disease burden: cancer, cardiovascular, rare diseases, neurodegeneration, paediatric conditions.
• D4 — Ensuring access to innovative, sustainable, high-quality health care: digital health, health-system resilience, value-based care.
• D5 — Unlocking the full potential of new tools, technologies and digital solutions: AI in medicine, regulatory science, advanced manufacturing of medicinal products.
• D6 — Maintaining an innovative, sustainable and globally competitive health industry: translational research, public-private partnerships, IP, regulation.

2. Topics and the 2026 calendar

The 2026 Cluster 1 work programme was adopted in late 2025 with around 50 topics distributed across the six destinations. Most topics open in the spring 2026 call wave; a smaller second wave opens in the autumn. Concrete dates vary per topic, but the typical Cluster 1 cadence is:

• Topic publication on the Funding & Tenders Portal: late 2025 / early 2026.
• Call opens (single-stage): March–April 2026.
• Submission deadline: September 2026.
• Two-stage topics: stage-1 deadline in spring 2026, stage-2 in early 2027.
• Evaluation results: 5–7 months after deadline.
• Grant agreement signature: 8–10 months after deadline.

The authoritative source is the Funding & Tenders Portal (ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders). Filter by “Horizon Europe” → “HORIZON-HLTH-2026”.

3. Who can apply

Most Cluster 1 topics are Research and Innovation Actions (RIA) or Innovation Actions (IA), requiring a consortium of at least three independent legal entities from three different EU Member States or Horizon-Europe-associated countries. A few topics are Coordination and Support Actions (CSA, broader networks, lower TRL) or European Partnership topics with additional rules. Eligible participant types:

• Universities and research organisations (PIC needed; most institutions already have one).
• Hospitals and clinical networks.
• SMEs and large industry, including pharma and medtech.
• Patient organisations, civil society groups.
• Public authorities and regulators.

Associated countries with full participation rights include the UK, Norway, Switzerland, Israel, Turkey, Tunisia, and Ukraine. Third countries from the “automatic funding” list (low- and middle-income countries) can also receive funding under most topics.

4. Budget shape and TRL expectations

Topic budgets in Cluster 1 typically run from €6M to €15M per project, with 2–5 projects expected to be funded per topic. Funding rate is 100% of eligible direct costs for non-profit participants and 70% for profit-making (with 25% indirect-cost overhead for everyone). Project duration is usually 4–5 years.

Pay attention to the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) requested in the topic. RIA topics target TRL 2–5 (basic to early-applied). IA topics target TRL 6–9 (demonstration to deployment). Mismatching TRL kills proposals at evaluation: a TRL-7 demonstration plan submitted to a TRL-3 RIA topic scores low on Relevance, no matter how good the science.

5. Success rates and the political layer

Recent Cluster 1 calls (2023–2025) had overall success rates of 11–15%. Some topics receive 20+ proposals for a single funded project (success rate <5%); others, especially niche regulatory or policy topics, see 5–6 proposals per slot. Before deciding to apply, look at the historical success rate on the Funding & Tenders Portal — it filters bad bets early.

Cluster 1 has a strong political layer: gender, geographic balance, open science, patient involvement, and societal impact are scored, not just stated. Proposals that treat these as boilerplate score 12–13/15 on Impact; proposals that integrate them into the methodology score 14–15/15. The gap between funded and unfunded proposals usually sits in the second decimal.

6. The proposal structure

The Cluster 1 proposal template (Part B) is roughly 45 pages structured as:

• Section 1 — Excellence (10 pages): objectives, ambition, methodology, interdisciplinarity, gender dimension, open science.
• Section 2 — Impact (10 pages): pathway to impact, dissemination, exploitation, communication, scale and significance of expected outcomes.
• Section 3 — Implementation (15 pages): work-package structure, person-month tables, risk register, consortium description.
• Annexes: ethics self-assessment (mandatory), security self-assessment if relevant.

Reviewers spend most of their reading on Sections 1 and 2. A weak Implementation section can lower the score, but a strong implementation never rescues a weak Excellence or Impact.

7. Building the consortium

The consortium is the proposal’s spine. A good Cluster 1 consortium has:

• 6–12 partners — enough to cover the workplan, few enough for cohesive governance.
• Geographic diversity covering Widening countries (Portugal, Greece, Czech Republic, Estonia, etc.). Most topics have a soft expectation of including at least one Widening partner.
• One clinical partner if the topic involves human health (clinical sites, hospital networks, patient cohorts).
• One SME or industry partner for translation and exploitation.
• One policy or patient-organisation partner for dissemination and societal impact.

Coordinator role goes to the institution willing to invest in a professional grant office, not the institution with the strongest scientist. The two are sometimes different.

8. Evaluation in 60 seconds

Each section is scored 0–5 (5 = excellent). Total = sum of the three sections. Funding threshold sits around 13.5/15 for competitive topics; the cut-line moves with budget and topic interest. Two independent expert reviewers per proposal write Individual Evaluation Reports (IERs); a consensus meeting harmonises scores and produces the Evaluation Summary Report (ESR) you receive after ranking.

9. Common reasons proposals fail

• Topic mismatch — the proposal addresses an adjacent question, not the one in the topic text.
• Workplan that reads as a stack of unrelated WPs without a unifying logic.
• Impact section listing channels (newsletters, conferences) without a measurable theory of change.
• Ethics annex left for the last week — missing data-management plan, missing GDPR compliance for multinational data flows.
• Consortium with two strong partners and four sleeping ones (visible in person-month tables).
• Gender dimension treated as a paragraph instead of integrated into the methodology.

10. The two-month checklist

• T-8 weeks: lock the consortium, get all PIC numbers, draft the workplan skeleton with person-months.
• T-6 weeks: first complete draft of Excellence and Impact sections; circulate to all partners.
• T-4 weeks: integrate partner feedback, lock methodology and risk register.
• T-2 weeks: external mock review (ideally a former evaluator from a Cluster 1 panel), ethics annex finalised, gender plan integrated.
• T-1 week: language polish, references checked, page budget enforced, financial tables reconciled.
• T-3 days: full submission rehearsal on the portal, all forms filled, electronic signatures collected.

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