📋 Tender Overview
EIT HEI
Grant agreement ID: 101270329
DOI
10.3030/101270329
EC signature date
11 December 2025
Start date
1 January 2026
End date
31 December 2028
Description:
Europe’s universities are the key to its future competitiveness. The EIT Higher Education Initiative (HEI) is transforming European universities into powerhouses of innovation and entrepreneurship. Its mission is to bridge the gap between higher education, business, and policy, ensuring that even underrepresented regions have the resources they need to thrive. The EU-funded EIT HEI project aims to engage hundreds of higher education institutions, focusing on transforming universities into engines of innovation and entrepreneurship. Having moved past its pilot phase, it is now helping schools across the continent, particularly in developing regions, modernise their strategies and drive real-world impact. The project will ensure that higher education institutions contribute to Europe’s competitiveness and societal transformation.
Objective
The EIT Higher Education Initiative is a flagship programme of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), implemented jointly by the EIT Knowledge and Innovation Communities, to strengthen innovation capacity in higher education across Europe. Entering its next phase (2026–2028), the initiative builds on a highly successful pilot (2021–2023) and consolidation phase (2024–2025), during which it engaged over 500 higher education institutions and established itself as the only EU programme dedicated exclusively to transforming universities into engines of innovation, entrepreneurship, and regional development. At its core, the EIT Higher Education Initiative provides targeted funding and capacity building to help universities embed innovation and entrepreneurship into their strategies, governance, and education systems. It does so by mobilising the knowledge triangle of education, research, and business through partnerships that connect HEIs with companies, startups, public bodies, and civil society. This approach ensures that higher education is not only a source of knowledge but also a driver of Europe’s competitiveness, resilience, and societal transformation.
Over the past years, the EIT Higher Education Initiative has established itself not only as a funding instrument but also as an important and necessary innovation ecosystem. By convening universities, startups, industry, policymakers, and civil society, it has built a Europe-wide community where collaboration thrives, good practices are shared, and long-term partnerships are formed. This ecosystem has become an indispensable part of Europe’s innovation landscape: it connects higher education with entrepreneurial ecosystems, fosters diversity and inclusivity, and ensures that transformation reaches beyond Europe’s traditional centres of excellence into widening regions and underrepresented higher education institutions.
