[EU] Digital Europe Calls on League of Skills Academies en Competitions Launched
The European Commission has launched two calls for proposals under the Digital Europe Programme, in the field of advanced digital skills.
Digital Europe is the European Union’s Programme aimed at providing strategic funding for projects in areas such as supercomputing, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, advanced digital skills, and ensuring a wide use of digital technologies across the economy and society.
The 2025-2027 Work Programme highlights key initiatives to be funded, including those related to advanced digital skills.
In this regard, the Commission previously launched three calls for proposals, aimed at establishing new Digital Skills Academies, with a particular focus on quantum skills, GenAI, and Virtual Worlds. These calls closed on 2 October 2025 and the evaluation results are still awaited.
The Commission further intends to launch two additional calls on the establishment of new Digital Skills Academies, with a particular focus on AI Factories and Semiconductors, with a 2026 and 2027 deadline respectively.
Next to the establishment of these Digital Skills Academies, the Commission is also expected to provide funding for the design and delivery of education programmes in key capacity areas, as in previous years. However, such calls are only expected in 2026-2027.
Related to the funding for the Digital Skills Academies and education programmes, the Commission has now launched two calls, which respectively focus on:
- ELEVATE: European League of Advanced Digital Skills Academies (with a budget of €7,200,000 and a 100% funding rate for a duration of 48 months): aimed at fostering synergies, coordinating and ensuring coherence between the objectives of sectoral initiatives (the Cybersecurity Skills Academy, EuroHPC skills community), the advanced digital skills academies (AI, Virtual Worlds, quantum and semiconductors), and other EU funded projects focusing on advanced digital skills (in particular the education programmes). ELEVATE will be structured around four pillars:
- Coordination and collaboration among sectoral academies, sectoral initiatives and individual projects;
- Capacity building activities to complement the training offer of the sectoral academies and sectoral initiatives; leveraging the Digital Skills and Jobs Platform to offer access to diverse learning materials and courses; and developing a seal of quality/excellence for European ICT education and training courses;
- Communication and awareness efforts aimed at boosting visibility and credibility of career paths in ICT;
- Market analysis and impact assessment by leveraging the League’s broad networking activities and existing data/information
- European Advanced Digital Skills Competitions (with a budget of €7,000,000 and a 100% funding rate for an indicative duration of 36 months): aimed at connecting competing teams of young Europeans to the wider community of research organisations and industry players with the aim to address highly relevant challenges. Competitions would focus on six areas: AI, Virtual Worlds, quantum, semiconductors, the Destination Earth initiative, and one additional area chosen by the consortium. Four objectives should underpin the design and roll out of the competitions:
- Highly relevant European or local societal, technological and/or industry relevant challenges should be addressed;
- A large number of students from tertiary level education institutions (or equivalent) should be attracted;
- Students’ awareness and understanding of team and project-based work should be raised;
- Creative and solution-oriented thinking should be developed.
For both calls, consortia can include higher education institutions, VET institutions, other education and training providers, research institutes, centres of excellence, public administrations and/or governmental bodies, industry partners, and IT professionals.
For the ELEVATE call, consortia are recommended to also include human resources organisations and employment agencies, trade and industry associations, alliances, social partners and NGOs.
The calls for proposals close on 3 March 2026, with the results expected to be announced in June 2026.
Key Links and Documents
- The Call document outlining the requirements of both calls
- Proposals should be submitted by 3 March 2026, 17:00 CET, on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal, respectively:
- More information on the Digital Europe Programme and its current priorities can be found in the 2025-2027 Work Programme
Interested?
If you have any questions about the calls for proposals and the corresponding application processes, or if you are considering applying, please contact the Team EU International Education Projects (University Service Education and Research – Function Domain Internationalisation) via eu-educationprojects@ugent.be.
3 november 2025 15:16