Creative Innovation Lab

Cross Innovation Lab funding aims to:

• Encourage cooperation between the audiovisual sector and the music, book, or museum sectors to accompany their environmental transition and/or to improve their competitiveness and/or the circulation, visibility, discoverability, availability, diversity and the audience of European content across borders.
• Enable the European audiovisual sector and these three sectors (music, books and museums) to better adapt to the opportunities offered by the development of Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Worlds.

• In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities)must:− be legal entities (public or private bodies)− be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:− Creative Europe Participating Countries:− EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))− non-EU countries: listed EEA countries and countries associated to the Creative Europe Programme (list of participating countries).
• Applications by single applicants are allowed (single beneficiaries; affiliated entities are allowed, if needed), as well as proposals submitted by a consortium of at least two applicants (beneficiaries; not affiliated entities).
• Please read the Creative Innovation Lab 2026 Call document for full details.
• The European Commission strongly advises applicants to check the relevance and eligibility of their proposoal with the local Creative Europe Desk before submission.

• The Creative Innovation Lab support will support the design, development and/or spread of innovative tools, models or solutions applicable in the audiovisual (compulsory) and at least one the following sectors: music, books or museums.
• The audiovisual sector covers all activities and companies related to the development, production, distribution, promotion and circulation of the following content:
  • Feature films, animations and creative documentaries intended primarily for cinematic release;
  • Fiction audiovisual works (one-off or series), animation (one-off or series) and creative documentaries (one-off or series) intended primarily for the purposes of television or digital platform exploitation;
  • Interactive, non-linear fiction, animation or creative documentary projects (e.g. narrative virtual reality projects);
  • Narrative video games and interactive narrative immersive experiences. In order to be considered narrative, the story must be told or shown throughout the whole game (in-game storytelling) or interactive immersive experience, and not only as an introduction or an ending.
    

• Projects must focus on one or several of these topics:
  • Virtual Worlds as a new environment for the promotion of European content, audience renewal and competitiveness of European content industries;
  • Innovative Business Tools for production, financing, distribution or promotion enabled or enhanced by new technology (AI, big data, blockchain, Virtual Worlds, NFT, etc.), in particular:Rights’ management and monetisation (including innovative bundled subscription offers to access diverse European cultural content from various existing European platforms), at the same time ensuring transparency and fair remuneration for creators and artists;
  • Data collection and analysis, with particular emphasis on prediction for content creation and audience development including innovative cross-sectoral tools to improve the quality of the subscriber service and a better valorisation of European content offered by European online platforms;
  • Greener practices in order to lower the impact on the environment of the audiovisual and other cultural sectors in line with the Commission’s Green Deal and the New Bauhaus initiative.
• Please read the Creative Innovation Lab 2026 Call document for full details.
• The European Commission strongly advises applicants to check the relevance and eligibility of their proposoal with the local Creative Europe Desk before submission.

• Project budget - maximum grant amount: No limit.
• The grant will be a budget-based (actual costs, with unit cost and flat-rate elements). This means that it will reimburse ONLY certain types of costs (eligible costs) and costs that were actually incurred for your project (NOT the budgeted costs).
• The costs will be reimbursed at the funding rate fixed in the Grant Agreement (80%).
• Grants may NOT produce a profit (i.e. surplus of revenues + EU grant over costs). For-profit organisations must declare their revenues and, if there is a profit it it will be deducted from the final grant amount.
• Please read the Creative Innovation Lab 2026 Call document for full details.
• The European Commission strongly advises applicants to check the relevance and eligibility of their proposoal with the local Creative Europe Desk before submission.