CERV Programme 2026-27: Strands, Eligibility and How to Apply

CERV is the European Union’s largest funding instrument for protecting and promoting EU values and the fundamental rights of the Charter, and for many civil society organisations and municipalities it is the first EU programme they apply to. It is also one of the easiest to misread: grant sizes, consortium rules, page limits and even the way the lump sum is calculated change from call to call. This page sets the 2026 calls side by side using the call documents published on the Funding & Tenders Portal, and flags where those documents differ from the Commission’s earlier planning table.

What CERV is and who runs it

The programme runs from 2021 to 2027 under Regulation (EU) 2021/692 with a budget of over EUR 1.55 billion, more than double the original proposal. The Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers owns it. The European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) implements the citizens’ engagement and Union values strands, including town twinning, networks of towns, remembrance and the civil society calls, while DG JUST runs most of the equality and Daphne calls. The 2026-2027 work programme commits EUR 279.7 million in 2026 and EUR 300.0 million in 2027, of which EUR 235.2 million and EUR 251.4 million are grants.

The four strands

Every 2026 CERV call: dates and budgets

The Commission published an indicative planning table for the 2026 calls in late 2025, and then a call document for each call as it opened. Where a call document exists, its dates are used below, because they are the binding ones: the data protection call, for example, closed on 28 May 2026 rather than the 25 June shown in the planning table. Two calls, remembrance and Union values, had no published call document at the time of writing, so their dates are the planning table’s indicative ones.

Who can apply

Applicants must be legal entities established in an EU Member State, including overseas countries and territories, or in a non-EU country associated to CERV; each call links the current list of participating countries, and non-EU countries are excluded from every Union values call. Beyond that, each call sets its own rules on who may lead. In the citizens’ engagement call, for instance, the lead applicant must be a non-profit private legal entity or a public university, and co-applicants must be non-profit entities or international organisations; one sub-priority is reserved for national public bodies competent in electoral matters. Profit-oriented organisations cannot lead a Daphne proposal. Read section 6 of the call document before anything else, because an ineligible lead applicant is the fastest possible rejection.

How much a project gets, and how many partners it needs

The spread is the point: a town twinning grant can be under EUR 10,000 while a Daphne priority 1 project can reach EUR 2.5 million. Choose the call by the size of what you can deliver, not by the headline budget.

Lump sums: how the money works

Every 2026 action grant reviewed here is a lump sum, meaning a fixed amount not linked to actual costs, paid when the agreed work is done. There is no cost reporting, but there are two different ways the lump sum is set, and applicants mixing them up is common.

• Budget-based lump sums at 90 percent. In the gender equality, Daphne, Charter litigation, data protection and Roma contact points calls, the granting authority fixes the lump sum on the basis of the estimated project budget and a funding rate of 90 percent. The remaining 10 percent must come from other sources, such as own contributions.
• Event-based lump sums. In citizens’ engagement, networks of towns and town twinning, the lump sum is calculated from pre-fixed amounts per work package. The citizens’ engagement document puts it plainly: one lump sum equals one work package equals one event, and each event is priced from the number of direct, verifiable participants and the number of eligible countries involved. EU officials do not count as participants.

In both models the budget is entered in Part A of the online application, by work package. Payment follows completion of the work packages, which is why each work package needs a deliverable or event you can prove happened. The mechanics are the same family as Horizon Europe lump sums, worked through in detail in the Horizon Europe lump-sum budget guide.

One work package, one event: a planning template

How proposals are scored: 40, 40, 20

All eight 2026 call documents reviewed here use the same award criteria and the same two thresholds. That makes Relevance the gate: a proposal scoring below 25 of 40 on Relevance is rejected even if the rest is excellent.

A Relevance score below 25 usually comes from a needs assessment that describes a general problem instead of a specific gap for a named target group in named countries, or from a transnational dimension that is asserted rather than built into the activities. The gender equality and Daphne documents also state that projects with a gender analysis of differential impact are considered of higher quality, so treat that analysis as expected rather than optional.

A needs-assessment paragraph that scores on Relevance

[Problem] Across the EU, [specific issue], according to [EIGE / FRA / Eurostat source, year, figure].
[Gap] In [target countries or municipalities], [existing measures] do not reach [target group] because
[evidence: local report, survey, service data], leaving [measurable gap].
[Target group] The project works with [number] [target group], of whom [share] are women and girls,
[share] are [other relevant group], selected because [reason].
[Change] By the end of the project, [target group] will [measurable change], shown by [indicator].
[Why European] Partners in [countries] face the same gap under different conditions, so the methods
tested in [country A] and [country B] can be transferred through [mechanism].
[Priority] This responds directly to call priority [number and name] of [call ID].

Writing the application

Part A and Part B

Part A is the online administrative form: participants, declarations and, for these lump-sum calls, the budget by work package. Part B is the narrative, uploaded as a PDF and capped at the page limit of the call in the grant-rules table above; evaluators do not consider additional pages. Keep the work packages in Part B identical in name and number to those in Part A, because the lump sum is paid per work package.

Annexes and supporting documents

Each call document lists its mandatory annexes in the application section, typically including declarations and, for operating capacity checks, activity reports or financial statements of previous years. Newer organisations can often provide alternatives when they do not yet have annual accounts, but the document specifies which.

A 12-week plan for a first CERV application

1. Week 1: Read the call document end to end, especially the priorities, eligibility section and award criteria.
2. Week 2: Confirm every partner's eligibility and legal status, register PICs on the Funding and Tenders Portal, and check the lead applicant rule.
3. Weeks 3 to 4: Write the needs assessment with sources for each target country; test it against the Relevance sub-criteria.
4. Weeks 5 to 6: Design the work packages so each one ends in something that proves completion; for event-based calls, count participants and countries per event.
5. Week 7: Build the Part A budget by work package and check the grant range of the call.
6. Weeks 8 to 9: Draft Part B: relevance, quality with a risk table and monitoring plan, impact with dissemination and sustainability.
7. Week 10: Add the gender analysis and ethics and EU values compliance; collect annexes and declarations.
8. Week 11: External read against the 40/40/20 criteria; cut to the page limit.
9. Week 12: Submit at least 48 hours before 17:00 CET on the deadline; the portal accepts resubmission until the deadline.

Where CERV fits next to Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe

Organisations that work on education and training across borders often weigh CERV against Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnerships. KA220 funds education, training and youth partnerships through National Agencies with fixed tiers of EUR 120,000, 250,000 or 400,000; see the KA220 application guide, and vocational networks of eight or more organisations can apply to Erasmus+ Centres of Vocational Excellence. CERV funds rights, equality, civic participation and values work, with grant sizes set by each call. Research organisations with a policy or social-science angle can also look at Horizon Europe Cluster 2, covered in the Horizon Europe 2026 guide. The terms used across all three programmes are defined in the EU funding glossary.