Research Funding Opportunities UK: Horizon Europe's Hidden Instruments

Let's be honest: for most academics seeking research funding opportunities UK-wide, “European funding” is synonymous with the European Research Council (ERC). The ERC Starting Grant is the gold standard—the career-maker, the prestige-builder, the grant that allows you to tell your university administration to leave you alone for five years.

But it is also a bloodbath.

With success rates for ERC Starting Grants stagnating between 10% and 12%, the vast majority of brilliant proposals are rejected. We see it every day: excellent science discarded not because it wasn't good enough, but because the competition in Pillar I is a “red ocean” of hyper-competitiveness. Meanwhile, in the overlooked corners of Horizon Europe—the successor to H2020 (Horizon 2020)—a different story is playing out. Smart UK researchers are discovering alternative research funding opportunities with dramatically better odds.

There are instruments where success rates routinely hit 30%, and sometimes even 45%. These are the “hidden” gems of the programme: Coordination and Support Actions (CSAs), Innovation Actions (IAs), and Widening Participation calls. While everyone else is queuing up for the ERC lottery, savvy institutions are quietly securing millions through these collaborative mechanisms.

Here is how you can do the same.

Research Funding Opportunities UK: The Strategic Horizon Europe Landscape

The architecture of Horizon Europe is designed to be asymmetrical. While Pillar I (Excellent Science) focuses on individual brilliance—home to the coveted ERC Starting Grant and ERC Consolidator Grant—Pillar II (Global Challenges) and the Widening program focus on impact and policy alignment. This shift in focus creates a massive opportunity for those willing to adapt their Horizon Europe proposal template strategy.

Data from the first three years of the programme (2021–2024) reveals a striking “probability arbitrage.” While thematic calls in popular areas like Civil Security might see success rates as low as 11%, the “boring” administrative instruments tell a different story.

The “Lump Sum” Anomaly

Another “hidden” advantage lies in the administrative format itself. The European Commission is aggressively rolling out Lump Sum funding, where you get paid for completing work packages rather than reporting every euro of travel and personnel costs.

Many universities are terrified of this. Research offices, risk-averse by nature, often discourage applying for Lump Sum topics because they fear the financial risk. The result? Less competition.

Horizon Europe Innovation Actions (IA): The Academic Pivot to Impact

“But I'm a scholar, not a product developer.”

This is the most common objection we hear regarding Innovation Actions (IAs). Academics often dismiss them as subsidies for industry, assuming there is no room for serious research. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the financial ecosystem of a consortium.

In an IA, profit-making entities (companies) are reimbursed at 70%. Non-profit entities (universities), however, are still reimbursed at 100%.

This creates a powerful incentive. Companies want universities in these consortia to handle the heavy lifting of validation, data analysis, ethics, and social science research—tasks that are fully funded for you but expensive for them.

The 1.5x Impact Multiplier

The secret weapon of Innovation Actions is the evaluation criteria. Unlike standard grants where Excellence, Impact, and Implementation are weighted equally, in IAs, the Impact score is weighted 1.5x.

This means a proposal with “good enough” science but a stellar path to market or societal adoption will beat a proposal with Nobel-level science but vague impact. For academics, this requires a pivot in writing style: stop promising to “study” a problem and start promising to “deploy” a solution.

Coordination and Support Actions (CSA): The Long Game

If Innovation Actions are about deployment, Coordination and Support Actions (CSAs) are about influence. These grants explicitly forbid research. Instead, they fund networking, roadmapping, and policy definitions.

Why would a serious researcher apply for a grant that doesn't fund research?

Because CSAs allow you to write the rules of the game.

CSAs are often tasked with creating “Strategic Research and Innovation Agendas” (SRIAs). These documents literally tell the European Commission what topics to fund in the next Work Programme. By coordinating a CSA, you position yourself as the central node of your field. You aren't just applying for grants; you are helping to design them.

Widening Participation: The “Advanced Partner” Strategy

There is a pervasive myth that Widening Participation calls are only for institutions in Eastern and Southern Europe (the so-called “Widening countries”).

This is strategically wrong.

Instruments like Teaming and Twinning are structurally dependent on “Advanced Partners”—leading institutions from research-intensive nations like Germany, France, or the Netherlands. You cannot have a Twinning project without a mentor.

This creates a lucrative market for expertise. Top-tier Western universities are effectively paid to build their international networks. Data shows that countries like Germany and Belgium are among the top beneficiaries of Widening actions, often surpassing the Widening countries themselves in terms of number of participations.

European Partnerships: The “Club” Effect

Finally, we have the “Matryoshka doll” of Horizon Europe: the European Partnerships. These manage about 25% of the total budget but are often invisible to the casual observer because the calls don't always appear in the main searches or have complex eligibility rules.

In Co-funded Partnerships (like the Clean Energy Transition Partnership), there is a “national filter.” You must first pass a check by your national funding agency. This sounds like extra bureaucracy, and it is. But it acts as a massive filter.

If you clear the national hurdle, the competition at the European level is drastically reduced. You aren't fighting 500 applicants; you might be fighting 50. It's a “club” effect—harder to get in, but much easier to win once you are there.

How to Shift Your Strategy

To win these “hidden” grants, you must unlearn the habits of the ERC. The evaluation logic is fundamentally different.

Conclusion: Mastering the Full Horizon Europe Portfolio

The Horizon Europe landscape is not a flat playing field. It is a terrain of peaks and valleys, where the highest peaks (the ERC Starting Grant and ERC Consolidator Grant) are crowded and treacherous, while the valleys (CSAs, IAs, Widening) are lush and under-explored. Unlike the H2020 era, today's Horizon Europe offers more strategic pathways than ever before.

For research institutions, the smart play is a portfolio approach. Keep applying for the ERC, by all means—it is the crown jewel. But hedge your bets. Diversify your funding stability by pivoting to Impact-driven instruments. Use CSAs to build the networks that will sustain your lab for a decade. And don't be afraid of the “applied” label. In the current funding climate, “applied” is often just another word for “funded.”

If you are looking to understand where the program is heading next, check out our complete guide to Horizon Europe 2026. Learn about the transition from H2020 to Horizon Europe, or explore our Horizon Europe consortium survival guide for building winning collaborative teams. For researchers interested in aligning their proposals with sustainable development goals grants, our guide on the sustainability paradox reveals how to navigate short-term funding cycles while addressing long-term SDG grants. Use our interactive funding map visualizer to discover the full landscape of research funding opportunities UK institutions can access. The money is there; you just have to look where others aren't.