Call for proposals 2025 – AI Continent (DIGITAL-2026-AI-09)

Objectives

The AI Continent call under the Digital Europe Programme (Specific Objective 2) funds EU action grants to reinforce Europe’s core AI and data capacities as a key driver of digital transformation in public and private sectors. It is launched in line with the 2025–2027 Work Programme and implemented by the European Commission (DG CONNECT). The call supports large-scale, strategic deployment of AI solutions, data infrastructures and testing facilities in critical domains, aiming to make Europe an AI continent through the development, integration and adoption of trustworthy AI.

Seven actions are covered. Two actions strengthen the European genomic data infrastructure by deploying advanced tools for data curation, interoperability and access, and by scaling secure storage and processing capacities aligned with the European Health Data Space and the 1+ Million Genomes / Genome EDIC framework, enabling high-quality genomic and clinical data use for research, healthcare and public health. One action accelerates deployment of state-of-the-art multi-modal AI solutions for cancer imaging in clinical workflows and research to support more accurate diagnosis, prediction and personalised treatment. Two actions target the automotive ecosystem: providing a secretariat for the European Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Alliance and establishing a collaboration platform to coordinate projects on software, hardware, AI and autonomous driving, thereby reinforcing competitiveness and innovation leadership. Another action promotes uptake of generative AI in public administrations via coordination, knowledge sharing, community building and capacity building to scale successful pilots. The final action establishes virtual worlds test beds to experiment with and integrate immersive and extended-reality technologies in specific sectors, supporting interoperability, security, European digital sovereignty and alignment with EU rules on data protection and safety. Overall, the call aims at high-impact deployment of AI capacities and applications across the Union.

Actions

This call covers the following topics:

DIGITAL-2026-AI-09-DS-HEALTH-TOOL: Health: Data ingestion capacities and data services for the European Genomic Data Infrastructure in the European Health Data Space: data tools

DIGITAL-2026-AI-09-DS-HEALTH-STORAGE: Health: Data ingestion capacities and data services for the European Genomic Data Infrastructure in the European Health Data Space: data storage and processing capacity

DIGITAL-2026-AI-09-SOLUTIONS-CANCER-STEP: Deployment of cutting-edge multi-modal AI-based solutions in medical imaging

DIGITAL-2026-AI-09-ECAVA: Secretariat of the European Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Alliance

DIGITAL-2026-AI-09-AUTOMOTIVE: Collaboration platform for the European connected and autonomous vehicle of the future

DIGITAL-2026-AI-09-GENAI-PA: Apply AI: GenAI for the public administrations

DIGITAL-2026-AI-09-VIRTUAL-TESTBEDS-STEP: Virtual worlds test beds