The fifth annual Work Programme under the European Defence Fund (EDF), adopted Thursday by the EU Commission, will allocate over €1 billion to defence collaborative research and development projects.
With the 2025 EDF Work Programme, the Commission unlocks additional funding to support the development of critical defence technologies and capabilities – allocating around €100 million each in critical fields such as ground combat, space, air and naval combat, as well as energy resilience and environmental transition.
This new programme supports the development of critical defence technologies and capabilities required in line with EU capability priorities agreed by the EU Member States. It launches 9 competitive calls for proposals addressing 31 topics. Calls for proposals will prepare the ground for a enabling technologies related to autonomous triage and evacuation of injured personnel, multifunctional information distribution system, human-AI dialogue, chiplets for defence applications, soldier systems, and great-depth enabling technologies.
The programme foresees a budget of around €100 million to address future challenges in the fields of ground combat, space, air combat and energy resilience and environmental transition.
More than €40 million of EU funding is allocated to boosting research in critical areas, such as cyber, naval combat, underwater warfare, simulation and training, as well as advanced passive and active sensors – both in current and future operational contexts.
4% of the EDF 2025 budget is dedicated to a call addressing disruptive technologies. In addition, around 6% is devoted to two non-thematic calls on innovative and future defence solutions, inviting specifically SMEs to apply for research and development actions.
Calls for proposals are expected to be opened for submission in mid-February 2025, with a deadline for submission of 16 October 2025.
