NEWS - JOURNALISM PARTNERSHIPS - COLLABORATIONS

The Creative Europe call "Journalism Partnerships – Collaborations" (Topic 1) supports transnational collaborative projects that aim to strengthen the sustainability, resilience and systemic transformation of the European news media sector. The topic budget is €7 million with a maximum grant per project of €2 million at an 80% funding rate, normal project duration up to 24 months and an application deadline of 4 February 2027 (17:00 Brussels time). Applicants must be legal entities organised in a consortium of at least three independent beneficiaries established in three different eligible countries and comply with mandatory editorial independence and standards requirements. Proposals must use the Funding & Tenders Portal templates, respect the Part B page limit and include a signed Declaration on Standards and Independence.

Call: JOURNALISM PARTNERSHIPS (CREA-CROSS-2027-JOURPART-COLLABORATIONS)

Snapshot

Footnotes

1. 1Full call documents, templates, eligibility rules, budget details and application instructions are available on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal topic page: ec.europa.eu

Call at a glance

Scope, priorities and eligible activities

Who can apply and consortium rules

Affiliated entities, associated partners, subcontractors and third parties giving in-kind contributions may participate under the conditions set in the Call Document and Model Grant Agreement. Beneficiaries must register in the Participant Register and will be validated by the Central Validation Service.

Eligible countries and geographic scope

Project maturity and expected duration

Financial details and forms of support

Application and selection process

Evaluation and award criteria

Legal, administrative and compliance highlights

Budget categories and cost rules (summary)

Templates and application forms

Call-specific administrative conditions

Evaluation thresholds and scoring (detailed)

Timetable and key dates

EACEA will organise online info sessions to explain the opportunity and the application process (multiple sessions listed on the EACEA events page). The Portal Topic page and Topic Q&A will be used for call updates.

Operational, financial and legal checks

Risks and common pitfalls to avoid

Templates, documents and where to find them

Key documents available on the Funding & Tenders Portal Topic page and Portal Reference Documents: Call document (Call fiche / Call document PDF), Application form templates (Part B template for CREA MEDIA/CROSS), Declaration on Standards and Independence template, Model Grant Agreement (CREA MGA), Annotated Model Grant Agreement (EU Grants AGA), Rules for Legal Entity Validation and Financial Capacity Assessment, EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509 and Creative Europe Regulation 2021/818, Portal Online Manual and FAQs. The Part B template contains the required structure and tags for upload. Use the Portal Submission System forms for Part A and Part C and upload Part B PDF and annexes in the declared slots.

Application form structure (guidance and checklist)

Applicants must use the Portal submission forms. The main documents and structure are:

Application submission practical notes

Submit early to avoid technical issues; confirm receipt of the Portal submission confirmation e-mail. Use the Online Manual for step-by-step guidance. If a problem occurs during submission, open an IT Helpdesk ticket immediately and attach the proposal PDF and screenshots. Keep all partners’ declarations of consent and mandates available; the coordinator must confirm it has the mandate to act for all applicants at submission. Proposals that have already started prior to submission are handled case-by-case; costs for activities preceding the project start date are generally ineligible.

Success rates and competitiveness (guidance)

Co-funding and cost-sharing requirements

Number of application stages and decision flow

Summary: What this opportunity is about and how to approach it

This Creative Europe call finances collaborative projects that help European news media adapt to structural and technological change, increase economic resilience and enhance quality journalism across borders. Topic 1 funds collaboration and systemic change projects that develop new revenue and production models, shared services, syndication networks, technical standards and upskilling (including AI tools for journalists). Topic 2 focuses on pluralism and regranting schemes to strengthen local, regional, community and investigative/public interest media, requiring most of the grant to be passed to third parties. Successful proposals will present a substantiated needs analysis of the chosen subsector, concrete deliverables and measurable KPIs, a credible consortium or organisational setup meeting country coverage rules, robust governance and editorial-independence safeguards, transparent arrangements for any financial support to third parties, and a clear dissemination and outreach plan. Applicants must use the Portal templates (Part A/B/C), include the mandatory Declaration on Standards & Independence, respect page limits and submit before the single-stage deadline on 04 February 2027. This is a competitive call with defined maximum grant amounts and funding rates; applicants should design realistic budgets, justify co-financing and show operational capacity to implement transnational activities that produce systemic impact.

Footnotes

1. 1Call document, templates and Declaration on Standards & Independence are published on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal topic page: ec.europa.eu

Funding opportunity overview

The Journalism Partnerships Collaborations opportunity is a forthcoming Creative Europe Cross Sectoral action grant supporting transnational cooperation that improves the sustainability, resilience, quality and adaptability of the European news media sector. It is intended for collaborative projects that create systemic change across a news media subsector or genre, including through new business models, shared technologies, collaborative production, audience development, professional standards, skills development and cross border exchange. 1

The opportunity responds to economic and structural pressures affecting professional journalism, including declining advertising revenues, changing audience behaviour, digital transformation, shrinking local media capacity and the resulting risks to media pluralism, democratic participation and trust in information.

The topic is Topic 1, Journalism Partnerships Collaborations. Applicants seeking support for the separate Pluralism topic must submit a separate proposal under that topic.

Key facts

Policy purpose and expected change

The funding is designed to strengthen the economic sustainability and operational resilience of European news media through cooperation between organisations operating in different countries, markets, languages, regions or media formats. The project should not be limited to producing a one off media output. It should demonstrate how the collaboration can improve structures, workflows, capabilities, standards, revenues, distribution or professional practice across a wider subsector.

Projects are expected to have a European and transnational dimension. The European dimension should be demonstrated through the countries, languages, organisations, target groups, knowledge exchanges and wider transferability covered by the action, rather than simply through the location of the coordinator.

Priority areas

Proposals may address one or several priorities, provided that the selected priorities are justified by a credible needs analysis of the chosen media subsector or genre.

Eligible project activities

Activities must be connected to the identified needs of the selected subsector and must show credible potential to create systemic change. The following activities are specifically contemplated by the call.

Financial support to third parties

Financial support to third parties is permitted where it is necessary for the project and is clearly designed, managed and justified. It may support journalist exchanges, participation in training or events, collaborative journalistic projects, legal advice, technical tools for collaborative journalism, relevant events, or prizes for collaboration and innovation.

The application must explain why third party support is needed, identify the activities that may receive support, define the selection process and describe the results expected. Selection must be fair, transparent, objective and non discriminatory. Any cascade funding call must be published widely, remain open for at least two months, comply with transparency, equal treatment, confidentiality and conflict of interest rules, have a clear European dimension and publish its results on the participants websites.

The normal maximum amount of financial support to an individual third party is €60,000. A higher amount may be accepted only where it is necessary to achieve the action objectives and is duly justified in the application.

Target applicants and consortium structure

Topic 1 applications must be submitted by a consortium of at least three beneficiaries. The consortium must include at least three independent legal entities established in three different eligible countries. Affiliated entities do not count towards this minimum requirement.

Consortia may include non profit, public and private media organisations, including written and online press, radio, podcasts and television. They may also include media associations, non governmental organisations, journalistic funds, training organisations, universities, research organisations and other bodies with relevant expertise in news media and professional development.

The strongest consortium designs will normally combine complementary capabilities, such as editorial and journalistic expertise, digital and technology capacity, business model development, audience research, training, legal support, dissemination and access to smaller or underserved media markets.

Applicant eligibility

Geographic and operational scope

For Topic 1, activities must take place in eligible countries. The call encourages cooperation between media markets and countries with different languages, production volumes, organisational sizes and levels of digitalisation. The proposal should explain how the selected geographic coverage supports mutual learning and transferability.

Projects should normally last no longer than 24 months. A longer period may be accepted only through a duly justified amendment. The starting date will normally be after grant signature. A retroactive starting date may be approved exceptionally, but cannot be earlier than the proposal submission date.

Mandatory standards and independence requirements

Every coordinator and partner must provide a signed Declaration on Standards and Independence using the template available in the Submission System. The declaration confirms respect for EU values, editorial independence, professional and ethical journalistic standards, transparency, non discrimination and fair selection procedures where support is provided to other media.

Partnerships involving editorial work must operate with full editorial independence. The proposal must describe the standards applied, mechanisms for accuracy and accountability, complaint handling, impartiality, plural viewpoints and management of any differences between the partners editorial guidelines. The partners must also publish information about the project, its objectives, editorial standards and accountability arrangements on their websites.

Applicants should assess the environmental footprint of travel, events, equipment, digital infrastructure and production activities. Where relevant, the proposal should include measures for reducing emissions, limiting unnecessary travel, using sustainable procurement and improving environmental performance.

Funding amount and funding rate

A project requesting the maximum €2 million grant would normally need total eligible costs of at least €2.5 million to apply the 80% funding rate. The exact eligible budget and final grant amount will be established in the Grant Agreement and may be reduced for ineligible expenditure, underperformance, non compliance or generation of profit.

Eligible budget categories

Volunteer unit costs are not available under this call. Equipment costs are generally eligible through depreciation. Travel and subsistence costs normally use the applicable EU unit costs, with actual costs available only where the relevant travel category is not covered by the unit cost rules.

Financial and operational capacity

Applicants must have stable and sufficient financial resources to implement the action, contribute their share and manage any other projects in which they participate. Financial capacity checks normally focus on the coordinator, but may also cover affiliated entities or other participants where necessary.

The financial assessment may consider accounts, revenue, deficits, dependency on EU funding, business plans and audit evidence. Public bodies, international organisations, certain publicly funded cultural and creative sector entities and projects requesting no more than €60,000 may be exempt from the normal financial capacity check.

Applicants must demonstrate relevant operational capacity, including qualified staff, technical resources, project management experience and experience with actions of comparable size and complexity. The application should provide profiles of key staff, describe each consortium participant and allocate responsibilities and resources clearly.

Exclusion grounds

Applicants may not participate if they are subject to applicable EU exclusion grounds, including bankruptcy or similar proceedings, serious breaches of tax or social security obligations, grave professional misconduct, fraud, corruption, money laundering, terrorism related offences, criminal organisation involvement, human trafficking, significant failure to comply with previous EU commitments, irregularities, deliberate circumvention of legal obligations or obstruction of EU investigations and audits.

Evaluation and award criteria

Eligible proposals will be assessed through a one stage submission and one step evaluation process by an evaluation committee assisted by independent experts. Proposals will first be checked for admissibility and eligibility and will then be assessed against the award criteria and ranked within the topic.

Relevance is particularly important because the proposal must link its activities to a well evidenced needs analysis, demonstrate what already exists and explain why the proposed collaboration can deliver additional European value. The project should also quantify its expected results through objectively verifiable indicators rather than relying only on the number of media channels available.

Proposal design requirements

Required application documents and submission

Applications must be submitted electronically through the Funding and Tenders Portal. Paper applications are not accepted. All beneficiaries, affiliated entities and associated partners must be registered in the Participant Register before submission, and each relevant organisation must have a participant identification code.

The application consists of Part A, Part B, Part C and the required annexes. Part A contains administrative and budget information and is completed online. Part B contains the technical description and must be downloaded from the Submission System, completed and uploaded as a PDF. Part C contains additional project data and programme indicator information. The mandatory Declaration on Standards and Independence must be completed by the coordinator and all partners, assembled as required and uploaded with the application.

Part B is limited to a maximum of 50 pages. Evaluators will disregard pages beyond the applicable limit. Applicants should follow the formatting and upload requirements in the Submission System and should submit well before the deadline because technical problems close to the deadline remain the applicants responsibility.

Proposals may be submitted in any official EU language, but the project abstract or summary should be in English. English is strongly recommended for the complete application to support efficient evaluation.

Project work packages and implementation

The Grant Agreement must include a mandatory project management work package, at least one activity work package and a mandatory dissemination work package. A second activity work package is optional, and additional work packages may be added where justified.

Payment and reporting

The grant normally provides prefinancing to enable implementation to begin. The standard indication is approximately 40% of the maximum grant amount, although the final arrangement may be lower, paid in instalments or withheld depending on financial capacity, guarantees and the Grant Agreement.

There are normally no interim payments. One or more additional prefinancing payments may be linked to a prefinancing report. The balance is calculated at the end of the project after assessment of eligible costs, implementation and compliance. Any excess payment must be repaid.

Payments are made to the coordinator, which is responsible for distributing funds internally under the consortium arrangements. Beneficiaries must retain adequate records demonstrating the work performed and the costs declared. A prefinancing guarantee may be required, normally for an amount equal to or lower than the prefinancing.

Consortium and grant management considerations

Indicative timetable

An online information session organised by the European Education and Culture Executive Agency is scheduled for 12 November 2026 at 10:00 CET. Applicants should monitor the official topic page for any updates, clarifications or changes to the timetable.

Applicant readiness assessment

Overall assessment

This is a substantial collaborative capacity building opportunity for established media organisations, media networks, journalism support organisations and specialist partners that can demonstrate cross border relevance and sector wide impact. It is not primarily a grant for routine newsroom operating costs, isolated content production or a single organisations digital upgrade. The strongest applications are likely to combine a well evidenced sector problem, a credible multi country partnership, practical transformation activities, measurable adoption by wider media stakeholders and a durable plan for continuation after EU funding.

The principal commercial and operational constraints are the 80% funding rate, the need to finance at least part of the project from other resources, the requirement for a minimum three country consortium, the 24 month normal duration, the 50 page technical limit and the need to satisfy demanding editorial independence and transparency requirements. Early preparation is therefore advisable, particularly for partner confirmation, financial capacity evidence, technical work packages, third party support rules and the mandatory signed declaration.

Official source and applicant support

The authoritative topic page, call document, application templates and supporting documents are available through the Funding and Tenders Portal. Non technical questions may be sent to EACEA-CREATIVE-EUROPE-JOURNALISM-PARTNERSHIPS@ec.europa.eu. Portal access, registration and submission problems should be addressed through the Funding and Tenders Portal support channels. 1

FN:1