Support for information measures relating to the common agricultural policy (IMCAP)

IMCAP-2027-INFOME is a forthcoming European Commission (DG AGRI) action grant for large-audience, evidence-based information and communication measures on the Common Agricultural Policy. The call is planned to open on 22 October 2026 with electronic submission via the EU Funding & Tenders Portal and a deadline of 21 January 2027 at 17:00 Brussels time, and the total indicative call budget is €4 million. Projects may last up to 12 months, typical requested grants are €100,000–€350,000, the EU funding rate is 60% of eligible costs, and the application structure is single applicant (affiliated entities and associated partners permitted where justified). Proposals must address at least three specified themes (for example competitiveness/resilience, nutrient management, livestock/protein, role of women, countering rural misinformation, elements of the new CAP 2028–2034) and include a baseline plus measurable impact evaluation indicators.

What it funds

Purpose and scope

Grants for large‑audience information and communication measures to raise public awareness about the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Projects must provide objective, evidence‑based information and measurable impact indicators. Proposals must address at least three of the call’s priority topics (e.g. CAP role in competitiveness and resilience, nutrient management and fertilisers, livestock and protein sector, women in agriculture, countering rural misinformation, and elements of the CAP 2028‑2034) and target a significant number of citizens including youth, farmers and stakeholders.

Who can apply

Eligible applicants are legal entities (public or private bodies) established in eligible countries (EU Member States and territories as defined in the call). Single‑beneficiary applications are allowed; affiliated entities, associated partners, subcontractors and international organisations may participate under the rules of the call. Natural persons are not eligible except self‑employed persons in legal form.

Key eligibility and evaluation points

Activities that can be funded

Eligible activities are large‑audience communication measures such as communication campaigns, production/distribution of print, multimedia and audiovisual material, web and social media outreach, media events, conferences/seminars/workshops with significant reach, and supporting studies or final evaluations where necessary.

Practical timeline and budget snapshot

Footnotes

1. 1Call document and annexes IMCAP-2027-INFOME set detailed rules on budget categories, unit costs for travel/accommodation/subsistence, required deliverables, evaluation criteria and eligibility. See the topic page for all documents.

This is a call for project grants managed by the European Commission, Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development (DG AGRI) under the IMCAP programme. It finances large-audience information and communication measures targeted at raising awareness and understanding of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) among EU citizens, young people in urban areas, school and university audiences, farmers, stakeholders in rural areas and other relevant target groups. The call focuses on communication tied to the current CAP implementation and selected related topics (see Scope). The call is a single-stage open call run through the EU Funding & Tenders Portal IMCAP topic page.

Key administrative facts and calendar

Scope, objectives and eligible activities

Eligibility: who can apply and where

Applicant types and consortium rules

Budget, eligible costs, funding modality and financial rules

Application, submission process and templates

Evaluation, award criteria, thresholds and timing

Reporting, deliverables and monitoring

Project duration, expected maturity and eligible results

Nature of support, co-funding and financial capacity

Selection, award and post-award

Administrative and legal essentials applicants must follow

Evaluation success rate and application stages

Cross-cutting priorities and digital/AI aspects

Cross-cutting priorities flagged in the metadata include Digital Agenda and Artificial Intelligence. Proposals using digital and AI tools for outreach, awareness raising, combating misinformation and for monitoring and impact evaluation should address ethical, data protection and security issues and explain how these are managed. Where AI is used applicants must describe risks, mitigation and compliance with EU rules and values (ethics, data protection) in the Part B and in the ethics and security sections of the application 1.

Templates and deliverables — structure applicants must follow

Main application templates and reporting templates that applicants must use (available in the Submission System and Grant Management System): IMCAP Application Form (Part A and Part B IMCAP standard template), Detailed budget table (IMCAP), IMCAP General Model Grant Agreement (MGA v1.0), Activities Report template (bimestrial), Communication Indicators form (spreadsheet), Periodic Report template (technical Part A and Part B), Detailed cost reporting table template, Periodic Report financial statement (Annex 4 to MGA), Reporting templates for deliverables and administrative templates. The application must include: detailed budget (high granularity), CVs in Europass format for core team, activity report for last calendar year, list of previous relevant projects, and legal affiliation documents for affiliated entities. Mandatory outreach and reporting deliverables include bimestrial activities reports and an end-of-project Communication Indicators report measuring reach and change against baseline data (e.g. Special Eurobarometer 520 or other credible sources) 1.

Eligible Applicant Types

Funding Type

Consortium Requirement

Beneficiary Scope (Geographic Eligibility)

Target Sector

Mentioned Countries

Project Stage

Funding Amount

Application Type

Open single-stage call submitted electronically via the Funding & Tenders Portal (open to all eligible applicants meeting call conditions). Submission of the IMCAP-specific Application Form templates in the Submission System is mandatory. Paper applications are not allowed 1.

Nature of Support

Application Stages

Success Rates

Success rates are not specified in the call documentation. Selection depends on the number and quality of eligible proposals and available budget. Historically, success rates vary by call; this call’s success rate will be determined by the number of high-scoring proposals and the available budget of €4,000,000 1.

Co-funding Requirement

Co-funding is required. The standard funding rate indicated in the call is 60% of eligible costs; applicants must therefore provide at least 40% of project costs from other sources (own resources, other public or private co-financing). The grant may include unit costs and flat-rate indirect costs but net co-funding is still required. Financial capacity must be demonstrated in grant preparation (unless exempted) 1.

Templates (structure and application forms)

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

The IMCAP-2027-INFOME call finances EU-level information and communication projects that explain the Common Agricultural Policy to broad audiences across the European Union. The call supports large-audience campaigns, multimedia production and distribution, outreach via web and social media, media events and large-scale conferences/workshops, and research/studies where required to underpin communications. Projects must address at least three of the scope topics (competitiveness/resilience, nutrient management, livestock/protein sector support, role of women in agriculture, countering rural misinformation, and elements of the new CAP 2028–2034). Proposals must be evidence-based, present a clearly documented baseline (e.g. Eurobarometer 520), SMART objectives, a programme of activities with a timetable and a robust evaluation methodology with measurable KPIs (reach and change of perception).

Footnotes

1. 1Primary source: IMCAP-2027-INFOME Call document, Annexes and IMCAP templates on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal. All procedural details, templates and legal notices are available on the Topic page: ec.europa.eu. Applicants must follow the submission templates in the Portal Submission System and the IMCAP Model Grant Agreement and refer to the call document (Call: IMCAP-2027-INFOME — Call document V1.0, 19.10.2026) for full legal and administrative requirements.

Opportunity summary

IMCAP-2027-INFOME is a forthcoming European Commission action grant call managed by the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development. It supports large-audience, objective and evidence-based communication measures that improve understanding of the Common Agricultural Policy among citizens, farmers and other agricultural and rural stakeholders. The official call page and call document should be treated as the controlling sources for final conditions and any subsequent updates 1.

The opportunity is particularly suitable for established public or private organisations with demonstrable communication capacity, access to substantial audiences and experience in agriculture, rural development, media, education, public information or stakeholder engagement. The call is not intended to finance ordinary organisational activity, statutory meetings or communication activities where information provision is not the principal component.

Key facts

Purpose and policy context

The call seeks to raise awareness of the CAP among the general public, farmers and non-farmers, and to explain how the CAP contributes to affordable and stable food supplies, farm income, agricultural competitiveness, climate and environmental objectives, biodiversity, rural development, resilience, sustainability and the position of farmers in the food value chain. Communication must be consistent with the Commission’s legal obligation to carry out CAP information measures under Article 46 of Regulation (EU) 2021/2116 2.

Projects should provide coherent, comprehensive, fact-based and objective information. Applications should explain the current CAP, national CAP Strategic Plans and relevant connected policy instruments, including the Common Market Organisation, the Action Plan for the Development of Organic Production, the Unfair Trade Practices Directive and relevant elements of the Vision for Agriculture and Food.

The target audiences may include citizens generally, young people in urban areas, school children, teachers, university students, farmers, rural communities, agricultural organisations, food-sector stakeholders and other actors active in rural areas. Proposals should clearly distinguish audience needs, communication channels, expected reach and the intended change in awareness or perception.

Scope and required themes

A proposal must address at least three of the six specified themes. Failure to address at least three themes is expected to place the application outside the scope of the call.

The themes should not be treated as disconnected subjects. Strong applications will create an integrated communication narrative showing how the selected themes relate to CAP objectives, national implementation, farm competitiveness, environmental performance, rural vitality, food security and public understanding.

Eligible activities

Funding is intended for communication and information measures capable of reaching a significant number of citizens. The scale and credibility of the expected impact are central considerations in the assessment.

The following activities are not eligible or are unlikely to be eligible as standalone activities: measures required by law, general or recurring statutory meetings, ordinary annual conferences without a distinct IMCAP communication component, and activities in which communication and information are not the main component.

Impact, indicators and evaluation

Impact measurement is a mandatory substantive requirement rather than an optional add-on. The proposal must include objective and measurable quantitative and qualitative indicators and an impact evaluation methodology linked to the project objectives and activities.

The Commission’s communication indicators form illustrates the type of evidence expected. It covers website visitors and page views, event attendance, changes in opinion, publications and readers, audiovisual viewers, radio listeners, social media followers and engagement, press coverage, total contacts and the estimated number of people with a more positive opinion of the CAP 3.

A credible methodology could combine pre-project and post-project surveys, audience analytics, event attendance records, media monitoring, engagement data, knowledge tests, focus groups and sampling methods. Reach figures should avoid double counting where the same individuals are exposed through several channels, or clearly explain how duplicate exposure is treated.

Eligibility

Eligible applicants must generally be legal entities, whether public or private, established in an EU Member State, including overseas countries and territories. International organisations may participate and are not subject to the eligible-country restriction. Natural persons are not eligible, except self-employed persons or sole traders where the business has no separate legal personality.

Entities without legal personality may participate exceptionally where their representatives can undertake legal obligations on their behalf and provide equivalent protection for the EU’s financial interests. Associations and interest groupings may participate as sole beneficiaries or as beneficiaries without legal personality, subject to the applicable conditions.

The call permits only single-applicant applications. Affiliated entities and associated partners may be included where they are necessary and their roles are clearly justified. Associated partners do not receive grant funding. Subcontractors may be used for appropriate external tasks, but subcontracting should normally remain limited and any subcontracting exceeding 30 percent of total eligible costs must be justified.

All beneficiaries and affiliated entities must be registered in the Participant Register before submission and must obtain or hold a validated Participant Identification Code. Legal status and country of establishment will need to be supported through the validation process.

Entities subject to EU conditionality measures may be excluded from all funded roles. The call document specifically identifies Hungarian public interest trusts established under the relevant Hungarian legislation, and entities maintained by them, as currently affected by such measures.

Applicants must not be in an exclusion situation under the EU Financial Regulation. Relevant grounds include bankruptcy or comparable insolvency proceedings, breaches of tax or social security obligations, grave professional misconduct, fraud, corruption, money laundering, terrorism-related offences, human trafficking, serious deficiencies in previous EU contracts or grants, irregularities, conflicts of interest and misrepresentation.

Financial and operational capacity

Applicants must demonstrate stable and sufficient financial resources to implement the action and contribute their share of costs. Financial capacity may be assessed using documents such as profit and loss accounts, balance sheets, business plans, audit reports or other financial information requested during grant preparation.

A financial capacity check will normally apply to selected private applicants, but public bodies and international organisations are generally exempt. The check is also normally not required where the individual requested grant amount does not exceed €60,000. The Commission may request further information or reject an applicant where financial capacity is considered insufficient.

Operational capacity is assessed through the competence and experience of the applicant and project team, the available human and technical resources, the activity report for the last calendar year and a list of relevant projects from the last four years. Public bodies, Member State organisations and international organisations are exempt from the operational capacity check, although their ability to implement the proposed action remains relevant to the quality assessment.

Mandatory application documents

The application must be submitted using the forms generated or provided through the Submission System. The call document states that the following materials are required or may be mandatory depending on the relevant form fields and participant structure:

Part B is limited to a maximum of 70 pages. The prescribed template, formatting, font and layout must be respected. Excess pages may be disregarded, and changes to the required format can lead to rejection or a scoring penalty. The application must be readable, accessible and printable.

The online summarised budget must correspond to the detailed budget table. If there is a discrepancy, the amount entered in the online summarised budget table prevails. The applicant must confirm that it has authority to act for all participants and that the information is complete and correct.

Budget and funding model

The indicative budget for the call is €4 million. The Commission reserves the right not to allocate the entire amount or to redistribute funding depending on the proposals received and the evaluation results. The availability of the budget remains subject to adoption of the 2027 EU budget and the final financing decision.

Project budgets are expected to range from €100,000 to €350,000 in requested EU grant amount. These figures are indicative rather than an absolute eligibility range, and other amounts may be submitted. The Commission may award less than the amount requested.

The grant is a budget-based mixed actual cost grant. Eligible actual costs are reimbursed at a fixed funding rate of 60 percent. Travel, accommodation and subsistence must generally use the European Commission’s compulsory unit costs, while indirect costs are reimbursed as a 7 percent flat rate of eligible direct costs, subject to the grant agreement rules.

The principal budget categories are personnel costs, subcontracting, travel and subsistence, equipment, other goods, works and services, and indirect costs. Financial support to third parties is not allowed. Non-deductible VAT may be eligible, except where the applicable rules exclude VAT incurred by public bodies acting as public authorities.

Personnel costs must be calculated and reported using the methodology in the Model Grant Agreement. The call requires highly detailed forecasts, including salary ratios and levels for team members responsible for each activity, justification of subcontracting and evidence that proposed prices reflect actual salaries or market prices. Insufficient cost detail may result in a penalty of up to 8 points under the efficiency criterion.

The grant may not generate a profit. For-profit organisations must declare project revenues, and any surplus of revenues plus EU funding over eligible costs may result in a reduction of the final grant amount. Double funding of the same costs is prohibited.

Cash-flow and payment conditions

There is no prefinancing and no interim payment. Payment is made at the end of the project after submission and assessment of the technical report and financial statement. Applicants therefore need sufficient liquidity to finance eligible activities before reimbursement.

Applicants are responsible for maintaining records supporting all work performed and all costs declared. Payments may be reduced or offset where the beneficiary or another project member has outstanding debts towards the EU. No prefinancing guarantee is applicable because no prefinancing is planned.

Duration, deliverables and reporting

Projects should last no more than 12 months. The starting date will normally be after grant signature. A retroactive starting date may exceptionally be authorised for duly justified reasons, but not earlier than the proposal submission date.

Milestones are not applicable. Deliverables will be set out in the grant agreement and should be sufficiently detailed, distributed throughout the implementation period and separated by activity rather than bundling multiple activities or dates into one deliverable.

Evaluation and scoring

Applications are evaluated through a single-stage submission and one-step evaluation process. Proposals are first checked for admissibility and eligibility, then assessed for capacity and scored against four award criteria. Proposals must pass each individual threshold and the overall threshold, and funding remains subject to the available budget and ranking.

The effectiveness criterion carries the greatest weight, followed by efficiency. An application should therefore be designed around a clear theory of change, credible reach assumptions, measurable opinion or awareness outcomes and a detailed implementation programme, rather than relying only on the quality of creative outputs.

The five-point bonus for applicants from Member States with no projects selected under IMCAP-2026-INFOME can materially affect ranking. Applicants should verify their national status against the final list of selected 2026 projects and should not assume that the bonus applies without checking the Commission’s published information.

Key applicant risks and compliance points

Recommended project design

A competitive project should begin with a documented audience and information-needs analysis. It should identify the geographical coverage, demographic or professional segments, current awareness levels, misinformation or knowledge gaps, preferred channels and barriers to understanding the CAP.

The intervention should then combine complementary communication channels, for example audiovisual content, digital and social media, school or university engagement, farmer and rural stakeholder events, media relations and accessible explanatory materials. Each channel should have its own output, reach, outcome and verification method.

The work plan should include an inception baseline, content development and fact-checking, audience testing, campaign delivery, continuous monitoring, corrective actions, final evaluation and dissemination of results. A risk register should address low audience engagement, misinformation, platform algorithm changes, delays in content approval, procurement risks, reputational issues and insufficient evidence of impact.

A suitable budget should show the relationship between each cost and the expected audience impact. Cost-effectiveness can be expressed through indicators such as eligible cost per verified contact, cost per engaged user, cost per event participant, cost per completed survey response and cost per person demonstrating improved CAP recognition or perception.

Application process and authoritative documents

Applications must be submitted electronically through the Funding and Tenders Portal. Paper submissions are not accepted. Applicants must create an EU Login account, register the organisation in the Participant Register, obtain the required participant identification code and submit Part A, Part B and the required annexes through the electronic system.

The 2027 call document, the live topic page and the templates available in the Submission System should be checked regularly because the call is forthcoming and the official documentation may be updated. The call is also subject to the final adoption of the 2027 financing decision.

Overall assessment

This is a focused communication grant for organisations capable of delivering substantial public reach and demonstrating measurable improvements in awareness or perception of the CAP. Its strongest fit is a mature, evidence-led campaign with a single eligible applicant, clearly justified delivery partners or affiliated entities, at least three priority themes, a credible evaluation design and a detailed, cost-efficient implementation plan.

The main challenges are the absence of prefinancing, the 60 percent funding rate, the requirement for substantial own or other eligible resources, the high level of budget detail, the 70-page technical limit, the need to demonstrate novelty where previous campaigns were funded and the competitive scoring thresholds. Applicants should begin evidence collection, participant registration, audience partnerships, budget preparation and technical drafting well before the opening date.

Source and document links

The official Funding and Tenders Portal topic page is the primary source for the live status, submission system, conditions, documents and updates 1.

The official 2027 call document contains the legally relevant details on scope, eligibility, budget, evaluation, grant implementation, reporting and payment arrangements 4.

The official IMCAP application form provides the structure and formatting model for administrative and technical information, although the live Submission System templates take precedence over any example form 5.

The European Commission IMCAP information page provides programme-level context and information on recurring annual calls 6.

The Funding and Tenders Portal Online Manual provides general submission and electronic exchange guidance 7.

Footnotes

1. 1Official topic page: IMCAP-2027-INFOME Funding and Tenders Portal.
2. 2Legal and policy reference identified in the call documentation: Regulation (EU) 2021/2116, including Article 46, concerning financing, management and monitoring of the Common Agricultural Policy.
3. 3Official IMCAP communication indicators form: Communication Indicators Form.
4. 4Official 2027 call document: IMCAP-2027-INFOME Call Document.
5. 5Official IMCAP application form example: IMCAP Application Form.
6. 6European Commission IMCAP grants information page: Grants for information, Agriculture and Rural Development.
7. 7Funding and Tenders Portal Online Manual: Online Manual.