The Center for Technological Development and Innovation (CDTI), an entity belonging to the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, and the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology (KIAT), have reached an agreement with the objective of publishing a new joint call for the presentation of proposals for technological cooperation in technologies related to advanced materials.

The period of submission of proposals will include from 21 September 2026 to 28 January 2027, with the aim of starting the projects on 1 August 2027.

You can download the English document of the call KSSP 2026-2027 at the following link.

Under its agreement, CDTI and KIAT are committed to promoting, supporting and financing joint technological projects of Spanish and Korean business entities, and can count on the support of non-business entities, which on the Spanish side must be subcontracted.

The call 2026-2027 within the KSSP Program, managed by the agencies CDTI and KIAT, will have an aid in the form of a grant to support joint projects of great scope and high impact on technologies that fall under the theme chosen for this year: advanced materials.

The KSSP Program is a pioneer with a third country and aims to make a qualitative leap in the typology of international technological cooperation projects with a higher R&D intensity and a higher budget.

The KSSP Program endorses the approved projects through a "seal of quality" which, in addition to being a promotional element and recognition of the technological level of the proposal, in the case of this call makes it worthy of public funding. Each country will assume the financing of its participating entities.

The financing of Spanish companies in the KSSP Program will be carried out through a call for direct allocation managed by the CDTI, from which only companies that previously obtain the quality seal can be beneficiaries.

Characteristics of the projects:

The projects must have the following characteristics:

• The result of these must be an innovative product, process or service.
• The consortium must be made up of at least two Spanish companies (one large or medium as leader and an additional SME) and one Korean, independent, and the project must be relevant to all partners (no country or member of the consortium must have more than 60% budget).
• None of the applicants will be able to participate in more than one consortium for the same call. If this is the case, the participant will be asked to select an application and the rest will be withdrawn.
• The duration of the projects may be between 12 and 36 months.
• The proposals, always of civil use, must be framed in the technological area of advanced materials.
• For the Spanish part of the consortium, the overall target budget will be between 2.5 and 6 million euros and there should be a minimum SME budget contribution of 10% on the total budget of the Spanish part. The budget must be consistent with the developments to be carried out and with the technical/financial capacity of the participants.

In addition, participants must sign a consortium agreement that specifies the rights and obligations of the parties with respect to the development carried out and the possible rights of intellectual property, exploitation and marketing of the results.

Procedure for submitting proposals:

In the CDTI, the filing procedure distinguishes between the International PCTI-PSI Application and the SPSI National Aid Application.

For the International Application, participants must submit, at the CDTI and KIAT respectively, until 18:00 h on 28 January 2027 (local time at each agency) the corresponding online KSSP application accompanied by the following mandatory international documentation (in English), common to all partners: KSSP Application Form, signed by all partners.

For the Spanish part, the International Application (PCTI-PSI) must be submitted on-line through the CDTI electronic headquarters… and will be unique by project, despite the fact that there are two or more Spanish companies in the consortium.

Once the International Application is completed, CDTI and KIAT will begin the verification of the eligibility of the proposals. All proposals that meet the eligibility characteristics for the call will be evaluated by a panel of independent and qualified experts with a score. Only proposals with a total score above the predefined threshold (70 points out of 100) will form a ranking list.

In order of punctuation, between 2 and 4 projects can be selected, then receiving the approval letter KSSP (grant of the KSSP seal) that confirms the availability of funds. The allocation of national funds to the selected applications will follow the order of the ranking list.

Spanish applicants who receive the KSSP approval letter must communicate with CDTI since it is mandatory for each Spanish participant to make the SPSI National Aid Application individually.

The deadline for the submission of the National Aid Application at the CDTI will be 28 June 2027 at 18:00 h (Spanish time).

Contacts:

It is recommended that each partner contacts their national agency as soon as possible, as soon as they have a project idea.

Spain (CDTI): Mrs. Merced Pérez; +34 91 581 0489; merced.perez@cdti.es
Korea (CDTI): Mr. Jordi Espluga; +82 (0)70 4117 0888; jordi.espluga@cdti.es

Korea (KIAT): Mrs. Jee Hyun Woo; +82 (0)2 6009 3767; jeehyun.woo@kiat.or.kr