From science to market: CDTI Innovation will allocate up to 1,817 million in 2026 in grants, venture capital investment, public procurement and soft loans for business R+D+I, transfer and scaling

The CDTI Innovation, the state agency of innovation of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, plans to allocate in 2026 up to 1,817 million euros to reinforce the complete cycle of innovation from the creation and consolidation of new technology-based companies, the acceleration of collaborative R&D oriented to challenges, the promotion of early demand R&D and the validation of prototypes in real environments and the mobilization of public capital in public-private co-investment actions and operations in funds, all focused on ensuring that the results of Spanish R&D are transformed into competitive and sustainable growth through solutions that reach the market and contribute to the citizens.

Specifically, the CDTI Innovation would allocate up to 407 million euros to grants, 75 million to innovative public procurement, 32 million to innovative actions in international cooperation, 545 million euros to partially reimbursable aid and, specifically, a volume of about 790 million euros in direct investment (co-investments) and indirect (funds) aimed at scaling up innovative companies and disruptive technologies so that the results of R&D reach the market.

Within the scope of the Spanish Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy 2021-2027, the CDTI Innovation acts as a driving force, increasing the average grant intensity and diversifying the financing instruments to adapt to the nature of each business project around R&D and innovation. In this context, the objective of the actions of the CDTI Innovation is to promote Spain as a European leader in knowledge transfer and its programs and aid to R+D+I include, currently for decades, those focused on dual technologies that can be used both in civil and defense applications, generating synergies and reducing development costs, which the CDTI transversalizes and manages through a dedicated department.

With an approach focused on a portfolio or itinerary architecture rather than isolated programs, the CDTI Innovation structures its action to adapt to the nature of each project: its technological risk, its maturity, its need for collaboration and its scaling potential. Thus, the CDTI Innovation bets on a public intervention that is not limited to giving grants but builds instruments to unlock different bottlenecks according to the time of each project:

• Startups and deep-tech (NEOTEC) to promote business creation and disruptive technology.
• Tractor consortiums (Misiones, Innterconnect) to move value chains and industry.
• Technological and transfer capacities of an ecosystem nature (Cervera and Innovation and Transfer Ecosystems) to consolidate useful knowledge and connect it with the company.
• Validation in real environment (Public Procurement) to accelerate adoption and market.
• Financing with continuity (APR Loans) to sustain the most incremental innovative investment.
• Capital to scale (Innvierte) to turn technology into growth.

In 2026, with a comprehensive portfolio of instruments that combines grants in competitive competition, support for international cooperation, innovative public procurement, partially refundable financing and investment and venture capital, the CDTI Innovation is able to offer specific support to projects located at all levels of technological maturity.

Calls for competitive grants

In the field of competitive subsidies, the CDTI Innovation concentrates instruments that strongly promote the most intensive phase at risk, that of converting knowledge into demonstrable technology and, later, into a product or service. Thus, the NEOTEC program would have up to 40 million euros, aimed at the creation and consolidation of technology-based companies with high R&D intensity, thus maintaining the focus on innovative entrepreneurship as a vector of competitiveness. Deep-tech entrepreneurship can be born with a market vocation and, at the same time, contribute to promoting strategic capabilities and technological sovereignty.

Along the same lines, the call for SCIENCE AND INNOVATION MISSIONS could be endowed with up to 145 million euros to promote large collaborative R&D projects, typically articulated in consortia and oriented to socio-economic challenges linked to sustainability, energy transition, health or security and defense. In practice, Misiones operates as a tractor program: it promotes highly ambitious consortia and projects with a differential weight of the dual aspect, mobilizes value chains, integrates business and knowledge capabilities and accelerates the passage between applied research and market arrival, opening opportunities for industrial value chains, integrators and technological SMEs.

For its part, INTERCONNECT-STEP will have 70 million euros to support high-technology solutions with a logic of public-private collaboration and strengthening territorial ecosystems of innovation, in line with European priorities of industrial capacities, acting as a lever for business consortiums and knowledge and R&D centers to accelerate high-technology developments in sensitive areas for European industrial sovereignty (digital technologies, clean and efficient technologies in the use of resources and biotechnology, including essential medicines), aimed at deployments, scalability and productive capacity.

The CERVERA programme, with up to 50 million euros, strengthens the role of technology and excellence centres as a bridge between knowledge and business and the development and traction of technological capabilities, especially in the axis of centres and networks of excellence (and their effective connection with business). Not only is technology financed, but its transferability and robustness for demanding environments are promoted, making it a key part of the innovative process, consolidating applied technological capabilities and facilitating the access of the business fabric to advanced technologies, specialized talent and technology maturation projects with practical orientation, strengthening both market applications and developments with requirements of robustness and reliability typical of strategic environments.

In addition to Cervera’s ecosystem approach (building capacities and acting as a bridge between academia and business), INNOVATION AND TRANSFER ECOSYSTEMS will help to interconnect all the agents of the innovative system (knowledge centres, companies, public administrations and users) around socio-technical challenges to which R+D+I can contribute to solve the problems detected.

The portfolio of competitive grants completes the INNOGLOBAL call, with 15 million euros, aimed at promoting international technological cooperation, positioning and international connection in high-potential projects, strengthening the external dimension as a natural part of innovative growth and opening channels for Spanish companies to participate in transnational projects and gain traction in global markets and value chains.

Overall, competitive grant calls are focused on more intensity and more focus, where impact requires collaboration, critical mass, agent interconnection and real acceleration to market, with the cross-cutting axis of dual-use technologies as an additional priority criterion.

Aid for internationalisation

Together with this package in competitive competition, the CDTI deploys a second main axis: internationalization and support for projects evaluated in external competitive frameworks, which in 2026 is concretized at 32 million euros through direct concession actions that facilitate continuity and connection with international programs. This block includes Eurostars, European partnerships and a bilateral call with Korea, with 17 million euros, and the Seal of Excellence, with 15 million euros, which facilitates innovative Spanish companies to play in international alliances and programs with continuity, thus reinforcing the principle of coherence: when a project exceeds thresholds of excellence, the system must be able to guide it and prevent the lack of funding in the international program from becoming a brake.

Innovative Public Procurement

The third strategic lever, which will have 75 million euros in 2026, is the INNOVATIVE PUBLIC PURCHASE in pre-commercial mode, for the acquisition of high-technology prototypes and demonstrators (digital health, autonomous mobility, clean energy, food safety) that will allow R&D development companies to develop their technology through R&D contracts and validate their solutions in real environments. Pre-commercial public procurement introduces real demand and early validation, allowing technology companies to develop prototypes and demonstrators while working with a public “client” under real-world testing conditions. This reduces market risk, accelerates adoption and converts public challenges into opportunities for applied innovation, a particularly useful mechanism for emerging technologies that need demonstration and scalability that enable innovation to emerge with the customer and multiply the likelihood of subsequent adoption in the market, while offering public administrations a technology capable of solving the challenges they face.

APR's: Soft loans repaid with a non-refundable share (equivalent subsidy)

In parallel, the CDTI maintains its capacity to finance business R+D+I through SUBSIDISED LOANS with a tranche that does not need to be repaid (the classic Partially Refundable Aid or RWAs), with an allocation of 545 million euros. This instrument fulfils a continuity function that allows to sustain the innovative investment of companies, usually of an incremental nature and with “lower market risk”, by providing the financing component that allows companies to sustain and scale projects, align technological effort with financial reality and a logic of continuity and volume and accelerate modernization and development without relying exclusively on competitive windows. It is, in the support architecture of the CDTI Innovation, the component that gives stability to the incremental R&D effort and to business technological innovation, combining rigor, return and drag effect on productivity. This instrument is the piece that makes it possible for many companies not to be forced to choose between innovating at the stroke of a call. With RWAs, the R&D&I muscle and technological modernization are sustained with a more stable and predictable funding framework.

Capitalization: investment and public risk capital

Finally, the 2026 strategy is completed with the great instrument of scaling, the INNVIERTE Program, which will mobilize 790 million euros to promote, through direct and indirect investment (co-investment and funds), the creation and growth of innovative companies. INNVIERTE operates where the bottleneck is not only technological, but also capital, accompaniment and growth: it makes it easier for the results of R&D to reach the market through companies capable of scaling, attracting investment, internationalizing and consolidating competitive advantages. In terms of public policy, it is the piece that connects research, entrepreneurship and the market in the form of companies with traction capacity. INNVIERTE acts where the bottleneck is not the cost of R&D but the market risk, commercial traction, the need for additional rounds of financing for internationalization or industrial scalability. In this sense, public risk capital catalyses private investment, strengthens transfer and helps knowledge and technology to become companies with a future.
 

CDTI Innovation

The Center for Technological Development and Innovation, CDTI E.P.E. It is the innovation agency of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, whose objective is the promotion of technological innovation in the business environment. The mission of the CDTI is to ensure that the Spanish business fabric generates and transforms scientific and technical knowledge into globally competitive, sustainable and inclusive growth. In 2024, within the framework of a new strategic plan, the CDTI provided more than 2.3 billion euros of support to Spanish companies and startups.

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