Run a CoLAB in Porto, Coimbra or Évora? There's €45m open until 15 October
Call COMPETE2030-2026-7 puts €45m behind knowledge-transfer work at Portugal's collaborative labs and technology centres, 85% of it European money. Only the North, Centre and Alentejo can apply.
Apply / Learn moreThere is fresh money for the part of Portugal’s science system almost nobody writes about: the institutions sitting halfway between a university lab and a factory floor. Call COMPETE2030-2026-7 opened on 12 August with €45 million and closes at 17:00 on 15 October.
It is aimed at Laboratórios Colaborativos, known as CoLABs, and Centros de Tecnologia e Inovação, the technology and innovation centres. Both are interface bodies. They exist to take research and push it into companies, which is the step where the Portuguese system tends to stall.
Who can apply, and who cannot
This is the detail the announcements skate over. The call covers CoLABs and technology centres in the North, Centre and Alentejo NUTS II regions, and nowhere else. A body based in Lisbon, the Algarve, the Azores or Madeira is outside this competition however well its work fits.
The rule goes beyond the registered address, too. The activities and investments have to take place in those regions, though work elsewhere, including abroad, is allowed where it demonstrably benefits the economy of the three eligible regions.
That is standard structural-funds logic, reserving this kind of support for less developed regions. It is still worth knowing before you spend a week drafting.
What the money covers
The budget is €45 million with a maximum co-financing rate of 85% from the European Regional Development Fund. Do the arithmetic and that is €38.25m of European money against €6.75m in national funding. Projects run for a maximum of 24 months, unless the managing authority accepts a justified exception.
The framework is the collective actions support scheme, and eligible activities follow the priority areas of Portugal’s smart specialisation strategy. In practice the call pays for the work of getting closer to industry: new channels for spreading and commercialising knowledge, pre-commercial testing and validation stages, digital platforms that support transfer, intellectual property management, standardisation and certification processes, economic impact studies and diagnoses of what technology companies actually need, plus training for the teams doing all of it.
Two conditions that stop applications
Both are worth checking before you start. The applicant has to show that knowledge and technology transfer is a core part of its current activity, evidenced with data from calendar years starting in 2023 — saying it became core this year will not do. And 2025 is the reference year for proving a balanced financial position and the capacity to fund the operation.
Applications go in online only, through the Balcão dos Fundos portal. Anyone tracking what is currently open should note this one runs alongside the €182.5m Productive Innovation call for SMEs, which closes on the very same day, so it is not a week you want to double-book.
One last note on timing. These institutions have been without this funding line since June. The call restores it, with a fixed pot and a hard date, which usually means preparation starts now rather than in October.
Chart: Tugadaily · data from call COMPETE2030-2026-7, COMPETE 2030
