Portuguese Earth-observation firms have until 2 October to reach the ESA's 1.25 million
Portugal Space has set three annual assessment rounds for the ESA's InCubed programme through to 2028. Applications never close; the assessment dates do.
Apply / Learn moreAn electricity grid operator can work out, without leaving the office, that a branch is growing too close to a high-voltage line. That is not science fiction and it is not expensive. It is what VESTA does — a system built by the Portuguese company Spotlite that combines satellite imagery with AI to watch vegetation along power lines, railways and roads.
VESTA was funded through InCubed, the European Space Agency’s industrial innovation programme for Earth Observation. InCubed has now published the calendar for anyone hoping to follow the same route: Portugal Space has announced three annual assessment rounds running to 2028, with an indicative budget of 1.25 million euros for national projects.
The dates that matter
The first assessment closes on 2 October 2026. After that comes 30 April 2027 and, subject to budget, 28 January 2028.
There is a distinction here that trips up first-time applicants. Applications are permanently open through the ESA’s ORBIT portal, so you can submit on any day of the year. What carries a deadline is the assessment round your proposal lands in. Submitting on 3 October shuts no doors; it pushes you to April.
How proposals are scored
Portugal Space issues the letter of support the ESA needs before it will fund a project, and it has published the weightings it applies. Impact for Portugal is worth 30%, judged on alignment with the National Space Strategy and on the return to the country. Then come innovation and technical viability (20%), the business case (20%), team capability (15%), and the fit of management, planning and co-financing (15%).
The programme co-finances commercially viable products and services built on Earth Observation data, anywhere along the value chain — satellite design, end-user applications, or new business models built on existing data. You do not need to build hardware to qualify.
Portugal joined InCubed in 2019 and the programme has been open to Portuguese companies since 2020. Thirteen national projects have been co-financed in that time. It is a modest number, and it is exactly why the agency keeps stressing the calendar: predictability is what founders planning a three-year product usually lack.
The sector is growing — see the Coimbra company tracking satellites in orbit that just raised 15.6 million euros — but the entry funnel stays narrow. These three dates are the funnel.
Image: © European Union, Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery
