Exploring the EIC Pathfinder Challenges 2025

The European Innovation Council (EIC) Pathfinder programme is one of the EU’s most ambitious funding instruments, designed to support cutting-edge, high-risk research with the potential to lead to transformative technologies. For 2025, the Pathfinder Challenges call is open with a deadline of 29th October 2025, offering researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs the opportunity to pursue breakthrough ideas that could shape Europe’s technological and societal future.

What is EIC Pathfinder?

The EIC Pathfinder funds interdisciplinary consortia and pioneering teams to explore radically new technologies at early stages of development. Unlike incremental improvements, projects are expected to challenge the state-of-the-art and set the foundation for entirely new markets, industries and solutions to global challenges.

Projects typically begin at TRL 1–3 (basic principles and proof of concept) and are expected to reach TRL 4 (lab validation) by the end of the project.

Applicants can come from universities, research organisations, start-ups, SMEs, and spin-offs, either as individual entities (for Open calls) or as multi-partner consortia for Challenges.

What funding and benefits are available?

Successful Pathfinder Challenge applicants can receive:

  • Grants of up to €4 million (depending on the challenge).
  • Support to cover research costs, equipment, staff and collaboration.
  • Business Acceleration Services, including coaching, mentoring, networking, and investor engagement.
  • Access to Booster grants of up to €50,000 to explore commercialisation pathways.
  • Fast-track entry routes to EIC Transition and EIC Accelerator funding, bridging the gap from lab to market.
  • Close interaction with EIC Programme Managers, who help projects form synergies, align with EU missions, and build challenge-wide roadmaps.

This integrated support ensures that projects are not just funded but actively guided towards maximum impact.

The 2025 Pathfinder Challenges

This year, the Pathfinder programme is inviting proposals under four targeted challenges. Each focus on a domain where Europe aims to lead the next wave of innovation.

  1. Biotech for Climate Resilient Crops and Plant-Based Biomanufacturing

Agriculture provides 95% of human nutrients, yet climate change is placing enormous stress on global crop production. Rising temperatures, drought, salinity, flooding, and soil degradation all threaten food security.

This challenge calls for breakthrough solutions to enhance crop resilience and to develop alternative plant-based pathways for producing high-value ingredients. Projects must go beyond incremental breeding techniques to deliver energy-efficient, low-emission foods that boost biodiversity and nutrition.

Key objectives include:

  • Increasing yields and stress tolerance under multiple climate stressors.
  • Enhancing water and nutrient efficiency.
  • Improving plant reproduction under harsh conditions.
  • Leveraging multi-omics, AI, nanotechnology, and soil microbiome research to accelerate adaptation strategies.
  • Producing crops with higher nutritional value or novel plant-derived ingredients.

Ultimately, the goal is to support Europe’s Farm to Fork Strategy, securing sustainable food supply chains while reducing dependency on imports.

  1. Generative AI Agents for Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment

Cancer remains one of Europe’s greatest health challenges. Medical imaging produces enormous amounts of data, but integrating and interpreting this across modalities (MRI, CT, PET, histopathology, genomics, etc.) remains difficult.

This challenge seeks to harness Generative AI (GenAI) and advanced machine learning to develop autonomous agents that provide clinicians with a holistic, end-to-end perspective of patient care.

Projects should focus on one of eight cancers (breast, cervical, ovarian, prostate, lung, brain, stomach or colorectal) and address both technological and clinical dimensions.

Key objectives include:

  • Developing GenAI algorithms for integrating multimodal health data.
  • Creating synthetic medical datasets to overcome data scarcity.
  • Building interpretable AI systems that clinicians can trust.
  • Designing personalised treatment pathways and improving diagnostic accuracy.

The expected impact is profound: better cancer outcomes, reduced costs, enhanced clinician support, and positioning Europe as a leader in AI-driven healthcare.

  1. Autonomous Robot Collectives for Construction

The construction industry is one of the least digitalised sectors, struggling with productivity gaps, safety issues, labour shortages, and rising sustainability demands. Current automation efforts often focus on upgrading heavy machinery, but this challenge envisions something far more radical: multi-robot collectives performing collaborative tasks in unstructured construction environments.

Projects should explore robot swarms and distributed control systems capable of handling site preparation, substructures, and superstructures in dynamic conditions, while integrating with electrified equipment.

Key objectives include:

  • Demonstrating TRL 4 robotic building systems using modular construction elements.
  • Developing mobile, collaborative robotic platforms capable of autonomous assembly and disassembly.
  • Advancing human-robot collaboration for safe on-site coexistence.

The expected impacts include higher productivity, safer workplaces, reduced emissions, and progress towards affordable housing and sustainable infrastructure.

  1. Waste-to-Value Devices: Circular Fuels, Chemicals and Materials

Despite progress in renewable energy, fossil fuels still dominate as feedstocks for chemicals and materials. This challenge aims to develop next-generation waste-to-value devices that transform problematic waste streams (plastics, flue gases, wastewater, desalination brines) into valuable fuels, chemicals, and raw materials.

Technologies of interest include:

  • Solar reforming and synthetic biology devices.
  • Integrated capture and conversion technologies.
  • Brine mining for critical raw materials.
  • Microbial and photocatalytic remediation processes.

Projects must deliver TRL 4 integrated devices within 3–4 years, ensuring that outputs are higher-value than the original waste and fully sustainable.

The challenge is aligned with the EU Green Deal, Fit for 55, and Circular Economy Action Plan, aiming to reduce resource dependency and support localised, renewable supply chains.

Why Apply?

The EIC Pathfinder Challenges are not just research projects, they are opportunities to shape the future of Europe’s economy and society.

From resilient food systems and AI-driven healthcare, to robotic construction and circular chemistry, the 2025 challenges address some of the world’s most pressing problems. For ambitious innovators, this is a unique chance to secure substantial funding, collaborate across disciplines, and take part in building Europe’s next wave of transformative technologies.

👉 For a FREE consultation to discuss your project idea, contact RedKnight today.

 

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