A New Year’s message from Eureka Director-General, Brit Helle

Dear colleagues and friends of Eureka,

The start of a new year is a good occasion to share our plans for the year ahead.

2026 will give us the opportunity to look forward through the lens of our achievements since Eureka began in 1985. This year, we celebrate Eureka’s 40th anniversary by publishing a book titled Blueprint for Tomorrow, complemented by video and website content. The book features insights from key stakeholders and spotlights success stories from across our network.

Celebrations will culminate in a Global Innovation Summit in Basel on 6 May, hosted by Innosuisse, our Swiss Chair, in connection with Swiss Biotech Days. The Global Innovation Summit is Eureka’s flagship event, and it never fails to impress. It demonstrates our network’s ability to gather a global audience of innovators and deliver high-quality content on groundbreaking research and development.

For those based in Brussels, keep in touch! We will be organising events here too: to honour Eureka’s 40 years and to discuss how innovation policy can best support researchers and entrepreneurs in the context of our European Partnership on Innovative SMEs.

In the second half of the year, we eagerly anticipate our incoming Belgian Chair. United in research, development and innovation, Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia have progressive goals to reinforce our programmes and the reach of Eureka’s network. This will be significant as the 10th Framework Programme for Research and Innovation becomes more clearly defined.

In looking ahead, it is important to stay anchored in our recent achievements. 2025 saw renewed association agreements with Chile and South Africa, renewed Cluster licenses for the next seven years and new corporate and investor partnerships. Additionally, we broke records for both the number of calls for projects launched in one year and the number of applications received for a single call for projects.

Behind all our accomplishments is the hard work of the Eureka teams in each national administration and the dedicated team at the Eureka Secretariat. Together, we embrace and tackle new challenges year after year. Reenergised after a good end-of-year break, we are ready to both seize and create new opportunities in 2026.

From all of us at Eureka Network to our global innovation network: happy 2026!