The new work programme of Horizon Europe 2025 – 2026 has been published and is a key step towards achieving the EU’s research and innovation priorities outlined in the Horizon Europe strategic plan for 2025-2027. ME/CFS is specifically highlighted in one funding area with the aspects to be considered by funders bearing a great deal of synergy with ME/CFS research areas and approaches.
Only legal entities forming a consortium are eligible to participate in Horizon Europe actions provided that the consortium includes, as beneficiaries, three legal entities independent from each other and each established in a different country as follows:
- at least one independent legal entity established in an EU Member State;
- and at least two other independent legal entities, each established in different Member States or Associated Countries (this includes the UK).
An independent legal entity being a business, university, research institute, charity, or not-for-profit with an indicative amount of EU funding contributions for projects mostly between €2m and €20m. This can cover up to 100% of costs depending on the call.
Although the closing date for European Partnership for Brain Healthand European partnership fostering a European Research Area for health research (Phase 2) have passed, all others within Cluster 1: Health have a first stage closing date of 16 September 2025, and the second stage closing date of 16 April 2026.
The overarching Horizon Europe 7-year scheme enjoys a budget of €95.5 billion. Contained within policy Call: Cluster 1 – Health (Single stage – 2025) is the snappily entitled “HORIZON-HLTH-2025-01-DISEASE-07: Tackling high-burden for patients and under-researched medical conditions”. It is likely that this heading (p63) will be the area under which ME/CFS research will find funding given it is listed specifically but ME/CFS has also been recognised as a high burden/low research disease in an EU scoping study. The amount allocated to this area is €6m.
To that end, proposals under this topic should aim to deliver results that are directed, tailored towards and contributing to most of the following expected outcomes:
- The scientific and clinical communities make effective use of state-of-the-art information, data, technologies, tools and best practices to better understand the condition, underpinning the development of diagnostics, therapeutics and/or preventive strategies.
- The scientific and clinical community exchange data, knowledge and best practices, thereby strengthening their collaboration and building knowledge and care networks in Europe and beyond.
- The scientific and clinical community make wide use of newly established and where relevant open access databases and/or integrate them with existing infrastructures for storage and sharing of collected data according to FAIR 127 principles, thereby encouraging further use of the data.
- Policymakers and funders are informed of the research advances made and consider further support in light of the sustainability of the studies.
- Patients and caregivers are constructively engaged with the research, which also caters for their needs.
- Health professionals have access to and use improved clinical guidelines on diagnosis and/or treatment of the condition.
Scope: A number of medical conditions fail to be recognised and/or be correctly diagnosed in a significant proportion of patients. As a consequence, they are inadequately treated and often can become a chronic and high burden for the patient. These medical conditions, including:
i. myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome,
ii. autism,
iii. gynaecological diseases,
iv. low back pain,
v. other,
may be insufficiently researched even though they manifest with high prevalence.Further –
- Proposals should address the gaps in robust, scientific evidence for improved policies and practices to tackle such a medical condition and aim at identifying the pathophysiological mechanism(s) (e.g. genetic, cellular and molecular) and potential risk factors (e.g. psychological and environmental) of the medical condition through basic, pre-clinical and/or clinical research. These efforts should underpin the development of diagnostics, therapeutics, and/or preventive strategies for the condition.
- Proposals should demonstrate that the medical condition under study is insufficiently understood, inaccurately diagnosed or inadequately treated in a significant proportion of patients, and as such represent a high burden for patients and society. This could be through referencing key literature.
- Sex and gender-related aspects, age, ethnicity, socio-economic, lifestyle and behavioural factors should be taken into consideration. In addition, the emotional and societal long-term effects of these chronic disorders for the affected individuals should be addressed.
- Where applicable, the development of biomarkers and other technologies for diagnosis, monitoring in patients, and stratification of patient groups should be considered.
- Where applicable, the development of clinically relevant, (non-)human model systems that can complement clinical investigations should be considered.
- Exploitation of existing data, biobanks, registries and cohorts is expected, together with the generation of new (e.g. genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics) data.
- To enable sharing of samples, quality data and advanced analytical tools, it is encouraged to make use of existing infrastructures developed at the European or national level.
- Inclusion of patients or patient organisations in the research is strongly encouraged, to ensure that their views are considered.
- Participation of start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is strongly encouraged.
