HORIZON-CL2-2026-01-HERITAGE-01: “Artistic Intelligence” — Harnessing the Power of the Arts to Address Complex Challenges, Enhance Soft Skills and Boost Innovation and Competitiveness

Officially titled “Artistic intelligence: harnessing the power of the arts to address complex challenges, enhance soft skills and boost innovation and competitiveness,” this Horizon Europe topic funds research into what art-science-technology collaboration actually delivers, and how to measure it. The framing in the call text is that initiatives such as SciArt and S+T+ARTS have shown these collaborations work; what is missing is consolidated evidence, transferable methodology, and evaluation metrics that let policymakers act on them.

Call at a Glance

Expected Outcomes

Proposals should contribute to the first two outcomes, plus either the Focus 1 or the Focus 2 outcome:

• The potential of art-science and/or technology collaborations to address societal challenges and drive innovation is better understood, with guidance, toolkits, and actionable methodologies giving policymakers, professionals, and training organisations clarity on intervention scope, applicability across fields, and evaluation methods, metrics, or tools.
• New and existing national, European, or international networks for art-science-technology collaboration are established or strengthened, expanding opportunities for artists to engage with science and technology.

Focus 1 outcome: approaches, methodologies, and model interventions for integrating arts and creative practices to enhance soft skills across public and private sectors are developed, tested, and disseminated.

Focus 2 outcome: the effectiveness of critical artists’ engagement in interdisciplinary teams is demonstrated, alongside assessment of the viability of research-intensive emerging technologies, through at least three low technology readiness level (TRL) pilot demonstrators.

Scope: What Proposals Should Address

The call defines “artistic intelligence” as the collaborative capacity of artistic research and practice to generate innovation, impact, and value by integrating creativity with scientific, technological, and cultural knowledge, particularly through cross-disciplinary collaboration. Proposals may critically explore and develop that definition.

Projects are expected to:

• Gather evidence on art-science-technology collaborations for addressing societal challenges and spurring innovation in science and technology.
• Collect case studies and produce guidance, toolkits, and methodologies supporting policymakers in promoting such collaborations, clarifying mechanisms, the span of possible interventions, and applicability across fields and contexts.
• Develop concrete use cases, such as artists supporting ethical, inclusive, human-centred AI; addressing societal challenges and complex transformations; advancing emotional storytelling, experiential art, and public engagement through AI and real-time data; public sector roles in art-science-technology uptake; the role of artists in catalysing innovation in policymaking; and participatory art-science-technology initiatives and citizen science.
• Develop and test qualitative and quantitative methodologies and key performance indicators for evaluating these interventions, measuring medium- to long-term benefits and identifying what constitutes success.
• Increase opportunities for artists to engage in art-science-technology collaborations through networks, interdisciplinary initiatives, or other methods.

The Two Focus Options

Focus 1: Enhancing soft skills through creativity and the arts. Develop, experiment with, and disseminate frameworks for using the arts and creative practices to strengthen soft skills such as creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, and emotional intelligence, across education and lifelong learning, public administration, and corporate environments. Proposals may choose their own areas of application. The call cites the Draghi report on European competitiveness as part of the rationale.

Focus 2: Pilots on emerging technologies. Develop at least three small-scale, low-TRL pilots on emerging technologies in interdisciplinary settings involving artists. Candidate technologies named in the call include immersive arts, grid sensing networks, multisensuality, ubiquitous XR, spatial computing, VLM/LLM work with historical data, crowd digitization, and virtual reality.

Proposals must clearly indicate which focus they have selected.

Eligibility and Consortium Requirements

Standard Horizon Europe eligibility applies (General Annex B), with two topic-specific points:

• Consortia must include artists and creatives or representatives of the creative industries. This is stated as a requirement, not a preference.
• The Joint Research Centre (JRC) may participate as a consortium member with zero funding or as an associated partner. Proposals should consider JRC involvement given its experience with the SciArt programme and its role as an interface between research and policymaking.

Financial support to third parties of up to EUR 60 000 in the form of grants may be used to actively engage artists and creative professionals, for example through residencies.

Where to Apply

Proposals are submitted through the EU Funding & Tenders Portal. Check the official topic page and the Cluster 2 work programme for authoritative conditions.

Related Calls in This Destination

Also closing 23 September 2026 under the cultural heritage and creative industries destination:

• HORIZON-CL2-2026-01-HERITAGE-02 — Boosting creative startups for disruptive innovation
• See all HORIZON-CL2-2026-01 calls

Building a Proposal for This Topic?

We partner in Horizon Europe consortia on the software, data, and adoption layer. Art and technology can carry scientific work beyond institutional settings that remain unequally accessible — a thread we follow under art, science and technology collaboration and science communication. Focus 2 pilots that need real-time data, VLM/LLM work with historical or scientific datasets, or reusable technical demonstrators fit software, AI and tech development.

Read more about how we work in Horizon consortia, or browse our wider projects and research.