French-German R&D Projects Matchmaking 2025/2026

Scope

Bpifrance and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE) intend to support joint French-German research and development projects (R&D projects) in order to develop innovative products, processes, or technical services in all technological and application areas.

Funding will be available for R&D projects in which new products, technical services or processes with a high market potential are developed and subsequently transformed into marketable products.

In Germany, funding is provided through the Central Innovation Programme for SMEs (ZIM). In France, funding is provided through the Bpifrance Aide à l’Innovation funding scheme.

Deadline for the applications is 03rd December 2025.

Requirements

The partners must include at least one company from France and one SME from Germany, which are independent from each other.
The project should demonstrate a balanced technological contribution by the participants from both countries and must be equally significant to all participants.
- In a project with two cooperating partners, no partner may contribute more than 70% of total person months to the project.
- In a project with more than two cooperating partners, no partner may contribute more than 50% of total person months.
- All RTOs involved in the consortium may altogether not contribute more than 50% of the total person months.

The criteria are detailed in the guidelines below (cf. chapter 2.2), which should be read carefully before applying :

Guidelines_call for projects - France-Germany_Bpifrance_AiF.pdf

Submission of proposals :

Every project consortium submits two types of applications: A single common proposal (English) to be jointly prepared, and the national applications to be submitted by each individual partner to their respective funding organisation (French or German).

1. Common proposal

German and French partners file one short common proposal in English, legally signed by all organizations participating in the project.

Please download and open this PDF using the Adobe Acrobat Reader as the file includes dynamic features such as calculation functions which otherwise will not work.

Proposal-application-form_Call for proposals_France-Germany.pdf

2. National applications

In addition to the common proposal, project partners must submit a national application according to their respective national rules.

Germany

Each German project partner submits an individual ZIM application to AiF Projekt GmbH (ZIM project management agency on behalf of BMWE). The application must be written in German and comply with the regulations of the ZIM guideline.
Eligible beneficiaries:

German SMEs and medium-sized companies with less than 500 employees (fulltime equivalents)
Medium-sized companies with less than 1,000 employees are eligible if they cooperate with at least one German SME
Research and technology organizations can apply as cooperation partners
General information on ZIM funding: Zentrales Innovationsprogramm Mittelstand (ZIM) - FuE-Kooperationsprojekte

Detailed criteria for submitting applications and the email address for requesting the ZIM application form can be found on the Zim website.

France

In order to check their eligibility for national funding, French participants must contact their Bpifrance chargé(e) d’affaires innovation, cc international.innoproject@bpifrance.fr, prior to applying.
Each French partner must submit their national funding application on Bpifrance En Ligne platform before 03 December with all mandatory appendices included. The short project title used in the Proposal Application Form with their German partners must be provided. The Bpifrance en Ligne account will be opened with the help of the chargé(e) d’affaires innovation.