April was a full one. Across our EU project portfolio — PQ-REACT, EVOLVE2CARE, Open Horizons, Women TechEU, SPADE and APPtake— the month brought quantum milestones, health tech workshops, a closing cohort, smart drone pilots completing in the field, and a week that felt more like a sprint than a calendar month.
Here is everything that happened — and the people behind it.
14 April
Post-quantum cryptography might sound like a topic reserved for specialists, but the work happening inside PQ-REACT has real implications for how Europe secures its digital future. And this month, the project made sure the world knew about it.
World Quantum Day — and a busy month for PQ-REACT
14 April was World Quantum Day, and honestly, it felt like the right kind of reminder of why this work matters. PQ-REACT marked the occasion with a post on the growing importance of post-quantum cryptography and what it means for the way Europe protects its digital infrastructure. And we celebrated it too, because quantum security is the kind of topic that deserves more attention than it gets.
That was just one moment in what turned out to be a surprisingly full month.
PQ-REACT is a Horizon Europe project developing a post-quantum cryptography framework for energy-aware contexts. Learn more at pqreact.eu.
17 April | Online
There is a question every EU project eventually has to answer: what actually survives after the funding ends? EVOLVE2CARE tackled that question head-on this month.
On 17 April, the consortium gathered for a focused internal workshop dedicated to identifying the project’s Key Exploitable Results (KERs) — in other words, the things the project has produced that have genuine life beyond the project itself. From digital platforms to policy frameworks, the team worked through what exists, what it is worth, and how it continues to serve the Health Tech Ecosystem long after the project closes.
Our own Małgorzata Olszewska (Project Manager) was in the room for this one, contributing alongside eight colleagues from across the consortium. It is exactly the kind of session that does not make headlines but determines whether the work actually lands.
Mapping what EVOLVE2CARE actually produces and how it survives beyond the project is exactly the kind of work that determines whether innovation sticks.
Evolve2Care is a Horizon Europe project accelerating the adoption of digital innovations in transitional care. Learn more at evolve2care.eu.
16 April | Online
Open Horizons has always been about more than funding. It is about finding the right startups, supporting them well, and building a community that keeps going. April showed what that looks like in practice.
OC#2 is wrapping up strong: interviews completed, 12 startups pre-selected for funding, legal validation underway. Meanwhile, OC#3 is already outpacing previous calls in submission rates — which says something about the reputation the programme has built.
On 16 April, the team hosted the final Info Day for Open Call #3 — and it drew 43 registered participants from 30 countries. Our own Virginia Vasilakou led the session as presenter, with Maja Horvat managing the Q&A alongside her.
What made it memorable was the honesty. Rather than a standard walkthrough of eligibility criteria, the team shared five real reasons why strong startups still get rejected — weak challenge alignment, generic proposals without technical depth, thin business models, gaps in the team, and plans that try to do too much at once. It was the kind of content that comes from having read hundreds of applications and actually caring about the outcome.
Open Horizons comes together for its final Info Day not as an endpoint, but as a shared milestone — celebrating the startups, ideas, and collaborations that will continue shaping inclusive and sustainable innovation beyond the project.
Later that same day, Virginia Vasilakou and Timi Graubina co-hosted a joint webinar with Access2EIC — “Funding Unlocked: Inside the EIC & Cascade Opportunities Ecosystem” — for the Sploro startup community.
The session brought founders and ecosystem actors together to make sense of Europe’s funding landscape: the EIC and its instruments, cascade funding as a faster and more accessible path to support, and what initiatives like Open Horizons, PhotonQBoost, and Women TechEU actually offer in practice. Real talk, no jargon.
With 26 attendees from 15 countries, and brilliant contributions from Alessia Rotolo (APRE) and Christina Cheimonidi (Praxi Network), it was one of those sessions where the conversation in the chat was almost as good as the content on screen.
Open Horizons is a Horizon Europe project supporting deep tech and digital startups through cascade funding and structured corporate collaboration. Learn more at openhorizonsproject.eu.
1 April | 20-24 April | Online
Women TechEU has been one of those projects that is easy to underestimate from the outside. It is not a technology project in the traditional sense — it is about people, specifically women-led deep tech startups, and what it takes to actually support them well. Our Senior Project Manager, Maja Horvat, has led this work, and April marked the closing of the programme’s fourth and final cohort.
Throughout the project, the team held monthly check-ins with mentors — not because the programme required it, but because they understood early on that knowing your mentors is what makes matchmaking work. By the final cohort, there were 24 mentors involved, and the quality of matches had improved consistently across every round. The feedback from both mentors and mentees reflected that.
Creating a community of any kind takes time and effort, but it can bring immense value to the project. Knowing the mentors in person meant that we were able to make better quality matches and cater to the real needs of the WTEU beneficiaries, which showed in the constant positive feedback we were getting.
On 9 April, the project published its third policy paper (out of four): “The Role of Venture Capital in Advancing Deep Tech in Europe: Challenges, Opportunities, and Future Directions”, prepared by our CEO Miguel Garcia. One final paper is still in the pipeline.
These papers are not filler. They are part of a genuine effort to shape how Europe thinks about innovation, funding, and who gets access to both. Worth reading.
In the final week of April, Women TechEU partners organised a series of public sessions — open to all applicants from previous open calls, regardless of whether they received funding. The idea was simple: the knowledge should reach more people than just the selected cohort.
Our team ran one of those sessions. Virginia Gómez (EU Projects Area Manager) moderated, with Timi Graubina and César Muro each presenting their part — covering cascade funding, alternative funding routes for founders, and what being part of the Sploro startup community actually means in practice.
Of the 27 people who attended, 75% had never engaged with public funding before. That number stays with you.
One thing is very clear: awareness of European public funding is still far from where it should be. That gap is not just surprising — it represents missed opportunities.
Women Tech EU is a European initiative supporting women-led startups in deep tech. Learn more at womentecheurope.eu.
28 April | Online
SPADE is a Horizon Europe project exploring how drone ecosystems — physical and cyber — can transform how we manage agriculture, forestry, and livestock across Europe. April brought two moments worth highlighting.
GRAZEful shows exactly what SPADE's open calls are designed to achieve — real, deployable solutions that bring precision livestock management to farmers using drone technology. Congratulations to the Algolysis team on a successful project completion.
On 28 April, SPADE hosted its e-Conference 2026 — “From Data to Decisions – Standards, AI, and Real-World Pilots” — a four-hour online event that brought together partners, end-users, pilots, and policymakers in an interactive FrameVR environment.
The session was structured around seven blocks, each building on the last. It opened with the latest developments in drone standards, interoperability, and AI regulation — the kind of foundational conversation that often gets skipped in favour of the flashier stuff, but matters enormously for anyone trying to scale these technologies in the real world. From there, the agenda moved through sensor and drone innovation, the SPADE Cyber Platform, and a series of live pilot showcases covering open-field, livestock, and forestry use cases.
One of the highlights was Session 5, where SMEs and innovators who received funding through SPADE’s open calls presented their results — including GRAZEful, which we covered earlier in this recap. Seeing funded projects present their outcomes at the project’s own conference is exactly the kind of full-circle moment that makes open call management worthwhile.
The event closed with a policy roundtable — “Digital Drones, Data and Policy: Turning EU Strategies into Practice in Agriculture and Forestry” — bringing together voices from DG AGRI, standards bodies, pilot operators, and open call beneficiaries to discuss what it actually takes to turn EU policy ambitions into field-level reality.
SPADE is a Horizon Europe project developing smart, sustainable solutions for precision agriculture across the EU. Learn more at spade-horizon.eu.
30 April | Online
To close out the month, Alberto Sierra (COO) and Mikel Apesteguía (Team Leader EU Projects) joined APPtake Dialogue D5 alongside NCC-NL (The Netherlands Cybersecurity Coordination Centre) for a session on something we think about a lot: “Unlock EU Funding for Cybersecurity — and actually make it work.”
Securing EU funding is one thing. Turning it into a project that delivers real impact is a different challenge entirely — and that is what the conversation was about. We will be sharing highlights and takeaways from the session very soon.
APPtake is a Horizon Europe project helping European SMEs strengthen their cybersecurity capabilities by driving the adoption of DevSecOps practices through an integrated marketplace of innovative application security solutions. Learn more at apptake.eu.
May is already shaping up to be just as packed. The PQ-REACT General Assembly is taking place in Berlin, SPADE has more open call completions on the horizon, and Open Horizons OC#3 keeps building momentum as OC#2 pre-selected startups move through legal validation. Women TechEU has one final policy paper still to publish — a small but fitting way to close out a programme that has meant a lot to the team. There is something quietly significant about all of this — watching projects move from launch to completion, and knowing the work continues well beyond the funding.
More to come.
