EU Kommission investiert 140 Mio. EUR in den Einsatz digitaler Schlüsseltechnologien

Die Umsetzung der Strategie Virtual Worlds ist in vollem Gange.

DEADLINE: 02.09.2025 – Förderung für Virtual Worlds!

Die Kommission hat vier Förderprogramme im Wert von 140 Mio. EUR im Rahmen des Programms „Digitales Europa“ (DIGITAL) veröffentlicht, um die Einführung künstlicher Intelligenz (KI) voranzutreiben, fortgeschrittene digitale Kompetenzen zu fördern, das Netz der europäischen digitalen Innovationszentren (EDIH) auszubauen und Desinformation zu bekämpfen.

27 Mio. EUR werden für vier neue Akademien für digitale Kompetenzen in den Bereichen Quanten-, KI- und virtuelle Welten eingerichtet. Und Testbeds für Virtual Worlds werden mit 20 Mio. EUR gefördert (ab Seite 73 im Call Dokument).

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Bewerben können sich für die Testbeds: Public or private entities, primarily focusing on Small Universities, SMEs and start-ups in the domain of Virtual Worlds.

Expected outcomes dabei sind:
• Contributing to European digital sovereignty and open strategic autonomy in the domain of Virtual Worlds.
• Contributing to development of interoperable Virtual Worlds solutions.
• Contributing to the creation of EU regulatory sandboxes for Virtual Worlds

Hier könnt Ihr Auszüge aus dem Arbeitsprogramm lesen:

2.3.2 Virtual worlds test beds
Objective
The principal objective is to support testing, experimentation and integration of state-of-the-art Virtual Worlds, immersive and extended reality technologies in specific sectors. The action will focus on testing and integrating mature technologies and solutions that have already been tested in the labs with the objective to be tested and validated in real-world environments. It will also cover the aspects of interoperability and transferability between Virtual Worlds.

Scope
Virtual Worlds bring unprecedented opportunities in many societal areas, such as better health services, more engaging education and training, new forms of interaction and collaboration among people, immersive cultural experiences or personalised administrative services. Industrial applications
of virtual worlds will enable intelligent, resilient and connected operations, with new digital processes and digital models that are more efficient, cheaper and more sustainable than current industrial processes. Many industrial sectors such as the automotive, advanced manufacturing or logistics industries already start using virtual environments to design, develop, simulate and test new products, services or workflows, accelerate permitting, but also to optimise inventories down the production
line or to train workers.
As Virtual Worlds are gradually moving from hype to reality, new issues appear on the agenda especially when it comes to integration, testing and deployment.
For this action, support to two sectorial test beds is envisaged: one for industrial applications (such as manufacturing, construction or industrial design) and one for societal applications (such as education and training, cultural heritage and other cultural experiences or healthcare). Each test bed should create a network of facilities with critical mass across at least three different Member States or associated countries.
The test beds will offer a combination of physical and virtual facilities to be used by technology providers, and key relevant stakeholders providing access to real conditions depending on the selected sectors (e.g. manufacturing sites, hospitals, construction sites). Activities supported by this action will cover the demonstration, testing and validation in real-life application environment, solving issues and providing improvements. Each test bed will pay a special attention to closely involve end-users in their
activities for customisation of technologies to work environments, and for ensuring human-centric outcomes.
Each test bed will facilitate full integration of Virtual Worlds underlying technologies (eXtended Reality and immersive technologies coupled to, for example, AI, IoT, edge and cloud computing, digital twins, sensors, microelectronics). In addition to access to facilities, the test beds will offer services such as access to hardware components (for example helmets and glasses, XR devices, haptics equipment), computing power, operating systems, software and SDK, testing of new services and devices,
involvement of potential end-users as well as on-demand technical advice and expertise. Each test bed will develop use cases and demonstrators, while investigating issues related to legal and ethical issues and provide support on these (e.g. ethics, data protection, legal regulation, cybersecurity,
privacy, Intellectual property including copyright, certification and standardisation). The test beds will also explore the possibility to support the creation of regulatory sandboxes around the envisaged facilities.
The test bed infrastructure established within this activity will set-up or build on physical and digital resources, which will be available to the facilities users for the testing and experimentation of their hardware and software related to Virtual Worlds.
The facilities will link to relevant Digital Europe Programme projects such as Testing and Experimentation Facilities, EDIHs and data spaces. Facilities are also encouraged to establish links to relevant projects funded by Horizon 2020 or Horizon Europe, whenever feasible and meaningful. For State aid considerations, refer to Appendix 6 of this Work Programme.
Das gesamte Arbeitsprogramm findet Ihr hier.

Alle vier Aufforderungen zur Einreichung von Vorschlägen enden am 2. September 2025.

Dies ist die erste Aufforderung zur Einreichung von Vorschlägen im Rahmen des DIGITAL-Arbeitsprogramms 2025-2027, dessen Schwerpunkt auf der Einführung innovativer Technologien der nächsten Generation in ganz Europa liegt. 

Weitere Informationen zu den Aufforderungen zur Einreichung von Vorschlägen und zum Bewerbungsverfahren findet Ihr auf dem EU Funding & Tenders Portal.

Lest mehr über das Programm „Digitales Europa“ (DIGITAL).