Horisont Europa - yearbook 2025

Sweden breaks the trend and increases

2025 was a turning point for Sweden, which broke the trend regarding the share of granted funds. Sweden went from 3.3 percent in 2024 to 3.5 percent in 2025.

– From the pandemic onwards, Sweden has been on a downward spiral in its participation. It has been dropping a little bit all the time in how many percent of the money we take home. Now we take 3.6 percent, which is a jump upwards towards the goal of 3.7 percent of the contributions, says Johan Lindberg, project manager for the yearbook and national contact person for cluster 4, which deals with digital issues, industry and space.

The increase is distributed relatively evenly across the program.

– Subject-wise, participation looks about the same as it usually does. We are strong in what we have always been strong in, life science, and we are weak in the things we have been weak in, IT. But we have raised the average.

The break in the trend does not change Sweden's position in the ranking list of successful countries. Sweden comes in eighth place, with the distance both up and down the list being several tenths of a percent.

Horisont Europa has been running for five years, but there is still about 25 billion left to distribute over the next two years.

– Right now there is a lot of focus on what the next framework program will be like. But there is still plenty of money for Swedish actors to apply for in the ongoing program. So we hope that this upswing continues, says Johan Lindberg.

Sweden's results 2025

• 3.5% of funds granted to Swedish organisations.
• EUR 1,818.5 million in total funding during the period.

Collaborations that benefit Sweden

There are still only early and weak indications of what is causing the increase, but both large associated countries and the European Commission's stated objective to increase the size of EU projects may have had an impact here.

– The newly associated countries Great Britain and Canada take a big piece of the pie, but since we in Sweden are good at building relationships and cooperating with those countries, we get some of it too, notes Johan Lindberg.

– In the same way, we seem to be good at participating in large project, he continues. Ten to fifteen years ago I would have said that a normal EU project was three to four million euros. Today, it is more like ten to fifteen million that is normal in a project, with some up to 40 million euros.

The academy remains strong in Sweden

Sweden's results per type of organization are also relatively unchanged over time. Compared to other EU countries, a large proportion of granted funds end up with academia in Sweden. This is mainly at the expense of the institutes' share, which is far below the EU funds.

Proportion of funds granted per type of organization in Sweden

• Academy: 58.2 percent
• Business: 22.8 percent
• Research institutes: 9.2 percent

Separate analysis of Sweden's participation in the partnership

Vinnova has also conducted a separate analysis of Sweden's participation in the EU's partnership within Horizon Europe.