Innovation Capital prize deadline extended

The European Commission has announced an extension to the deadline for the Innovation Capital (iCapital) prize call under Horizon 2020.

On Monday the Commission said: “In order to ensure the most appropriate level of technical support to applicants, the deadline of this contest has been postponed to 18 November 2015”. The €1.1m call, which sits under the Societal Challenges pillar, was due to open on 1 July 2015 but is still described as ‘Forthcoming’.

The 2016 iCapital prize sees three awards being presented: a first prize of €950,000, a second prize of €100,000, and a third prize of €50,000. According to the Commission, the winning cities will be selected by an independent panel of experts early next year. The EU institution hopes the prize money will ‘encourage and contribute to enabling the city to develop new innovation activities by attracting investors, industry, top class researchers as well as talented and entrepreneurial individuals’.

The Spanish city of Barcelona was announced as the inaugural European Capital of Innovation during the Innovation Convention in 2014 in Brussels. The €500,000 iCapital prize is being used to scale-up and expand Barcelona’s efforts on innovation.

More details on the prize can be found here.