On June 8, the first thirteen open calls from the next cycle of the Creative Europe programme, scheduled for 2021-2027, were announced. They will provide opportunities for the support to Ukrainian organisations working in the cultural and creative industries and seeking to scale their work to the international level. 

The budget of Creative Europe, the EU's largest grant programme for the cultural and creative industries, has been approved at 2,4 billion EUR, which is almost twice as the budget of the previous programme cycle. Accordingly, Ukrainian applicants have almost twice as many opportunities for grant support and implementation of their own ideas at the international level.

In the first grant season, the following open calls have been already published: 

Culture strand:

• European Cooperation projects (small scale) — to support projects involving a large diversity of players active in different cultural and creative sectors, to carry out a broad spectrum of activities and initiatives. Grant size: to be announced. Deadline: 7th September 2021. Details via the following link. 
• European Cooperation projects (medium scale) — to support projects involving a large diversity of players active in different cultural and creative sectors, to carry out a broad spectrum of activities and initiatives. Grant size: to be announced. Deadline: 7th September 2021. Details via the following link. 
• European Cooperation projects (large scale) — to support projects involving a large diversity of players active in different cultural and creative sectors, to carry out a broad spectrum of activities and initiatives. Grant size: to be announced. Deadline: 7th September 2021. Details via the following link. 
• European Networks of Cultural and Creative Organisations — to enhance the capacities of European cultural and creative sectors to face common challenges and nurture talents, innovate, prosper and generate jobs and growth. Grant size: to be announced. Deadline: 26th August 2021. Details via the following link. 

MEDIA strand:

• European slate development — to foster the competitiveness of European independent production companies and to increase their economic weight on the market. Grant size: 10-100 thousand EUR depending on the number and the genre of the works. Deadline: 25th August 2021. Details via the following link. 
• European mini-slate development — to foster the competitiveness of European independent production companies and to increase their economic weight on the market. Grant size: 10-100 thousand EUR depending on the number and the genre of the works. Deadline: 12th August 2021. Details via the following link. 
• TV and online content — to increase the capacity of audiovisual producers to develop and produce strong projects with significant potential to circulate throughout Europe and beyond, and to facilitate European and international co-productions within the television and online sector, to enhance collaboration between operators, producers, broadcasters. Grant size: from 300 thousand EUR to 2 mln EUR depending on the format of the created content. Deadline: 25th August 2021. Details via the following link. 
• Markets & networking — to encourage business-to-business exchanges among European audiovisual professionals, to include industry events focused on contents and/or the uptake of new technologies and business models, to value environmental-friendly approaches. Call budget: 7,5 mln EUR. Deadline: 24th August 2021. Details via the link.  
• Films on the Move — to encourage and support the wider distribution of recent non-national European films by encouraging sales agents and theatrical distributors in particular to invest in promotion and adequate distribution of non-national European films. Grant size: 10-150 thousand EUR depending on the applicant country and financial capacity of the applicant. Deadline: 24th August. Details via the link. 
• Networks of European Cinemas — to encourage cinema operators to screen a significant proportion of non-national European films and to raise and increase the interest of the audience for non-national films. Call budget: 15 mln. EUR. Deadline: 10th August 2021. Details via the link. 
• European Festivals — to increase audiences' interest in non-national European audiovisual content and promote the circulation and visibility of non-national European audiovisual content. Grant size: 27-75 thousand EUR depending on the number of films at the festival. Deadline: 24th August 2021. Details via the link. 
• Talent & Skills — to foster talents and skills of the audiovisual sector professionals, strengthen the capacity of audiovisual professionals to adapt to new creative processes and new business models. Call budget: 8 mln EUR and grant size depends on the number of planned activities. Deadline: 26th August 2021. Details via the link. 

Cross-sectoral strand:

• Innovation Lab — to incentivise players from different cultural and creative sectors to design and test innovative digital solutions with a potential positive long-term impact on multiple cultural and creative sectors. Call budget: 6,32 mln EUR. Deadline: 5th October 2021. Details via the following link. 

All the applications should be sent only online. In order to apply for grant opportunities, your organisation has to be registered at Funding and tenders opportunities portal. In the forthcoming days all application forms will become active (the calls’ status will change from ‘Forthcoming’ to ‘Open’) and applicants will be able to apply. 

During June-July Creative Europe Desk Ukraine will organise the series of online webinars for each of the open call and will continue providing the free assistance to the prospective applicants. The full schedule of the mentioned events one can find at the official Facebook page or at the web-site of CED Ukraine. 

Ukrainian applicants along with their foreign colleagues can apply to the open calls right now. Grants to the Ukrainian organisations can be awarded only when the Agreement between the Government of Ukraine and the European Commission on the participation of Ukraine in the Creative Europe programme enters into force. At the moment, The Ministry of Culture and Informational Policy of Ukraine works on the Agreement signature. The approximate signing is scheduled for autumn 2021. The approximate announcement dates of the results of the first open calls: January-February 2022.