SBEP 3rd Joint Call 2025 Launches

The Marine Institute is delighted to announce that the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership’s third joint transnational call “Digitalisation and Innovation for Resilient Marine Ecosystems Businesses, and Communities to Strengthen the EU Blue Economy’s Competitiveness” with a deadline for pre-proposal submissions on 17 November 2025. 

This call is co-branded as part of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, which is coordinated by UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC/UNESCO) on behalf of the UN system, with the aim that the funded research and innovation projects are endorsed as Ocean Decade projects. 

The third Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership (SBEP) co-funded call pools national and regional financial resources of 43.5 million Euro through the participation of 38 funding organisations from 28 countries. The Marine Institute is one of the national funders for Ireland under this call with a commitment of €0.9 million. Research Ireland is the other national funder with €0.8 million funding commitment, making €1.7 million in total available for Irish partners. (Note: The Marine Institute has already awarded €3.8 million for 12 projects under the first two calls in 2023 and 2024).

The vision of the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership is to design, steer and support a just and inclusive transition to a regenerative, resilient, and sustainable blue economy. This EU Horizon Europe Partnership aims to boost the transformation needed towards a climate-neutral, sustainable, productive, and competitive blue economy by 2030 while creating and supporting the conditions for a sustainable ocean for the people by 2050.

Irish co-ordinators or partners in a consortium can apply to the Marine Institute under any of the five themes as follows:

  1. Digital Twins of the Ocean (DTOs) at sub-basin scale

  2. Transitioning the blue economy sectors, and the development of the coexistence and the marine multi-use infrastructures

  3. Climate-Smart Planning and managing sea-uses at the regional level

  4. Blue Bioresources; sustainable fisheries and aquaculture, and new bio-based products

  5. Resilient Coastal Communities and Businesses

Proposal consortia must have at least three countries, with funding available for Irish partners being 300,000 Euro for Public Research Performing Organisations and Industry/Private RPOs (minimum request 90,000 Euro per Irish partner) for three years (max of two Irish partners per proposal), which is being funded by the Marine Institute. A budget template for Irish partners is available from the Marine Institute's Research Funding Office (funding@marine.ie). The full call details including details of national guidelines for Irish partners are published on the SBEP website.

 

Applicants will have up to 17 November 2025 (15h CET) to submit their pre-proposals, via the online submission tool managed by the SBEP Call Secretariat.

 

An online webinar will be held on 24 September 2025 (14:00-15:30 CEST) for potential applicants. The webinar will introduce the priority areas of the call and outline the process, evaluation criteria and selection process. Please register for this webinar at the link above.

 

Please email the Marine Institute's Research Funding Office (funding@marine.ie) if you have any queries, and/or to confirm that you are submitting a proposal, quoting SBEP call in the subject title.

 

 

 

Expiration Date