Open Calls

The “Phoenix Award for long-term Swiss entrepreneurship” is entering its sixth year. With its Succession Award, the Swiss Umbrella Association for Corporate Succession – CHDU honors Swiss SMEs that have successfully mastered their succession for at least a century. Potential winners for the Phoenix Award 2025 are independent Swiss SMEs that have been entered in the Swiss commercial register for 100 years or are 100 years old this year. Companies that meet the following criteria can now apply directly at www.phoenixaward.ch:
Founded in 1925
OR
Registered in the Swiss commercial register in 1925
OR
Celebrate a milestone birthday over 100, e.g. 110th, 125th, 200th. etc.
Swiss SMEs
Group-independent resp. privately managed
The registration deadline is May 31, 2025.

We look forward to receiving an application from your company or a relevant company from your network.

The Canton of Zurich Vocational Training Fund rewards training companies in the Canton of Zurich with a lump-sum financial contribution if they provide individual support for their high-performing, talented apprentices. Submit applications for 2025 now.

Swissbau Startup Challenge 2026 – Your startup, your chance: Register now!

The Swissbau Startup Challenge is a cooperation between the Startup Academy and Swissbau, which promotes young companies from the construction and real estate industry. In 2025 / 2026, it will take place for the third time and invites all young companies in the construction and real estate industry to participate. The newly launched “Circular Award” recognizes particularly innovative approaches to the circular economy. Preparations are in full swing, the Challenge is in the starting blocks and registration was recently opened. The Challenge is a platform for young companies to present their ideas and actively contribute to the transformation of the construction and real estate industry. Participation in the Swissbau Startup Challenge, which begins in June 2025 with the boot camp, brings numerous advantages. Finalists will have the opportunity to present their innovations to a wide audience at Swissbau from January 20 to 23, 2026 in Basel – one of Europe’s leading trade fairs. They also benefit from the opportunity to make valuable contacts with decision-makers, companies, organizations and potential partners. A high-caliber jury of experts also provides well-founded feedback on the business ideas presented.

The challenge is accompanied by a strong network of mentors who provide participants with valuable input. There is also the option of taking part in the Startup Academy’s accompanying program to further develop your own ideas.

Together with strong partners, the Swissbau Startup Challenge 2026 sets an example for innovation and sustainability – an important impulse for the future of the construction and real estate industry!

Startups can now register to take part in the Swissbau Startup Challenge. For more information, visit the official website here.

This is the fifth time that the Zürcher Unterland regional location promotion organisation has awarded the coveted innovation prize. This was launched in 2021 by the Regional Economic Council to recognise and highlight innovations from the lowlands. SMEs from the Zürcher Unterland can apply now. We are looking for companies that can convince with innovative products, services, processes, business models or organisational forms.

To apply, you must have your registered office or a branch in the Zürcher Unterland. In addition, the innovation should have been implemented in the last three years or be at an advanced stage of implementation. Applications will be accepted online until June 30, 2025: zuercherunterland.ch/innovationspreis.

The prize money of CHF 5000 for the winning company and CHF 2500 each for second and third place is sponsored by Zürcher Kantonalbank and Vetropack AG.

The innovations submitted are evaluated by the Economic Council, which acts as a jury, according to the following criteria:

• Degree of innovation
• Impact on the regional economy
• Impact on social life (ESG Social / Social Sustainability)
• Impact on the environment (ESG Environmental / ecological sustainability)
• Image impact and appeal for the region
• Transferability to other companies

The award ceremony will take place on August 26, 2025 as part of the location promotion innovation event. The event will take place in Rafz at the winner of the Innovation Award 2024, Localfish AG.

With the Digital Economy Award, we want to motivate and promote companies and organizations that are advancing digital transformation and digitalization in Switzerland. The Digital Economy Award is organized by the ICT trade association swissICT. The Digital Economy Award was created in 2018 through a merger of the Swiss ICT Award and the Swiss Digital Transformation Award. The Digital Economy Awards ceremony will take place on November 13, 2025 at the Hallenstadion in Zurich.

Do you have a great idea? Then bring it to life with the help of AI and join the AI Challenge!

No prior knowledge needed – you’ll learn the AI basics in an online course. All that matters is your creativity and curiosity!

🏆 Develop your own Artificial Intelligence
📅 For students aged 13 to 19 who are not enrolled in a university
💻 Learn, code & become an AI pro

Are you in? Sign up, form a team, and get started! 🚀

The THCS partnership aims to support the development of new and innovative solutions for current and future challenges in the health and care sector in a collaborative and transnational approach.

The title of the 2025 call for projects is “Better care closer to home: Enhancing primary and community care”. The aim is to strengthen both the healthcare and primary and community care systems and to provide policy makers and other responsible parties with the knowledge and tools needed to manage the necessary transitions in primary and community care. The projects funded under this call for projects should lead to promising innovations in financial, organizational and practical services to promote the transformation of the health and care system and help accelerate the exchange of best practices between countries and regions.

Proposals must relate to one of the following two sub-topics:

• Subtheme 1: Strengthening the primary and community health and care system
• Sub-theme 2: Systemic approaches to modernizing the primary and community healthcare sector

Further information can be found on the official THCS website.

The THCS project call is aimed at universities, colleges, research institutions, hospitals, foundations or other healthcare providers, user organizations, SMEs, start-ups and large companies.

You can find out more about the Transforming Health and Care Systems program on the official THCS website.

The aim of the Flagship Initiative is to promote systemic innovations that contribute to overcoming major economic and social challenges. It also aims to strengthen the competitiveness of the Swiss economy and/or contribute to the well-being of society by creating added value along the entire value chain through efficiency improvements, cost reductions or new solutions for socially relevant challenges.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has a significant impact on our world in many ways. AI is seen as a driver of productivity and economic growth and can help to overcome global challenges such as climate change, resource scarcity and health crises. For the Swiss economy and society, AI applications will create new opportunities for growth and development and help solve some of the most pressing problems facing our world today.

The flagship theme of the 2024 call for projects is therefore:

Artificial intelligence in life sciences with a focus on human health

Today, AI has already produced innovations in key areas of human health, such as drug discovery, genomic data analysis, precision medicine and personalized medicine, as well as multimodal large-scale language models and protein language models. Switzerland has the potential to take a leading position in the development of innovative solutions with AI to solve challenges and create added value for human health.

AI is expected to have a significant impact on all areas of the economy and society, and it is crucial that Swiss companies and universities strengthen their leading position in innovation. Promoting innovation in such important new technologies is of the utmost importance for Switzerland, as it boosts economic growth and enables the country to maintain its competitive edge and leading position on the global market. Thanks to it, Switzerland will continue to play a key role in important sectors with high added value such as pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical technology, diagnostics and patient monitoring as well as patient management solutions.

The need for an interdisciplinary approach and the ability to generate systemic innovations makes the Flagship Initiative an ideal instrument for developing valuable solutions. These solutions must have a decisive impact and be accepted by society and the economy. This means that the social, legal and regulatory aspects must not be neglected.

Switzerland has a strong AI ecosystem with a close-knit network of leading AI research institutes, ambitious start-ups and established industrial companies. Innosuisse is therefore inviting research and implementation partners to form consortia and submit applications for the 2024 flagship call for proposals “Artificial intelligence in life sciences with a focus on human health”.

Participants from Switzerland and South Korea are invited to submit proposals for joint projects in the field of research and development of innovative applications and products with high market potential in Switzerland and South Korea.

The call for projects is open to partners from Switzerland and South Korea. The aim is to promote innovation, particularly in the following areas:

• Biotech and Medtech;
• Digitalization, Industry 4.0, Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence;
• Additive manufacturing;
• Intelligent materials / innovative surfaces;
• Augmented and virtual reality;
• Hydrogen technologies;
• Renewable energies and batteries.

More about the international projects with South Korea and the local partner Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology (KIAT).

Submit an application:

Participants from Switzerland must submit their application to Innosuisse via the submission portal. Each application must contain the following information:

• a draft of the consortium agreement (not signed);
• the document for joint project proposals 2025.
• Documents to verify financial viability (for Swiss implementation partners with less than 250 FTEs), i.e:
  • Income statement (2023, 2024),
  • Balance sheets (2023, 2024),
  • other financial evidence of the contributions received,
  • If no annual financial statements are available: submit the completed financing form by secure e-mail.
• For financing applications of more than CHF 1 million, please submit additional due diligence documents to Innosuisse (application form / documents via bilateral-cooperation@innosuisse.ch).

Participants from South Korea must submit their application to KIAT.

Apply for the Swiss Excellence Product Award 2025

With the Swiss Excellence Product Award, the Swiss Excellence Foundation makes a contribution to promoting entrepreneurship and Switzerland as a location for technology and innovation.

We present two different product awards for SMEs & start-ups

The innovation content, value creation potential and the quality of the business model and marketing concept are evaluated. The awards will be presented at a ceremony at Technopark Winterthur on September 11, 2025. The winners receive the right to label and advertise the award-winning products with the “Swiss Excellence Product Award” label. They also benefit from the Foundation Board’s valuable network, participation in the AWARD ceremony and the publicity generated in connection with the award.

The BRIDGE Discovery project call is aimed at experienced researchers who would like to implement an innovation resulting from their research work in the field of basic or applied research. The program provides financial support for the development of the scientific foundations necessary for the implementation of innovative projects, especially in the critical pre-commercialization phase, to advance their scientific and technological vision.

BRIDGE is a joint initiative of Innosuisse and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). This program comprises two funding opportunities aimed at researchers in Switzerland.

Further Information:

Further information, in particular on the requirements and the application procedure, can be found on the project call page.

Swiss companies and research institutions are invited to participate in the cooperation program between Switzerland and Poland. The aim of this program is to promote sustainable development and long-term economic growth by generating knowledge from research.

The international research and development projects funded under this program are intended to help improve the competitiveness of companies in the field of applied research. At the same time, young researchers are to be supported in their projects.

Projects must be submitted by consortia comprising at least one Swiss and one Polish institution as well as one Swiss and one Polish company. The call for projects is open to all subject areas. The experimental and industrial research work carried out as part of the projects is aimed exclusively at applications in the civil sector.

The program is financed via the Swiss contribution to certain EU member states. It is managed by the Polish National Center for Research and Development (NCBR) and funded by Innosuisse.