The European Commission's Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL) is offering funding to mature a European industrial ecosystem for security-certified terrestrial Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) technologies and systems. This call aims to foster technological autonomy and support the growth of the SME sector in the quantum communication domain.

Objective

The primary objective is to stimulate the development and security certification of compact, efficient European components and systems for quantum key distribution (QKD) and quantum-secure networks. These systems should be ready for integration into telecom networks and compliant with security requirements, such as protection profiles.

The call aims to contribute to the development of a European industrial quantum communication ecosystem, including a thriving SME sector.

The focus is on components and systems that are ready for integration into telecom networks and compliant with security requirements.

Scope

This call focuses on maturing technological components and their integration into end-to-end systems, creating market-ready, high-performance, and ultra-efficient solutions. Designs should favor Small Form Factor (SFF) and cost-effective approaches with a relevant manufacturing readiness level.

This includes the development and integration of hardware and software elements such as photonic integrated circuits for QKD transmitters, receivers, QRNGs, and light sources, as well as non-standard fibers and processing algorithms on reprogrammable platforms.

The scope also covers the development of complete QKD systems, including the integration of software-defined networking controllers and orchestrators for dynamic routing functionalities and multi-vendor network integration.

Expected Outcome

The expected outcome is the maturation of European quantum key distribution components and systems that are compact, efficient, integrable, and security certified. These systems should have relevant manufacturing readiness and be ready for deployment in telecom networks.

The call aims to contribute to a technologically autonomous European quantum communication ecosystem.

Projects are expected to collaborate with the EuroQCI testing and evaluation infrastructure, providing QKD devices as test vehicles and engaging in their testing and validation.

Budget and Timeline

The total budget for the DIGITAL-IRIS2-2025-QCI-01 topic is EUR 30,000,000. The planned opening date for the submission system is 15 July 2025, and the deadline for submissions is 16 October 2025 at 17:00:00 Brussels time.

The call anticipates awarding approximately 5 grants for the DIGITAL-IRIS2-2025-QCI-01 topic.

Other related topics include DIGITAL-IRIS2-2025-QCI-02 and DIGITAL-IRIS2-2025-QCI-03, each with a budget of EUR 3,000,000 and expecting to award 1 grant each.

Eligibility and Admissibility

Admissibility conditions, including proposal page limits and layout, are detailed in section 5 of the call document. Eligible countries and other eligible conditions are described in section 6 of the call document.

Applicants must demonstrate financial and operational capacity, as outlined in section 7 of the call document. The submission and evaluation processes are described in section 8 of the call document and the Online Manual.

Evaluation criteria, scoring, and thresholds are detailed in section 9 of the call document. The indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement is provided in section 4 of the call document.