The EIT Innovation Awards 2025 open today at the Budapest Congress Centre, marking the start of a full day dedicated to celebrating Europe’s brightest innovators.

The event brings together leading entrepreneurs, researchers and emerging startups from across the European Institute of Innovation and Technology’s vast ecosystem.

The EIT, which is the European Union’s largest innovation network, uses the awards to highlight breakthrough solutions and the teams behind them while inspiring a new wave of entrepreneurial talent across Europe.

The gathering also demonstrates how the EIT Community nurtures skills, supports the creation of products and services and helps tackle the continent’s major societal challenges.

This year’s programme unites the EIT Awards, the EIT Jumpstarter Grand Finale and the EIT Red Kalyna celebrations.

The EIT Awards honour outstanding innovators through four categories named Most Promising EIT Changemaker, Best Innovation Team, Most Promising Venture and The Public Award, with prize money set at EUR 50,000 for first place, EUR 30,000 for second place and EUR 20, 000 for third place.

The EIT Jumpstarter Grand Finale concludes a seven-month pre-acceleration journey during which early-stage innovators from moderate and emerging regions compete for awards of up to EUR 10,000 across seven thematic fields.

The EIT Red Kalyna Awards recognise Ukrainian women who are shaping innovation as entrepreneurs, educators, researchers and mentors.

During the event, EIT Director Martin Kern will introduce the organisation’s tenth Knowledge and Innovation Community, EIT Water, alongside Hero Prins, Interim CEO, and Michelle Williams, Vice-Dean for Talent Development and Internationalisation at the Faculty of Technical Sciences at Aarhus University.

The EIT will also sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the Government of Malta to strengthen the country’s innovation capacity.

Nine finalists now advance to the grand finale after emerging from the EIT Awards selection as leading innovators within the community.

The EIT Changemaker Award highlights role models who create meaningful social impact through their work.

Among the finalists is Farnaz Baksh of Estonia, a researcher in the EIT Doctoral Programme who is developing an open-source, affordable and fully 3D-printed social robot designed to support university students both emotionally and academically and supported by EIT Manufacturing.

Another finalist is Germany’s Laura Laringe, an engineer and entrepreneur who co-founded reLi Energy and is transforming battery lifecycle management through intelligent software that boosts performance and extends operational life with support from InnoEnergy.

The Netherlands’ Laurie Lancee, founder of AtVenture Platform, is also shortlisted and is working to create a more inclusive startup ecosystem by training new angel investors and connecting them with underrepresented founders in an effort to close Europe’s gender funding and wealth gaps with support from EIT Food.

The EIT Innovation Team Award draws attention to multidisciplinary teams pioneering transformative solutions.

The Italian team behind AI Automated Industrial Analytics offers human-centric, shop-floor-ready artificial intelligence that enables operators to detect issues early and improve performance and sustainability, benefiting from an EIT Manufacturing grant to reach market readiness.

The BRIGHT Project Innovation Team from Estonia is advancing personalised, risk-based breast cancer screening using polygenic testing to identify high-risk women earlier and enable targeted prevention, building on support from multiple EIT Health programmes.

Italy’s VoiceMed has developed rapid artificial intelligence software that analyses voice and breath recordings to identify abnormal vocal biomarkers using one of the world’s largest proprietary respiratory-health datasets and support from EIT Health and EIT Digital.

The EIT Venture Award recognises emerging startups demonstrating strong growth potential across the EIT Community.

Spain’s ABLE Human Motion develops intuitive and affordable robotic exoskeletons that broaden access to advanced gait training and neurorehabilitation for people with disabilities, supported by the EIT Health Headstart programme.

Sweden’s Digiclean Solutions AB is cutting chemical use in factories through smart sensor technology that optimises industrial fluids in real time to create cleaner and safer processes, supported by several EIT Manufacturing and Supernovas programmes.

Finland’s Sofi Alchemist recovers ultrafine mineral concentrate from process waters to increase output by up to 20 per cent at low operating cost, advancing more efficient and sustainable mining with help from the EIT Raw Materials Booster programme.

Together, the finalists represent the strength and diversity of Europe’s innovation landscape and highlight how the EIT is shaping a more resilient, inclusive and technologically advanced future.