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Poland is preparing to open a PLN 350 million research-and-development competition designed to bring companies, research organisations and selected non-governmental organisations into joint innovation projects. Applications for the consortium-based SMART Path call open on Friday, 7 August 2026, and will remain open until 16 October at 16:00.
The programme is administered by the National Centre for Research and Development, or NCBR, under the European Funds for a Modern Economy framework. Its stated purpose is to support projects that lead to a product innovation or an innovation in a business process connected with the production of goods or services.
The call is a current development for Polish businesses because it moves beyond a general promise of innovation support to a defined funding window, a published budget and a clear partnership model. The programme was announced on 1 July and its terms were updated on 22 July, according to the NCBR competition page.
A partnership-based model
The central feature of the competition is that projects must be carried out by consortia. The consortium leader must be a company, while other participating organisations may include micro, small or medium-sized enterprises, larger companies, research organisations or non-governmental organisations.
Every consortium member must be responsible for at least one task within the research-and-development work. That requirement is intended to make collaboration substantive rather than merely formal: each partner must have a defined role in the project’s research or development activities.
Research organisations and non-governmental organisations may participate only as consortium members, not as leaders. Large companies, with certain exceptions for small and medium-sized mid-caps, must also plan cooperation with an SME connected to the research-and-development tasks or include an SME in the consortium.
Funding for research, development and market preparation
The call covers industrial research and development work, or development work alone, provided that the project is aimed at creating a new product or business-process innovation. Each proposal must fit at least one of Poland’s National Smart Specialisations, the country’s framework for identifying priority areas of economic and technological development.
The minimum eligible expenditure is PLN 3 million. The total requested grant may not exceed PLN 140 million for an entire project. Funding will be provided through grants, with the precise aid structure depending on the status and role of each consortium member.
The research component is mandatory, but the competition also permits related activities. These may include international promotion of products developed through the project, protection of industrial-property rights and the development of skills among employees or management staff at participating companies and other non-research partners.
That combination gives applicants room to plan beyond the laboratory stage. A project can include not only the development of a technology or process, but also selected steps needed to protect the result, prepare it for international exposure or strengthen the skills required to carry it forward.
What applicants need to know
Applications must be submitted electronically through NCBR’s LSI 2.0 information system. The submission window begins on 7 August 2026 and closes on 16 October 2026 at 16:00. NCBR says the competition will use a two-stage assessment process conducted by expert panels.
The first stage will be carried out without a meeting with the applicant. In the second stage, applicants may be asked to correct or supplement their documentation, and a meeting with the applicant forms part of the assessment. The agency expects to approve the first-stage results within 67 days of the deadline and the second-stage results within 155 days of the deadline, although these are projected rather than guaranteed dates.
A signal for collaborative innovation
The call does not predetermine which technologies will receive support. Instead, it establishes a broad route for collaborative projects that meet the National Smart Specialisations and demonstrate a research-and-development component.
Its practical importance lies in the scale and structure of the opportunity. With a PLN 350 million budget and a maximum grant of PLN 140 million per project, the competition can accommodate both substantial industrial research programmes and smaller collaborative proposals above the PLN 3 million eligible-cost threshold.
For Polish companies, universities and applied research teams, the immediate task is to identify partners, divide the research responsibilities clearly and demonstrate how the proposed work could result in a marketable product or business-process improvement. The deadline gives potential applicants just over two months from the opening date to assemble their consortia and complete their proposals.
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