Tomorrow’s startups awarded: here are the EIT Jumpstarter 2026 winners

Europe’s next generation of startup founders won recognition in Lisbon on 12 November, as the EIT Jumpstarter 2026 winners were announced at an official side event of Web Summit.

Selected from 895 applications, the winning teams developed their ideas through training, mentoring, market validation and pitch development. Their solutions span a wide range of sectors, including nanotechnology, food and agritech, energy, shared mobility, geoscience, and other innovative technologies addressing real-world challenges.

This year’s innovations include PRECISION-CHEMO from Spain, a test predicting chemotherapy resistance, SimOSpine (Spain), digital twins to help prevent spinal surgery complications, GeoCura from Albania, which turns toxic mine waste into sustainable building materials and Arcmentor (Ukraine), an AI assistant helping operators learn robotic welding faster.

Supporting innovation talent across Europe

‘The 2026 winners reflect the ambition and diversity of Europe’s emerging innovation talent. They entered EIT Jumpstarter with promising ideas and have worked intensively to understand their markets, validate their solutions and build credible paths towards impact and growth. We look forward to seeing where they take their ventures next,’ said Ilaria Tagliavini, Head of Operations at the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).

The winners come from 12 countries, many of them regions with lower innovation performance. Finalists competed in six categories: Healthcare, Food and Agritech, Energy and Renewables, Smart Cities and Mobility, Raw Materials, and Supporting Maltese Startups and Innovations.

First, second and third-placed teams in these six categories received €10 000, €5 000 and €3 000. Three special prizes were also awarded: Rebuild Ukraine, the Western Balkans Special Prize and the New European Bauhaus prize, which rewards sustainable, inclusive and beautiful solutions inspired by the EU initiative of the same name.

Get to know the winners here

What is EIT Jumpstarter?

EIT Jumpstarter is a pre-acceleration programme for early-stage innovators with science- and technology-based ideas. It helps them turn those ideas into viable businesses through entrepreneurial training, specialist mentoring and access to the EIT’s pan-European innovation ecosystem.

Since its launch, it has trained more than 1 500 innovators and supported over 150 startups. Those companies have created more than 2 600 jobs and attracted over €150 million in external investment.