Method, scope and limits
How this calendar is built, what it includes as defence and dual-use, what it deliberately leaves out, and what it does not claim to do.
Applies to the edition published 2026-08-25. The same note is the last page of the PDF.
Where the data comes from
Every row is taken from the European Commission's own Funding & Tenders portal, through its public search API (SEDIA). We read the calls for proposals whose status the Commission publishes as open or forthcoming.
There is no secondary source, no press release, no aggregator and no language model anywhere in the data path. Code, title, dates, action type, budget and link are the portal's own values, reproduced as published.
Where our figure and the portal's figure disagree, the portal is right and we are wrong. Every row carries its official link so the check takes one click.
How often it is refreshed
The portal is re-read every night at 04:45 CET and the document is rebuilt at 05:05. The date in the header and in the footer of every page is the date of that build, not the date you downloaded the file.
A monthly edition is issued at the beginning of each month, opening with the changes since the previous one: calls that appeared, deadlines that moved, calls that closed.
Before publication the build passes eleven automated checks. If any of them fails, the new edition is not published and the previous one stays online: a calendar one day old is better than a wrong one today.
What we include as defence and dual-use
The criterion is structural — it looks at which programme and which cluster a call belongs to, not at whether certain words appear in its title. It is applied in this order:
The European Defence Fund and EDIP, in full, with no further test.
Clusters that are security by construction: Horizon Europe Cluster 3 (Civil Security for Society) in its entirety, the Internal Security Fund, and the EIC defence call.
A curated dual-use list, matched on the call code: space (Horizon CL4-SPACE), cybersecurity (CS-ECCC), quantum sensing and positioning (EuroHPC next-generation computing), semiconductors and photonics (Chips JU), military mobility and submarine cable repair (CEF), submarine cable surveillance (PPPA), information integrity (Digital Europe), and dual-use steel (RFCS). Each entry carries, in the code, the reason it is there — so it can be argued with.
Anything else is out.
Cluster 3 is taken or left whole. Splitting it topic by topic is what a keyword test used to do, and it put border surveillance outside the defence section while keeping a call on age assessment inside it.
What we leave out, and why
These areas never enter the calendar, whatever their wording:
Agriculture and bioeconomy (Horizon Cluster 6), the Soil and Climate missions, the New European Bauhaus, LIFE, CERV and Erasmus+. In these areas the word security means food security or energy security, which is not what this calendar is about.
Civil mobility (Horizon Cluster 5, destination 6): connected and automated driving, urban transport, road safety.
Civil nuclear safety (Euratom).
Where a call could be argued either way, we exclude it. A shorter list that is right is worth more than a longer one that is not, because every wrong row costs the reader the time to discover it is wrong.
The two filters are aligned: a call that no rule claims as defence or dual-use is not published here at all. Until 12 August 2026 the document also carried a second section of calls collected by a looser filter, where submarine cable surveillance sat next to calls on homelessness. That section is gone. The build now refuses to publish if a single unclaimed row reaches the document.
What this document does not do
It is not a list of every open EU call. Calls with no defence, security or dual-use relevance are deliberately outside its scope, and there are several hundred of them open at any time.
It does not tell you what a single project would receive. The budget column is the indicative envelope of the topic; individual grants are a fraction of it, set by each call's conditions.
It does not assess whether you are eligible, whether your consortium qualifies, or whether a call suits your project. It tells you what is open and by when.
It does not replace the official portal. It is a way of seeing the deadlines at a glance; the portal remains the authority on every one of them.
Limits we accept, stated plainly
A call withdrawn or postponed by the Commission after our last read can remain in the document until its published deadline. We re-read the portal nightly and close anything whose deadline has passed, but a withdrawal announced between two reads is not visible to us until the next one.
The defence and dual-use classification is our editorial judgement, not an official Commission category. The Commission does not label calls this way. Every row carries the reason it was classified as it was, so the judgement can be contested row by row rather than taken on trust.
Where the Commission publishes one figure for a budget line covering several topics, the same amount appears on each of those rows, marked shared. Those rows must not be added together.
Dates are reproduced as published. Time zones and the hour of each cut-off are on the portal, and for a deadline that falls in the next few days that hour is worth checking there.
Found a row you would classify differently? The reason for each classification travels with the row in the CSV — write to us with the call code and we will look at it.