Digital Investigations and Standardisation

Home Funding Calls for proposals Digital Investigations Digital Investigations ISF-2026-TF2-AG-CYBER-DIGITAL Topic Calls for proposals Internal navigation General information Topic description Topic updates Conditions and documents Budget overview Partner search announcements Start submission Topic Q&As Get support General information Programme Internal Security Fund (ISF) Call Digital Investigations and Standardisation (ISF-2026-TF2-AG-CYBER) Type of action ISF-PJG ISF Project Grants Type of MGA ISF Action Grant Budget-Based [ISF-AG] Open For Submission Deadline model Single-stage Opening date 15 September 2026 Deadline date 15 December 2026 17:00:00 Brussels time Topic description Expected Impact: Projects selected under this call for proposals should aim to achieve one or more of the following outcomes in the field of countering cybercrime and supporting digital investigations: - increasing operational capacity and capabilities of law enforcement and/or judicial authorities, - increasing the availability of technical tools for law enforcement, - increasing awareness on best practices and available solutions as well as building synergies amongst relevant stakeholders will be an asset Objective: (1) developing capacity and expertise of law enforcement and judicial authorities; (2) contributing to the implementation of EU law and strategic documents; (3) fostering cross-border cooperation between law enforcement/judicial authorities and private entities. Scope: Proposals should focus on: Enhancing the operational capacity of law enforcement and/or judicial authorities to investigate cyber-attacks and cyber enabled crime, for instance through specific training, investigative techniques and tools (including for) with a focus on top threat priorities (excluding online child sexual abuse, which is covered by specific calls for proposals) as presented in Europol Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment 2025. Areas that have been identified by EU Member States as needing particular attention include: digital forensics (mobile forensics, computer forensics, network forensics, IoT forensics including automotive forensics, cloud forensics), visual data analysis, malware analysis and reverse engineering capabilities, cryptocurrencies tracing, identifying and disrupting criminal infrastructures, analysis and seizure, efficient storage, processing, analysis and transfer of big data and large datasets, understanding and exploiting “threat intelligence” and metadata, OSINT, crime involving the use of AI by offenders. Enhancing the operational capabilities of law enforcement and/or judicial authorities to address the challenges posed by the use of encryption by criminals and its impact on criminal investigations, for instance through training and/or by supporting the establishment, extension and development of points of expertise and their networking at EU level or supporting the development of a toolbox of alternative investigation techniques to obtain needed information encrypted by criminals (with the exclusion of measures that could weaken encryption in general or could have an impact on a larger or indiscriminate number of people) Enhancing the capabilities of law enforcement and/or judicial authorities through the use and/or adaptation of Large Language Models and AI-based solutions to improve analysis, translation, transcription of data as well as detection of AI materials generated for criminal pruposes. Enhancing the operational capacity of law enforcement and/or judicial authorities to cooperate across borders, for instance supporting the gathering and provision of digital evidence, supporting the secondment of officials, improving the efficiency of 24/7 (permanent) law enforcement contact points for cybercrime, establishment of dedicated platforms Enhancing the cooperation between private entities and/or authorities in the area of cybersecurity and law enforcement and/or judicial authorities, taking remedial action, including by setting of appropriate information exchange systems (or interfaces to make better use of existing systems) Increasing and enhancing reporting of cybercrime to law enforcement authorities Show more Topic updates 17 September 2026 The submission session is now available for: ISF-2026-TF2-AG-CYBER-STANDARD, ISF-2026-TF2-AG-CYBER-DIGITAL Show more Topic conditions and documents Conditions 1. Admissibility conditions: Proposal page limit and layout described in section 5 of the call document. Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System. 2. Eligible countries described in section 6 of the call document. 3. Other eligibility conditions described in section 6 of the call document. 4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion described in section 7 of the call document. 5a. Evaluation and award: Submission and evaluation processes described section 8 of the call document and the Online Manual. 5b. Evaluation and award: Award criteria, scoring and thresholds described in section 9 of the call document. 5c. Evaluation and award: Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement described in section 4 of the call document. 6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants described in section 10 of the call document. Call document and annexes: Call document. Application form templates Standard application form (AMIF, ISF and BMVI) — the application form specific to this call is available in the Submission System Model Grant Agreements (MGA) AMIF, ISF and BMVI MGA Additional documents: ISF Work Programme ISF Regulation 2021/1149 EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509 Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual Funding & Tenders Portal Terms and Conditions Funding & Tenders Portal Privacy Statement Show more Budget overview Topic Budget year : 2026 Stages Opening date Deadline Contributions Indicative number of grants ISF-2026-TF2-AG-CYBER-STANDARD - ISF-PJG ISF Project Grants ISF-2026-TF2-AG-CYBER-DIGITAL - ISF-PJG ISF Project Grants 6 200 000,00 € Single-stage 15 September 2026 15 December 2026 Items per page: 10 50 100 Showing 1–1 of 1 Partner search announcements 17 Searches of partners to collaborate on this topic View / Edit LEARs, Account Administrators or self-registrants can publish partner requests for open and forthcoming topics after logging into this Portal, as well as any user having an active public Person profile. Start submission Need help? To access the Electronic Submission Service, please click on the submission-button next to the type of action and the type of model grant agreement that corresponds to your proposal. You will then be asked to confirm your choice, as it cannot be changed in the submission system. Upon confirmation, you will be linked to the correct entry point. To access existing draft proposals for this topic, please login to the Funding & Tenders Portal and select the My Proposals page of the My Area section. Please select the type of your submission: ISF Project Grants [ISF-PJG], ISF Action Grant Budget-Based [ISF-AG] Start submission Topic Q&As5 item(s) found General FAQ (Clone) Other costs, such as costs for financial support to third parties, are not allowed in this call. Nevertheless, in the Budget sheet (Part A), the budget category "Financial support to third parties/EUR" appears. How come? Financial support to third parties is indeed not allowed, but unfortunately this category could not be removed from the budget sheet. (Clone) Can I choose between the unit costs for travel, accommodation and subsistence, and the actual costs? In my case I am subject to national public procurement rules, so in any case I need to use actual costs for my accounting purposes. For the period 2021-2027 the HOME Funds (AMIF, BMVI and ISF) apply the unit costs for travel, accommodation and subsistence (as specified by the Model Grant Agreement and Annotated G... (Clone) In my application: Where should I list the previous projects, at the end of part B or in a separate file? The list of the previous projects as a separate mandatory annex is mentioned in point 5 of the call text. As mentioned in point 11 of the Call for proposals document, applicants shal... The link to https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/projects-and-activities/digital-finance-research/ciphermonitoring-crypto-markets_en in the footnote 11 on page 8 in the call document seems to be wrong Thanks for flagging this. Indeed in some browsers the link does not go to the correct page since a hyphen was added in the formatting of the text. The correct link is: https://joint-... We would like to include an eligible third country in the proposal but when trying to add them in the submission system we get a warning that we included an ineligible country. What should we do? This seems to be the default setting in the submission system. You indeed receive a warning when you include any non-EU country, but you can still submit the proposal. Your proposal ... Get support Please read carefully all provisions below before the preparation of your application. For help related to this call, please contact HOME-ISF@ec.europa.eu. Funding & Tenders Portal FAQ – Submission of proposals. IT Helpdesk – Contact the IT helpdesk for questions such as forgotten passwords, access rights and roles, technical aspects of submission of proposals, etc. Online Manual – Step-by-step online guide through the Portal processes from proposal preparation and evaluation to reporting on your ongoing project. Valid for all 2021-2027 programmes.