Call for Applications: CREA European Festivals

Objectives

• The general objectives of the Programme are:
  • To safeguard, develop and promote European cultural and linguistic diversity and heritage;
  • To increase the competitiveness and the economic potential of the cultural and creative sectors, in particular the audiovisual sector.

Themes

• The media strand shall provide support to:
  • European audiovisual festivals aiming at increasing audiences’ interest in nonnational European audiovisual content and promoting its circulation and visibility.

Funding Information

• The estimated available call budget is EUR 10000000.
• Projects should not normally exceed 24 months.

Eligible Projects

• Projects must comply with:
  • Highest ethical standards
  • Applicable EU, international and national law.
  • They may not include pornographic or racist material or advocate violence.

Eligible Activities

• European festivals programming a significant proportion of non-national European audiovisual works, aiming at year-long activities targeted to expand and renew audiences and implementing innovative audience outreach activities as well as initiatives for young audiences.
• Applications should present adequate strategies to ensure more sustainable and more environmentally-respectful industry and to ensure gender balance, inclusion, diversity and representativeness.
• Applications should present activities to be implemented over 2 years.

Ineligible Activities

• The following events are not eligible:
  • Festivals programming exclusively works that are not considered as eligible, such as commercials, live-broadcast events, TV series, music videos, video games, amateur films, mobile phone films, trailers and non-narrative artistic works.
  • Thematic Festivals such as cultural events or art/technology/science-related events, as well as highly specialized festivals dealing with specific topics (for example: tourism, sport, gastronomy, fashion, health etc.) are not eligible.
  • Projects must comply with EU policy interests and priorities. Financial support to third parties is not allowed.

Eligibility Criteria

• In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
  • Be legal entities (public or private bodies)
  • Be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
    • Creative Europe Participating Countries:
      • EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))
    • Non-EU countries:
      • Listed EEA countries and countries associated to the Creative Europe Programme or countries which are in ongoing negotiations for an association agreement and where the agreement enters into force before grant signature
  • Only applications from eligible entities organizing audiovisual festivals in countries participating in the Media strand will be accepted.
  • Eligible audiovisual festivals are those having cumulatively:
    • A clear curation, regulation and selection procedure and screening to the general public as well as accredited international audiovisual professionals and press;
    • 50% of the programming for which support is sought should be devoted to non-national European films and audiovisual works from countries participating to the Media strand and presenting a geographical diverse coverage of at least 15 from these countries including low capacity ones;
    • Had at least three editions that took place by end of December 2024.
  • Beneficiaries and affiliated entities must register in the Participant Register — before submitting the proposal — and will have to be validated by the Central Validation Service (REA Validation). For the validation, they will be requested to upload documents showing legal status and origin.
  • Other entities may participate in other consortium roles, such as associated partners, subcontractors, third parties giving in-kind contributions, etc.

For more information, visit European Commission.